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HISTORY OF RELIGION
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First Edition .
Second Edition
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Third Edition
Fourth Edition
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April 1895
September 1895
March 1897
June 1900
January 1902
March 1903
October 1905
January 1908
September 1 9 11
June 1 91 4
October 19 18
HISTORY OF RELIGION
A SKETCH OF PRIMITIVE RELIGIOUS BELIEFS
AND PRACTICES, AND OF THE ORIGIN AND
CHARACTER OF THE GREAT SYSTEMS
By ALLAN MENZIES, D.D.
PROFESSOR OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ST. ANDREWS
TCnown unto God are all hts works from the beginning of the world.'
— Acts xv. i8.
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
PREFACE
This book makes no pretence to be a guide to all the
mythologies, or to all the religious practices which
have prevailed in the world. It is intended to aid
the student who desires to obtain a general idea of
comparative religion, by exhibiting the subject as a
connected and organic whole, and by indicating the
leading points of view from which each of the great
systems may best be understood. A certain amount
of discussion is employed in order to bring clearly
before the reader the great motives and ideas by which
the various religions are inspired, and the movements
of thought which they present. And the attempt is
made to exhibit the great manifestations of human
piety in their genealogical connection. The writer has
ventured to deal with the religions of the Bible, each
in its proper historical place, and trusts that he has
not by doing so rendered any disservice either to
Christian faith or to the science of religion. It is
obvious that in a work claiming to be scientific, and
appealing to men of every faith, all religions must be
treated impartially, and that the same method must
be applied to each of them.
V
vi Preface
In a field of study, every part of which is being
illuminated almost every year by fresh discoveries, such
a sketch as the present can be merely tentative, and
must soon, in many of its parts, grow antiquated and
be superseded. And where so much depends on the
selection of some facts out of many which might have
been employed, it will no doubt appear to readers
who have some acquaintance with the subject, that
here and there a better choice might have been made.
The writer hopes that the great difficulty will not be
overlooked with which he has had to contend, of com-
pressing a vast subject into a compendious statement
without allowing its life and interest to evaporate in
the process.
For a fuller bibliography than is given in this volume
the reader may consult the works of Dr. C. P. Tiele,
and of Dr. Chantepie de la Saussaye. It will readily
be believed that the writer of this volume has been
indebted to many an author whom he has not named.
St. Andrews, 1895.
PREFACE TO THE THIRD
(REVISED) EDITION
Since this book first appeared twelve years ago it
has been several times reprinted without change.
Advantage has now been taken, however, of a call
for a fresh issue, to introduce into it some alterations
and additions, such as its stereotyped form allows.
Some mistakes have been corrected, the names of
recent books have been added to the bibliographies,
and in some chapters, especially those dealing with
the Semitic religions, considerable changes have been
made. In going over the book for this purpose, I have
seen very clearly that if it had been called for and
written at this time instead of twelve years ago, some
things which are in it need not have appeared, and
additions might have been made which are not now
possible. The last twelve years have made a great
change in the study of religions ; the prejudices with
which it was regarded have almost passed away, powerful
forces have been enlisted in its service, and admirable
works have appeared dealing with various parts of the
vast field. Yet I am glad to think that the attempt
vii
viii Preface to the Third {Revised) Edition
made in this book to furnish a simple introduction to
a deeply important study, and especially to promote
the understanding of the religions of the Bible by
placing them in their connection with the religion of
mankind at large, may still prove useful.
St. Andrews, June 1907,
PREFACE TO THE FOURTH
EDITION
This book is now being reprinted in a somewhat larger
type, and an opportunity is given, less restricted than
the last, for making changes in it. It is impossible
for me at present to re-write it ; it appears substantially
as it was. Some alterations and additions have been
made in the earlier chapters, and the bibliographies
have been brought more nearly up to date. I would
take this opportunity of directing the attention of
readers of this book to the published Proceedings of
the Oxford Congress of the History of Religion, held
in September 1908. They will there see how large
this field of study has now grown, and what varied
life and movement every part of it contains. I have
given references only to the addresses of the Presidents
of the Sections of the Congress, in which a fresh review
will be found of recent progress in the study of each
of the great religions.
St, Andrews, July 191a
CONTENTS
PART I
THE RELIGION OF THE EARLY WORLD
CHAPTER I
pa(;e
introduction
Position of the science — Unity of all religion — The
growth of religion continuous — Preliminary definition
of religion — Criticism of other definitions — Fuller
definition — Religion and civilisation advance together i-iS
CHAPTER II
THE BEGINNING OF RELIGION
Origin of civilisation — It was from the savage state that
civilisation was by degrees produced — The religion
of savages — All savages have religion — It is a psycho-
logical necessity 19-28
CHAPTER III
THE EARLIEST OBJECTS OF WORSHIP
Nature-worship — Ancestor-worship — Fetish-worship — A
supreme being — Which gods were first worshipped? —
Fetish-gods came first — Spirits, human or quasi-
human, came first — Theories of Mr. Spencer and
xi
xii Contents
PAGE
Mr. Tylor — Animism — The minor nature - worship
came first — Theories of Mr. M. Miiller and of Ed. von
Hartmann — The great nature-powers came first — Both
nature-worship and the worship of spirits are sources
of early religion — Conclusion 29-50
CHAPTER IV
EARLY DEVELOPMENTS — BELIEF
Growth of the great gods — Polytheism — Kathenotheism —
The minor nature-worship — The worship of animals
— Trees, wells, stones — The state after death — Growth
of the great religions out of these beliefs . . . 51-65
CHAPTER V
EARLY DEVELOPMENTS — PRACTICES
Sacrifice — Prayer — Sacred places, objects, persons —
Magic — Character of early religion — Early religion
and morality 66-78
CHAPTER VI
NATIONAL RELIGION
Classifications of religions — Rise of national religion — It
affords a new social bond — And a better God —
Example — The Inca religion 79-90
PART II
ISOLATED NATIONAL RELIGIONS
CHAPTER VII
BABYLON AND ASSYRIA
People and literature — Worship of spirits — Worship of
animals— The great Gods— Mythology — The state
religion 91-105
Contents xlii
CHAPTER VI 11
rAGB
CHINA
History of China—The literature of the religion— The
state religion of ancient China — Heaven — The spirits
—Ancestors— Confucius— His life— His doctrine-
Taoism — Buddhism in China .... 106-125
CHAPTER IX
THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT EGYPT
History and literature— i. Animal worship — Theories
accounting for it — 2. The great Gods— They also
are local — Mythology — Dynasties of gods — Ra
— Osiris — Ptah — Was the earliest religion mono-
theistic ? — Syncretism — Pantheism — Worship — 3.
The doctrine of the other life — Treatment of the
dead — The spirit in the under- world — The Book of
the Z?^a^— Conclusion 126-157
PART III
THE SEMITIC GROUP
CHAPTER X
THE SEMITIC RELIGION
Home of the Semites — Character of the race— Their early
rehgious ideas — DifiFerence between Semitic and
Aryan religion 159-169
xiv Contents
CHAPTER XI
FAGB
CANAANITES AND PHENICIANS
The Religion of the Canaanites — The Phenicians — Their
gods — Astral deities of Phenicia — Influence of
Phcnician art 170-178
CHAPTER XII
ISRAEL
The sacred literature — The people — Jehovah — The early
ritual was simple — Contact with Canaanite religion —
Danger of fusion — Religious conflict — The monarchy
— Religion not centralised — The Prophets — The old
religion national — Criticism of the old religion by
the prophets — Appearance of Universalism — Ethical
monotheism — Individualism of the prophetic teach-
ing— The reforms — Deuteronomy — Earlier codes
— The exile — The return ; the reform of Ezra —
Character of the later religion — Heathenish elements
of Judaism — Spiritual elements — The Psalms — The
Synagogue — The national hopes — The state after
death 179-216
CHAPTER XIII
ISLAM
Arabia before Mahomet — The old religion — Confusion
of worship — Allah — Judaism and Christianity in
Arabia — Mahomet, early life — His religious impres-
sions— The revelations — His preaching — Persecution
— Trials; decides to leave Mecca — Mahomet at
Medina — New religious union — Breach with Judaism
and Christianity — Domestic — Conquest of Mecca —
Mecca made the capital of Islam — Spread of Islam —
The duties of the Moslem — The Koran — Islam a
universal religion 217-242
Contents xv
PART IV
THE ARYAN GROUP
CHAPTER XIV
THE ARYAN RELIGION
rAGB
The Aryans, their early home — Their civilisation described
— Little known of their gods — Their worship was
domestic 243-255
CHAPTER XV
THE TEUTONS
The Aryans in Europe — The ancient Germans — The early
German gods — The working religion — Later German
religion — Iceland — The Eddas — The gods of the
Eddas— The twilight of the gods .... 256-273
CHAPTER XVI
GREECE
People and land — Earliest religion ; functional deities —
Growth of Greek gods — Stones, animals, trees — Greek
religion is local — Artistic tendency — Early Eastern
influences — Homer — The Homeric gods — Worship
in Homer — Omens — The state after death — Hesiod —
The poets and the working religion — Rise of religious
art — Festivals and games — Zeus and Apollo — Change
of the Greek spirit in sixth century B.C. — New
religious feeling ; the mysteries — Religion and philo-
sophy 274-304
CHAPTER XVII
THE RELIGION OF ROME
Roman religion was different from Greek — The earliest
gods of Rome are functional beings — The worship of
these beings — The great gods — Sacred persons —
xvi Contents
PAGE
Roman religion legal rather than priestly — Changes
introduced from without — Etruria — Greek gods in
Rome — The Graeco- Roman religion — Decay and
confusion 3°S-323
CHAPTER XVIII
THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA
I. The Vedic Religion
Relation of Indian to Aryan religion — TheRigveda — The
Vedic gods — Hymns to the gods — To what stage
does this religion belong? — It is primitive — It is
advanced — In spite of many gods, a tendency to
Monotheism 324-337
CHAPTER XIX
INDIA
II. Brakmanism
The caste system: the Brahmans — The growth of the
sacred literature — Sacrifice — Practical life — Philo-
sophy— Transmigration — Later developments . . 338-352
CHAPTER XX
INDIA
III. Buddhism
The literature — Was there a personal founder? — The
story of the founder — Is Buddhism a revolt against
Brahmanism ? — The Buddha — Th£_ do(7,triP€ — .^^
Buddhiftt molality — Nirvana — No gods;--jrhj^order
— Buddhism made popirtar-^-CeftehTsion — BuoHhism
is not a complete'religion '. "": r ; : — . 353-380
Contents xvii
CHAPTER XXI
PERSIA
PAGE
Sources — The contents of the Zend-Avesta are composite
— Zoroaster — Primitive religion of Iran — The call of
Zarathustra — The doctrine — Its inconsistencies— -Man
is called to judge between the gods — This religion
is essentially intolerant — Growth of Mazdeism —
Organisation of the heavenly beings — The attributes
of Ahura — Ancient testimonies to the Persian religion
— The Vendidad : laws of purity — How this doctrine
entered Mazdeism — Influence of Mazdeism on
Judaism and in other directions .... 381-408
PART V
UNIVERSAL RELIGION
CHAPTER XXII
CHRISTIANITY
State of Jewish religion at the Christian era — The teach-
ing of Jesus — His person and work — Universalism
of Christianity — The Apostle Paul — What Christianity
received from Judaism — And from the Greek world —
The different religions of Christian nations and the
common Christianity 409-425
CHAPTER XXIII
CONCLUSION
Tribal, national, and individual religion — This the central
development — Has to be studied in nations — Periods
of general advance in religion — Conditions of religious
progress 426-434
INDEX ,,,,,♦,♦«. 435-440
^'
PART I
THE RELIGION OF THE EARLY WORLD
4
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
The science to which this Httle volume is devoted is a
comparatively new one. It is scarcely half a century
since the attention of Western Europe began to fix
itself seriously on the great religions of the East, and
the study of these ancient systems aroused reflection
on the great facts that the world possesses not one
religion only, but several, nay, many religions, and
that these exhibit both great differences and great
resemblances. The agitation of mind then awakened
by the thought that other faiths might be compared
with Christianity, has to a large extent passed away ;
and on the other hand fresh fields of knowledge have
been opened to the student of the worships of man-
kind. By new methods of research the religions of
Greece and Rome have come to be known as they
never were before ; and all the other religions of which
we formerly knew anything have been led to tell their
stories in a new way. A new study — that of the
earliest human life on the earth — has brought to light
many primitive beliefs and practices, which seem to
explain early religious ideas ; and the accounts of
missionaries and others about savage tribes now exist-
ing in different parts of the world, are seen to be full
of a significance which was not noticed formerly. We
are thus in a very different position from our fathers
for studying the religion of the world as a whole. To
3
4 History of Redgion part i
them their own reh'gion was the true one and all the
others were false. Calvin speaks of the "immense
welter of errors " in which the whole world outside of
Christianity is immersed ; it is unnecessary for him
to deal with these errors, he can at once proceed to
set forth the true doctrine. The belief of the early
fathers of the Church, that all worships but those of
Judaism and Christianity were directed to demons,
and that the demons bore sway in them, practically
prevailed till our own day ; and it could not but do
so, since no other religions than these were really
known. That ignorance has ceased, and we are
responsible for forming a view of the subject accord-
ing to the light that has been given us.
The science of religion, though of such recent origin,
has already passed beyond its earliest stage, as a
reference even to its earlier and its later names will
show. " Comparative Religion " was the title given
at first to the combined study of various religions.
What had to be done, it was thought, was to compare
them. The facts about them had to be collected, the
systems arranged according to the best information
procurable, and then laid side by side, that it might
be seen what features they had in common and what
each had to distinguish it from the others. Work of
this kind is still abundantly necessary. The collec-
tion of materials and the specifying of the similarities
and dissimilarities of the various faiths will long occupy
many workers.
Unity of all Religion.— But recent works on the
religions of the world regarded as a whole have been
called "histories." We have the well-known History
of Religion of M. Chantepie de la Saussaye, now in
its third edition, and the Comparative History of the
Religions of Antiquity of M. Tiele. A history of
religion may be either of two things. The word
history may be used as in the term Natural History,
to denote a reasoned account of this department of
CHAP. 1 Introduction 5
human life, without attempting any chronological
sequence ; or it may be used as when we speak of
the History of the Romans, an attempt being made
to tell the story of religion in the world in the order
of time. In either case the use of the term " history "
indicates that the study now aims at something more
than the accumulation of materials and the pointing out
of resemblances and analogies, namely, at arranging
the materials at its command so as to show them in
an organic connection. This, it cannot be doubted, is
the task which the science of religion is now called to
attempt. What every one with any interest in the
subject is striving after, is a knowledge of the religions
of the world not as isolated systems which, though
having many points of resemblance, may yet, for all
we know, be of separate and independent growth, but
as connected with each other and as forming parts
of one whole. Our science, in fact, is seeking to grasp
the religions of the world as manifestations of the
religion of the world.^
In rising to this conception of its task, the science
of religion is only obeying the impulse which dominates
every department of study in modern times. What
every science is doing is to seek to show the unity
of law amid the multiplicity of the phenomena with
which it has to deal, to gather up the many into one,
or rather to show how the one has given rise to the
many. In the study of religion, if it be really a
science, this impulse of all science must surely be
felt. Here also we must cherish the conviction that
an order does exist amid the apparent disorder, if we
could but find it. We must believe that the religious
beliefs and practices of mankind are not a mere chaos,
^ The above statement is criticised by Mr. L. H. Jordan in his excellent
work, Comparative Religion, p. 485, but is in the main a true account
of what has taken place. Mr. Jordan strongly holds that Comparative
Religion is a science by itself, and ought to be distinguished from the
History of Religion, though the latter is, of course, its necessary foundation.
6 History of Religion part i
not a mere incessant outburst of unreason, consistent
only in that it has appeared in every age and every
country of the world, but that they form a cosmos,
and may be known, if we take the right way, as a
part of human life from which reason has never been
absent, and in which a growing purpose has fulfilled
and still fulfils itself. Some theories, it is true, from
which the world formerly hoped much, are not now
relied on, and the present tendency is to abstain from
any general doctrine of the subject, and to be content
with careful collection and arrangement of the facts
in special parts of the field. Caution is no doubt
most needful in the attempt to form a view of this
great study as a whole. Yet something of this kind
is possible, and is beyond all doubt much called for.
It is the aim of this little work not only to describe
the leading features of the great religions, but also
to set forth some of the results which appear to have
been reached regarding the relation in which these
systems stand to each other.
The Growth of Religrion Continuous. — We shall not
pretend to set out on this enterprise without any
assumptions. The first and principal assumption we
make is that in religion as in other departments of
human life there has been a development from the
beginning, even till now, and that the growth of
religion has gone on according to the ordinary laws
of human progress. This is a position which, begin
the study at whatever point he may, the student of
this subject will find himself compelled to take up,
if he is not to renounce altogether the idea of under-
standing it as a whole. To understand anything means,
to the thought of the present day, to know how it has
come to be what it is ; of any historical phenomenon at
least it is certain that it cannot be understood except
by tracing its history up to the root. We assume,
therefore, until it be disproved, that in this as in
other departments of human activity, growth has
CHAP. I
Introduction
been continuous from the first. In every other branch
of historical study, this assumption is made. The
history of institutions is traced back in a continuous
line to an age before there was any family or any
such thing as property. The methods by which men
have earned their subsistence on the earth are known
equally far back ; and there is no break in the
development from the hooked stick to the steam
plough. And should it not be the same in religion ?
Here also shall we not assume, until we find it proved
to be incorrect, that there has been no break in the
growth of ideas and practices from the earliest days
till now, and that the highest religion of the present
day is organically connected with that religion which
man had at first? It is, indeed, in many ways far
removed from the earliest religion, but what was most
essential in the earliest belief still lives in it, and what
was fittest to survive of its earliest motives, still prompts
its worship. Should we adopt this view, we shall find
many of the difficulties disappear which have frequently
stood in the way of this study. When, according to
the new tendency that seems to govern all modern
thought, institutions and beliefs are regarded not as
fixed things, but as things growing from something
that was there before, and tending towards something
that is coming, they cease to arouse contempt, or
jealousy, or hatred. If we can regard religions as
stages in the evolution of religion, then we have no
motive either to depreciate or unduly to extol any
of them. The earlier stages of the development will
have a peculiar interest for us, just as we look with
affection on the home of our ancestors even though
we should not choose to dwell there. We shall not
divide religions into the true one, Christianity, and
the false ones, all the rest ; no religion will be to us
a mere superstition, nor shall we regard any as un-
guided by God. Feeling that we cannot understand
our own religion aright without understanding those
8 History of Re ligio7i parti
out of which it has been built up, we shall value these
others for the part they have played in the great
movement, and our own most of all, without which
they could not be made perfect. In the light of
this principle of growth we shall find good in the
lowest, and shall see that the good and true rather
than the evil and false, furnish the ultimate meaning
of even the poorest systems.
We start then with the assumption that religion is
a thing which has developed from the first, as law
has, or as art has ; and the best method we can follow,
if it should prove practicable, will be to follow its
movement from the beginning. We must not presume
to hope that everything will be made clear, or that
we shall meet with no religious phenomena to which
we cannot assign their place in the dev^elopment. We
must remember that ground is often lost as well as
won in human history, and that in religions as in
nations degeneration frequently occurs as well as
progress. We must not be too sure that we shall be
able to find any plain path leading through the
immeasurable forests of man's religious sentiments
and practices. Yet we may at least expect to find
evidence of the direction which on the whole the
growth of religion has followed.
Preliminary Definition of Religrion. — But, before
we can set out on this inquiry, we are met by the
question, What is it that we suppose to have been
thus developed ? In order to trace any process of
evolution it is necessary to define that h is
evolved ; for it belongs to the very idea of evolution
that the identity of the subject of it is not changed
on the way up, but that the germ and the finished
product are the same entity, only differing from each
other in that the one has still to grow while the other
is grown. Futile were it indeed to sketch a history
of religion with the savage at one end of it and the
Christian thinker at the other, if it could be said that
CHAP. I
Introduction
in no point did the religion of the savage and that
of the Christian coincide, but that the product was
a thing of entirely different nature from the germ.
It seems necessary, therefore, in the first place, to
say what that is, of which we are to attempt the
history ; or in other words, to say what we mean by
religion.
It must not be forgotten that an adequate definition
of a thing which is growing can only be reached when
the growth is complete. During its growth it is show-
ing what it is, and its higher as well as its lower mani-
festations are part of its nature. The world has not yet
found out completely, but is still in the course of find-
ing out, what religion is. Any definition propounded
at this stage must, therefore, be of an elementary and
provisional character. I propose then as a working
definition of religion in the meantime, that it is "The
worship of higher powers." This appears at first
sight a very meagre account of the matter ; but if we
consider what it implies, we shall find it is not so meagre.
In the first place it involves an element of belief No
one will worship higher powers unless he believes that
such powers exist. This is the intellectual factor. Not
that the intellectual is distinguished in early forms of
religion from the other factors, any more than grammar
is distinguished by early man as an element of language.
But something intellectual, some creed, is present
implicitly even in the earliest worships. Should there
be no belief in higher powers, true worship cannot
continue. If it be continued in outward act, it has lost
reality to the mind of the worshipper, and the result
is an apparent or a sham religion, a worship devoid
of one of the essential conditions of religion. This is
true at every stage. But in the second place, these
powers which are worshipped are "higher." Religion
has respect, not to beings men regard as on a level
with themselves or even beneath themselves, but to
beings in some way above and beyond themselves, and
lO History of Religion part i
whom they are disposed to approach with reverence.
When objects appear to be worshipped for which the
worshipper feels contempt, and which a moment after-
wards he will maltreat or throw away, there also one of
the essential conditions is absent, and such worship
must be judged to fall short of religion. There may no
doubt be some religion in it ; the object he worships
may appear to the savage, in whose mind there is little
continuity, at one moment to be higher than himself
and the next moment to be lower ; but the result of
the whole is something less than religion. And in the
third place these higher powers are worshipped. That
is to say, religion is not only belief in the higher powers
but it is a cultivating of relations with them, it is a
practical activity continuously directed to these beings.
It is not only a thinking but also a doing ; this also
is essential to it. When worship is discontinued,
religion ceases ; a principle indeed not to be applied too
narrowly, since the apparent cessation of worship may
be merely its transition to another, possibly a higher
form ; but religion is not present unless there be not
only a belief in higher powers but an effort of one kind
or another to keep on good terms with them.
Critieism of other Definitions. — What has now been
said will enable us to judge of several of the definitions
of religion which have been put before the world in
recent years. Without going back to the definitions
offered by philosophers who wrote before the scientific
study of our subject had begun, and limiting ourselves
to those which have been propounded in the interests
of our science, we notice that several make religion con-
sist in an intellectual activity.^ Thus Mr. Max Miiller ^
^ Though Mr. Tylor defines religion as the "belief in spiritual beings,"
he is not to be charged with making it too much a matter of the intellect.
He uses the word belief in a wide sense as including the practices it
involves. In the word "spiritual," however, Mr. Tylor brings into the
definition his theory of Animism, and thus makes it unserviceable for those
who do not adopt that theory.
* Introduction to ike Science of Religion, 1882, p. 13. The definition
CHAP. 1 Introduction 1 1
says that " Religion is a mental faculty or disposi-
tion which independent of, nay, in spite of, sense and
reason, enables man to apprehend the Infinite under
different names, and under varying disguises. Without
that faculty ... no religion would be possible." To
this definition there are various strong objections. It
implies that there is only one way in which men come
to believe in higher beings ; they arrive at that belief by
finding something which transcends them and which
they cannot understand ; i.e. by an intellectual process.
It may be doubted whether the sense of disappointment
with the finite is the only road, or even a common road,
to belief in gods. Mr. Miiller's omission, moreover,
from his definition, of the practical side of religion,
of the element of worship, is a fatal objection to it.
Belief and worship are inseparable sides of religion,
which does not come fully into existence till both are
present. In a later work ^ Mr. MiJller admits the force
of this objection, urged by several scholars, to his
definition, and modifies it as follows : " Religion con-
sists in the perception of the infinite under such mani-
festations as are able to influence the moral character
of man." In this form the definition recognises that
worship, the practical activity in which man's moral
character shows itself in fear, gratitude, love, contrition,
is an essential part of religion, and that perceptions of
the infinite apart from this are only one side of it. His
original definition, however, has played too large a part
in the history of our subject to be left without careful
notice. The same objection applies to Mr. Herbert
Spencer's account of the matter. Mr. Spencer finds the
basis of all religion in the inscrutableness of the Power
which the universe manifests to us. The belief common
to all religions, he holds, is the presence of something
was put forward in the year 1873, and in his lectures on the Origin of
Religion, 1882, Mr. MUller adhered to it as being in the main sound
(p. 23).
* Natural Religion^ 1S88, pp. 188, 193.
12 History of Religion parti
which passes comprehension. The idea of the absolute
and unconditioned he regards as accompanying all our
consciousness of things conditioned and limited, and as
being not a negative notion, not merely the denial of
limits, but a positive one. The unconditioned is that of
which all our thoughts and ideas are manifestations, but
which we never can know, with regard to which we
cannot affirm anything but that it exists. This defini-
tion like that last noticed traces religion to the defects
in man's knowledge, and rather to a negative than a
positive element in his experience. It also comes
under the objection that it traces religion rather to
an intellectual than a practical motive, and omits the
element of worship.
Other scholars have explained religion as the action
of the curiosity of the human mind, of that impulse
which prompts man to investigate the causes of things,
and specially to seek for the first cause of all things.
Here we touch what is certainly to be recognised as an
invariable feature of religion ; it always professes to
explain the world, and to bring unity to man's mind by
clearing up the problems which perplex him, and afford-
ing him a commanding point of view, from which he
may see all the parts of the world and of life fall into
their places. This, however, does not tell us what
religion itself is. This curiosity, this impulse to know,
are not specifically religious ; they belong rather to
philosophy. Other motives than those connected with
knowledge entered from the first into man's worship.
Curiosity impelled him to seek the first cause of things ;
in religion he saw something that promised to explain
the world to him, and to explain him to himself. But
it was something more than curiosity that made him
regard that cause, when found, as a god, and pay it
reverence and sacrifice. What is the motive of worship ?
Wonder, no doubt, is always present in it, but what is
there in it beyond wonder ? No definition of religion
can be regarded as complete in which the motive of
CHAP. I Introduction 13
worship is left undetermined. That is of the essence
of the matter. There must be a moral as well as an
intellectual quality which is characteristic of religion.
What is religion morally ? Acts of worship may be
specified in which every conceivable moral quality seeks
to express itself. The most contradictory motives,
pride and anger and revenge, as well as fear or hunger
or contrition, enter into such acts. But if religion is
a matter of sentiment as well as of outward posture,
these acts of worship cannot all be equally entitled to
the name, and something is wanted to complete our
definition.
Fuller Definition. — Let us add what seems to be
wanting; and say that religion is the "worship of
higher powers from a sense of need"! This will
remind the reader of Schleiermacher's definition — "a
sense of infinite dependence." It was always objected
to that definition, that it made religion no more than
a sentiment, a mood, but that besides this, it is both
belief and action. But the truth Schleiermacher urged
was one of essential importance to the matter. Belief
in gods and acts of worship paid to them do not con-
stitute religion unless the sentiment, the sense of need,
be also there. These three together, feeling, belief, and
will expressing itself in action, constitute religion both
in the lowest and in the highest levels of civilisation.
A belief must exist, to take a step farther, that the
being worshipped is capable of supplying what the
worshipper requires. Men do not pray nor bring
offerings to beings they suppose to be incapable of
attending to them, or powerless to do them any good
or evil. It is implied in every act of worship that
the being addressed is a power who is able to do
for the worshipper what he cannot do for himself. It
is his inability to help himself or to supply his own
needs that sends the worshipper to his god, who has
a power he himself has not. If he could help himself
he would not need religion, if his life were either
14 History of Religion part i
perfectly prosperous and even, so that there was
nothing left to wish for, or perfectly miserable and
unsuccessful, so that there was no room for hope, he
would not resort to higher powers ; but neither of
these two being the case, his life on the contrary being
a mixed lot of good and evil, in which there are
blessings his own forces cannot secure, and dangers
from which no efforts of his own can save him, and
the belief having arisen within him, in what way we
need not now inquire, that higher powers exist who
can, if they will, defend and prosper him, in this way
he has religion, he keeps up intercourse with higher
powers. And thus religion is not necessarily, even in
its most primitive form, a manifestation of mere selfish-
ness. Though gifts are offered which are expected to
please the higher beings, and though benefits are asked
of which the worshipper is urgently in need, such
transactions are not necessarily sordid any more than
similar applications between human beings, between two
friends, or between a parent and a child. Even the
savage living in entire isolation, at war with every one
and conscious of no needs but those of food and shelter,
will not seek benefits from his god without some feeling
of attachment, nor without some sense of strengthened
friendship should the benefit be granted him. When
once this sense of friendship has arisen, religion is
present, the man has come to be in living relation
with a higher power, whom he conceives, no doubt,
after his own likeness, but nevertheless as greater
than he is.
This then is what we conceive to be the essence of
religion — the worship of higher powers, from a sense
of need ; and it is of this that we are to trace the
history though only in the barest outlines. The
definition itself suggests in what way the development
may be expected to work itself out. According as
the needs change their character, of which men are
conscious, so will their religion also change. The
CHAP. I Introduction 1 5
gradual elevation and refinement of human needs, in
the growth of civilisation, is the motive force of the
development of religion. The deities themselves, their
past history and their present character, the sacrifices
offered to them, and the benefits aimed at in inter-
course with them, all must grow up as man himself
grows, from rudeness to refinement and from caprice
to order. At its lowest, religion is perhaps an indi-
vidual affair between the savage and his god, and has
to do with material individual needs. At a higher
stage (not always nor even commonly later in time)
it is the affair of a family, of a tribe, or of a com-
bination of tribes, and with each of these extensions
the requests grow broader and less personal which
have to be presented to the deity ; the religion be-
comes a common worship for public ends. The needs
of the nomad are other than those of the settled
agriculturist, and those of the countryman differ from
those of the citizen, and those of the Laplander from
those of the Negro, and these differences will be
reflected in the aspect of the deities and in the observ-
ances celebrated in their honour. When art begins to
stir within a nation, the gods have to adapt themselves
to the new taste. As society grows more humane,
cruel and sanguinary religious observances, though they
may long keep a hold of the ignorant and excitable,
lose their support in the public conscience and are
sentenced to change or to extinction. And when a
new consciousness of personal human dignity springs
up, and men come to feel the infinite value and the
infinite responsibility of personal life, the old public
religion is felt to be cold and distant, and religious
services of a more personal and more intimate kind
are sought for.
Thus religrion and civilisation advance together;
according as the civilisation is in any people, so is its
religion. It is vain, broadly speaking, to look for the
combination of primitive manners and customs with a
1 6 Histojy of Religion part i
lofty spiritual faith. The converse it is true may often
seem to take place. Religion, or rather religious creeds
and practices, often seem to lag behind civilisation and
to maintain themselves long after the reason and the
conscience of a people has condemned them. That is
because religion is what man values most in his life,
and he is loath to change observances in which his
affections are powerfully engaged. But religion must
reflect the ideals of the society in which it exists ; the
needs which the society feels at the time must be the
burden of its prayers ; its sacrifices must be such as
the general sentiment allows ; its gods, to retain the
allegiance of the community, must alter with time and
prove themselves alive and in touch with their people.
And if it be the case that civilisation has on the whole
advanced upwards from the first ; if, as Mr. Tylor assures
us,i man began with his lowest and has, in spite of
occasional declines, on the whole been improving ever
since, then of religion also the same will be true. It
also will be found to begin with its rudest forms and
gradually to grow better. Religion in fact is the inner
side of civilisation, and expresses the essential spirit of
human life in various ages and nations. The religion
of a race is the truest expression of its character, and
reflects most faithfully its attitude and aims and policy.
The religion of an age shows what at that time con-
stituted the object of man's aspiration and endeavour,
as older hopes grew pale and new hopes rose on his
sight. Thus the study of the religions of the world is
the study of the very soul of its history ; it is the study
of the desires and aspirations which throughout the
course of history men have not been ashamed, nay,
which they have been proud and determined to con-
fess. No more fascinating study could possibly engage
us. It is true that the requirements for the adequate
treatment of the subject are such as few indeed can
hope to possess. He who would treat the history of
* Primiiive CuUvre, chap, ii.
CHAP. 1 Introdtiction 17
religion aright ought to know thoroughly the whole
of the history of civilisation ; he should have explored
the vast domain of savage life and thought that has
recently been opened up to us, and he should be
at home in every century of every nation from the
beginning of history. At a time like this, when new
light is being poured every year on every part of our
subject, no statement of it can be more than tentative
and partial. The student will be directed at each step
to sources of fuller information.
Books Recommended. (General)
Outlines of the History of Religion to the Spread of the Universal Religions.
By Dr. C. P. Tide. Translation. In Triibner's Oriental Series.
Very condensed and in somewhat technical language ; but the work
of one of the greatest masters of the subject. A full Bibliography is
appended to the various chapters.
Lehrbuch der Religionsgeschichte, von P. D. Chantepie de la Saussaye.
Freiburg, 1887. The English translation has an altered title, viz.
Manual of the Science of Religion, Longmans, 1891. The Third
Edition (1905) is practically a different book, and consists of studies,
each by an expert, of the various religions.
Religious Systems of the W?r/^(Sonnenschein, 1892) is a full collection ol
descriptions of the various religions, by persons specially acquainted
with them ; of very unequal merit.
Mr. Max Miiller's works cited above, also his more recent volumes of
Gifford Lectures, contain a number of general discussions.
See also the Gifford Lectures of the late Mr. Ed. Caird, and the late Prof.
Tiele.
Pfleiderer's Philosophy of Religion, 4 vols.
Piinjer, Geschichte der christl. Religionsphilosophie, 2 vols. 1880-83.
Rauwenhoff, Wijsbegeerde van den Godsdienst, 2 vols. 1887 (also in
German).
M. J astro w, The Study of Religion, 1901.
L. H. Jordan, Comparative Religion, its Origin and Growth, 1905.
Revue de Phistoire des religions, edited by M. J. Reville.
ArchivfUr Religionswissenschaft, edited by Alb. Dieterich.
Reinach, Orpheus, Histoire Ginirale des Religions, 1909.
Hastings, Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics , vol. i. A- Art, 1908.
B
History of Religion part i
The New Schaff-Heizog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge has excellent
articles on the various religions.
Louis H. Jordan, Co7nparative Religion, 1905. An account of the progress
of our study, with extensive bibliography.
Galloway, The Principles of Religious Developvient, a psychological and
philosophical study, 1 909.
Proceedings of the Oxford International Congress of the History of Religiotts,
1908. 2 vols. The addresses of the Presidents of the Sections give a
record of the most recent progress in every part of our study. Of
these see, for this chapter, Count Goblet d'Alviella, vol. ii. pp. 365 sqq.
on the Method and Scope of the History of Religion.
CHAPTER II
THE BEGINNING OF RELIGION
Origrin of Civilisation. — Every inhabited country, we
are assured by ethnologists, was once peopled by
savages ; the stone age everywhere came before the
age of metals. Antecedent to every civilisation that
has sprung up on the earth is this dim period, the
period of the cave dwellers and afterwards of the lake
dwellers. There can be no chronology nor any exact
knowledge of these early men who lived by hunting,
with stone weapons, animals which are now extinct.
How from his earliest and most helpless state man
came in various ways to help himself; how he discovered
fire, how he improved his weapons and invented tools,
how he learned to tame certain of the animals on which
he had formerly made war, and instead of wandering
about the world came to settle in one place and till
the soil, and how family life came to be instituted, and
the father as well as the mother to act as guardian to
the children ; all that is a vast history, which must be
read in its own place. Immense, indeed, were the
labours early man had to undergo, in wrestling his
way up from a life like that of the brutes to a life in
which his own distinctive nature could begin to display
itself
It was from the savagre state that civilisation was
by degrrees produced. The theory that man was
originally civilised and humane, and that it was by
a fall, by a degeneration from that earliest condition,
19
20 History of Religion part i
that the state of savagery made its appearance, is now
generally abandoned. There may be instances of such
degeneration having taken place ; but on the whole,
the conviction now obtains that civilisation is the result
of progressive development, and was the result man
conquered for himself by his age-long struggles with
his environment. That development did not take place
in all lands alike. In some it proceeded faster than
in others, and its advances were due oftener to propaga-
tion from without, than to unaided growth from within ;
as one race came in contact with another new ideas were
aroused of the possibilities of life in various directions.
In some lands the development has scarcely taken
place at all. There remain to this day races who are
judged to be still in the primitive condition. Not
all savage tribes are thought to be in that condition.
The bushmen of Australia, the Andaman Islanders,
and others,^ are found to be in such a state in point
of habits and acquirements that they must be considered
as races which have fallen from a higher position, and
present instances of degeneration. But a multitude
of savage tribes remain in all quarters of the globe
who do not appear to have been thus enfeebled, and
who are held to be still in that state in which the
dwellers in all parts of the earth were before v/hat we
now call civilisation began. They are races among
whom civilisation did not spring up, as it did in China
or in Peru. From these races we may learn in a
general way, though in this great caution is required,
what the ancestors of all the civilised nations were.
It confirms this conclusion that we find in every
civilised nation a number of phenomena, practices,
beliefs, stories, which the mental condition of the
nation as we know it does not account for, which
manifestly are not outgrowths of tJie civilisation, but
relics of an older state of life, which civilisation has
* Instances in Tylor, Primitive Culiute, chap, ii., where the theory
of degeneration is fully discussed.
CHAP. II The Beginning of Religion 2 1
not entirely obliterated ; and that these practices,
beliefs, and stories can be exactly matched by those
of the savage races. The inference is drawn that
civilisation has sprung from savage life, that, as Mr.
Tylor says, " the savage state represents the early
condition of mankind, out of which the higher culture
has gradually been developed by causes still in opera-
tion." To trace the history of civilisation, therefore,
it is necessary to go back to the earliest knowledge we
have of human life upon the earth, and to ask what
germs and rudiments can be discovered among savages
of law, of institutions, of arts and sciences. Such works
as Maine's Ancient Law, Tylor's Primitive Culiwey
Lubbock's Origin of Civilisation, show how fruitful this
method is, and what floods of light it pours on the
history of society.
Now what is true of civilisation generally will be true
also of religion, which is one of its principal elements.
If every country was once inhabited by savages, then
the original religion of every country must have been
a religion of savages ; and in the later religion there
will be features which have been carried on from the
earlier one. This, indeed, we must in any case expect
to find. No new religion can enter on its career on
a soil quite unprepared, on which no gods have been
worshipped before. (That would imply that there had
been races in the world without religion, on which we
shall speak presently.) A new faith has always to begin
by adjusting itself to that which it found in possession
of the soil, and it always adopts what it can of the
old system. We should expect then that the great
religions of the world should exhibit features which
do not belong to their own structure, but which they
inherited, with or against their will, from their un-
civilised predecessors. And that is the case, as we
shall see afterwards, with all the great religions. They
are all full of survivals of the savage state. The old
religious associations cling to the face of a land and
22 History of Religion part i
refuse to be uprooted, whatever changes take place
among the gods above. Superstitious practices continue
among a race long after a truth has been preached
there with which they are entirely inconsistent. Stories
are long told about the gods, quite out of keeping with
their character in the theology of the new faith, point-
ing to a time when not so much was expected of a
god. In Mr. Lang's Myth, Ritual, and Religion, the
reader will find an admirable collection of material
showing how the popular elements of an old religion
survive in a new one in which they are quite out of
place. There is none of the great religions to which
this does not apply.
Now, if it be the case that each of the great religions
has been built upon a primitive religion formerly occupy-
ing the same ground, it might appear that we must, in
order to understand any of the great religions, study
first, in each case, the savage system which it super-
seded. It would be a serious prospect for the student
if he had to make a separate study of a set of savage
beliefs as an approach to each of the ten or twelve
great religions. But this, as we shall see afterwards,
is not the case. There is a great family likeness in
the religions of savages, and we may even allow our-
selves to speak not of the religions but of the religion
of early races. In the next chapter an attempt will
be made to describe that religion ; but we may say
here that there are some features which are generally,
though by no means always found in it, and that these
features may be regarded for practical purposes as the
religion of the primitive world, which everywhere was
the forerunner of the great systems. This is the jungle,
as it were, overspreading all the early world, out of
which like giant trees the great religions arose, and
from which they derived and still derive a nourish-
ment they cannot disown. Indeed, we may go much
farther. In some of their leading doctrines, the great
religions show the most striking affinity with one
CHAP. II The Beginning of Religion 23
another. China and Egypt have some doctrines in
common which are also found in the rehgion of the
Incas ; the Aryan and the Semitic religions know them
too. Should these doctrines be found in the religion
of savages, it will at least be a question whether the
great religions all alike borrowed and developed them
from that source, or whether any other explanation of
the case can be found. Evidently we cannot make
any progress with our subject till we have taken a
general view of this religion of savages and come to
some conclusions regarding it.
A few words must be said, by way of preface to this
subject, on the mental habits of early races. We
cannot hope to understand the thoughts of those people
without knowing how they came to have such thoughts,
how they were accustomed to think. Now of the savage
we may say that he is just like a child who has not
yet learned to think correctly, or to know things truly.
He is making all kinds of experiments in thought, and
being led into all sorts of errors and confusion ; and if
the child takes years, the savage may take millenniums,
to get free from these. He does not know the differ-
ence between one thing and another, between himself
and the lower animals, or between an animal and a
water- spout. He does not know how far things are
away from him, nor what makes them move and act
as they do ; why, for example, the sun and moon go
round the sky, or why the wind blows. He cannot
tell why things have this or that peculiar appearance ;
why, for example, the rabbit has no tail, why the sky
is red in the morning, why some stones are like men.
And he wants to know all these things, and is for ever
asking questions. But almost any answer will do for
him, the first explanation that turns up is accepted ;
and while a child finds out pretty soon if he has been
told wrong, the savage is so ignorant that he cannot see
the absurdest explanation to be false, but sticks to it
seriously and goes on using it. There is no consistency
24 History of Religion part i
in the contents of his mind, and inconsistency does
not distress him. He has no classes and orders of
things, but considers each thing by itself as it occurs,
without putting it in its place with reference to other
things. He has no idea of what is possible and what
is impossible ; these words in fact would have no mean-
ing for him, since he is not aware of any laws by which
events are governed. His imagination, accordingly, is
not under any restraint ; he hits upon all kinds of
grotesque theories, and, having no critical faculty to
test them, he repeats them and seriously believes them.
The stories of the nursery, in which there are no im-
possibilities, in which a man may visit the sun and
the winds in their homes and find them at their broth,
in which the beasts can speak, in which the witch or
the fairy knows at any distance what is going on and
can turn up just at the nick of time, in which ghosts
walk, in which anything can be changed into anything,
a hero going through half a dozen transformations to
escape from so many dangers, — these are to the savage
not incredible nor foolish tales, to him they are very
real, and very serious matters. He lives, in fact, we
are told by the authorities on the subject, in the myth-
making period of the world ; in the period when such
incidents as occur in the tales of fairyland and in the
stones of mythology are matter of common belief, and
even, it is thought, of common experience, so that when
the story is put in a good form, it lives and is believed
as a true record of what has actually taken place.
On one feature of the savage imagination in particular
we must fix our attention. The savage regards all
things as animated, — as animated with a life like his
own. Of his own life he has no very exalted idea ; he
has no notion how different he really is from anything
around him ; as he is himself, so he supposes other
beings to be also, not only the animals but the trees
and all that moves and even what does not move, even
rocks and stones. He is living himself; he regards all
CHAP. II The Beginnmg of Religion 25
these as living too. He imagines them like himself,
and supposes them to have feelings and passions like
his own, to reason as he does, and even if he is told
they speak as he does, that is not incredible to him.
Thus he lives in a world of infinite confusion, in which
there are no laws, no classes of beings, no means of
knowing what may happen, or of verifying any state-
ment, where every effort of fancy may be believed.
The mental world of savages has been compared to
the ravings of a whole world turned lunatic. We
survey it, however, without horror, because we know
that reason is not unseated there, but striving towards
her kingdom. That is the experience that had to be
gone through, these are part of the experiments, such
as every child has still to make, by which the know-
ledge of the world is gradually arrived at.
Amid this apparent universal confusion a certain
consistency of view is to be observed. It might be
expected that the savage habit of thought, acting in-
dependently in different parts of the world, would lead
to an infinite number of divergent and inconsistent
views of the nature of things and of man's place in
the world. But this is not found to be the case. Mr.
Lang accounts as follows for the diffusion of the same
stories all over the world : " An ancient identity of
mental status, and the working of similar mental forces
at the attempt to explain the same phenomena, will
account without any theory of borrowing, or of trans-
mission of myth, or of original unity of race, for the
world-wide diffusion of many mythical conceptions."
Mr. Tylor says that the same imaginative processes
regularly recur, that world - wide myths show the
regularity and the consistency of the human imagina-
tion. M. Reville, in his Religions des peuples non-
civilises, remarks that the character of savage religions
is everywhere the same ; that only the forms vary.
Now of the things that all savagres possess, certainly
relig^ion is one. It is practically agreed that religion,
26 Histojy of Religion part i
the belief in and worship of gods, is universal at the
savage stage ; and the accounts which some travellers
have given of tribes without religion are either set down
to misunderstanding, or are thought to be insufficient
to invalidate the assertion that religion is a universal
feature of savage life.
How did it get there? How comes it that men so
near the lowest human state, so devoid of all that has
been since acquired, should yet be found to have this
mode of thought universally diffused among them ?
It has been ascribed to a primitive revelation. At
the beginning, it is said, God, with the other gifts He
gave to man, gave him religion ; that is to say, gave
him not only a disposition for reverence and piety, but
a certain amount of religious knowledge, so that he
set out with a stock of religious ideas which were not
elaborated by his own efforts, but bestowed on him
ready made. It is impossible, however, to conceive
how this could be done. If the religion given at first
was a lofty and pure one, — and no other need be
thought of in such a connection, — then it implies a
condition of human life far above the struggles and
uncertainties of savage existence ; and both the civilisa-
tion and the religion must have been lost afterwards.
But how could all mankind forget a pure religion ?
Mankind in that case cannot have been fit for the
possession of it ; it was given prematurely. No. The
history of early civilisation is the history of a struggle
in which man has everything to conquer, and in which
he is not remembering something he had lost, but
advancing by new routes to a land he never reached
before. And if civilisation was won for the first time,
so was religion.
We may also put aside the theory that man had
religion from the first as an innate idea, that he found
information all ready and prepared in his mind of what
it was proper to do in this direction, and how it was to
be. done. There was indeed a suggestion from within ;
CHAP. II The Beginning of Religion 27
but it was due not to any special faculty lying outside
the essential structure of human nature, but to the
constitution of the human mind itself. We cannot
go into the philosophical question of the basis of
religion in the human mind.^ It would seem to be a
psychological necessity. At all stages of his existence
the world of which man is aware outside him, and the
world of feelings and desires within him are in conflict.
But the conviction lives within him that in some way
they can be brought into harmony, and that a power
exists which rules in both of these discordant realms
and in which, if he can identify himself with it, he also
will escape from their discord. If this be so, then this
necessity to seek after a higher power must have begun
to operate as soon as human consciousness appeared.
The savage certainly was never unacquainted with the
discrepancy between what he wanted and what the
world would give him, between the inner man so full
of desires and plans, and that outward nature which
denied him his desires and thwarted his plans, and
before which he felt so feeble and insecure. He also
could not but be driven, if his life was to go on at all
on any tolerable basis, to believe in something that
had to do both with the world outside him and with
the world of his heart, in a being which both had
sympathy with his desires and power to give effect to
them outwardly.
The whole of the early world did entertain such a
belief This is the first and the most important
instance of uniformity of thought at a stage through
which every nation once passed ; all men at that stage
believe in gods. We will not refuse the name of religion
to this side of savage life, even should the needs be low
and material which send the savage to his god, though
his god be a being who in us would excite the very
^ See on this subject Prof. Edward Caird's Gifford Lectures, The
Evolution of Religion, 1893. Galloway, The Principles of Religious
Development.
28 History of Religion part i
opposite of reverence, and though his treatment of his
god be far from what to us seems worthy, or even
though he strove to appease a multitude of spirits which
he conceived as flitting about him, before he came to
form a settled relation of confidence with one being
whom he took for his own god. Where the sense of
need has sent a human being to hold intercourse with
a higher power, there we hold religion is making its
appearance. And if this is universally the case among
men at the savage stage, then religion is universal
among the ancestors of all nations ; it did not need
to be invented when kings and priests appeared and
wanted it as an instrument for their own purposes ;
it was there before there were any kings or priests,
and is an inheritance which has come down to all
mankind from the time when human intelligence first
turned to the effort to understand the world.
Books Recommended
For this and the three following chapters
J, B. Tylor, Anthropology, Third Edition, 1 891.
,, ,, Primitive Culture, Fourth Edition, 1 903.
Frazer, The Golden Bough, Third Edition, 19CX). A new edition is now
appearing in parts.
A. Lang, Myth, Ritual, and Religion, new edition, 1899.
Th. Achelis, in De la Saussaye.
Waitz und Gerland, Anthropologic der Naiurvblker, 1859-72
Brinton, Religions of Primitive Peoples, 1897.
The reports of travellers and missionaries are, of course, important.
CHAPTER III
THE EARLIEST OBJECTS OF WORSHIP
We must now make some attempt to set forth the
principal features of the religion of savages. It is an
attempt of some difficulty ; for savage religion is an
immense and bewildering jungle of all manner of extra-
ordinary growths. It is described in detail in large
books and if we try to sum it up in a short statement,
we may be told that essential features have been
omitted. No one set of savages has anything that
can be called a system, and different sets of savages
are not alike. For the present purpose we are obliged
to include under the name, tribes who occupy various
positions in the scale of human advancement, and tribes
in all sorts of geographical positions, in hot climates and
in cold, both rude savages and those who are nobler ;
and these will, of course, have a variety of ideas and
needs, and in so far, different religions. After reading
such a book as Mr. Frazer's Golden Bough, or turning
over the pages of Waitz and Gerland's Anthropologie
der Naturvolker, one is inclined to regard it as a hope-
less task to reduce savage religion to any compact
statement.
Mr. Tylor's orderly collections, in his great book
Primitive Culture, of materials bearing on different
features of early religion are a help for which the
student cannot be sufficiently thankful. After all, it
is not the whole of savage religion that we are
29
30 History of Religion part i
responsible for here, but only those parts of it that
grew and survived in higher faiths. Remembering
what has been said as to the uniformity of savage
thought amid its great variety of forms, and looking
for those parts of it which have proved to have life
in them, rather than for what is merely curious and
grotesque, we may venture on our task not without
hope. In the present chapter we shall inquire what
beings savages worship as gods. Of these we shall
find that there are several classes ; and it will be
necessary to notice the great discussions which have
arisen on the question which of these classes of deities
was first worshipped by man. The objects worshipped
by men in low stages of civilisation may be arranged
in four classes, viz. —
1. Parts of nature {a) great, {b) small.
2. Spirits of ancestors and other spirits.
3. Objects supposed to be haunted by spirits
(fetish-worship).
4. A Supreme Being.
I. Nature-worship. — It is not difficult to realise why
early man turned to the great elements of nature as
beings who could help him, and whom he ought, there-
fore, to cultivate. The farther we go back in civilisation,
the less protection has man against the weather, the
more do his subsistence and his comfort depend on
the action of the sun, the winds, the rain. If, according
to the habits of early thought, he conceived these beings
as living like himself and as guided by feelings and
motives similar to his own, he could not fail to wish
to open up communication with them. That simple
view, that they were living beings with feelings like
his own, was enough to go upon. In his anxieties for
food or warmth he could not fail to think of the beings
who, he had observed, had power to supply him with
these comforts, of the rain which he had noticed was
able to make food grow, of the sun whose warmth he
CHAP. Ill The Earliest Objects of Worship 31
knew. The thunderstorm was a being who had power
to put an end to a long drought ; the winds could break
the trees, could dry up the wet earth, or could bring
rain. Heaven was over all, and the Earth was the
supporter and fertile producer of all ; from her all life
came. The moon as well as the sun was a friendly
power, nay, in some climates, more friendly. Fire was
a living being certainly, on whom much depended ; and
so was the great lake or the ocean. This is what
M. Rdville calls the great Nature-worship, in comparison
with the minor Nature-worship to be noticed presently.
We do not now enter on the subject of mythology ;
that is to say, of the names men very early began
to give to the great natural objects of worship, the
characters they ascribed to them, the stories they told
about them. That process of myth-making began very
early, and is to be found at work in every part of the
world. But at first it was simply the natural being
itself, conceived as living, that was worshipped, not a
spirit or a person thought to dwell in it. Of this,
abundant evidence has survived in the great religions.
Jupiter is just the sky, the Greek god Helios is just
the sun, and the goddess Selene the moon. In China
heaven itself is worshipped to this day. The Baby-
lonians worshipped the stars. The Vedic gods are
primarily the elements. From savage life examples
of this earliest state of matters can also be quoted,
though mythology has nearly everywhere greatly con-
fused it. The Mincopies adore the sun as a beneficent
deity, the moon as an inferior god. To the Natchez
the sun is the supreme god ; with some tribes of North
America the chief god is heaven blowing, the sky
with a wind in it, what Longfellow calls the " Great
Spirit" or blowing. The Incas invoked together the
Creator and the Sun and Thunder. Thunder was one
of the great gods of the Germans. The Samoyede
bows to the Sun every morning and every evening
and says. " When thou arisest I also arise ; when thou
32 History of Religion part i
settest I also betake myself to rest." To the Ojibways
Fire is a divine being, to be well entertained, with whom
no liberties must be taken. In every land men are to
be found who worship the Earth as a great deity, call-
ing her by her own name and serving her with suitable
rites. In the Prometheus of .^schylus the hero addresses
his appeal as follows to the beings he regards as gods
of old race who will sympathise with him against the
upstart Zeus : —
Ether of Heaven and Winds un tired of wing.
Rivers whose fountains fail not, and thou Sea,
Laughing in waves innumerable ! O Earth,
All-mother ! — Yea and on the Sun I call,
Whose orb scans all things ; look on me and see
How I, a god, am wronged by gods.
Lewis Campbell^ line 85 sq.
The minor Nature-worship has to do with rivers and
springs, with trees and groves, with crops and fruits,
with rocks and stones, and with the lower animals.
Here also we must bear in mind the habit of mind
of early man, who regarded all things as animated
and as like himself. It was not necessary for one
who thought in this way to suppose that the spring
was haunted by a nymph or the oak inhabited by a
dryad, before he felt that the spring or the oak had a
claim on him, and brought offerings to secure their
friendship. The Nile and the Ganges did not become
sacred by having a mythical being added to them
as their spirit ; they were themselves sacred beings.
Every country is studded with names which reveal
to the scholar the primeval sanctity of the spots
they belong to ; ~the mountain, the grove, and the
individual tree, the rocky gorge, the rock, the grassy
knoll, each was once an object of reverence. Britain is
full of sacred wells, which once received prayers and
offerings. There is no animal that has not once been
worshipped. A marked feature of primitive life also is
the worship of nature not in its particular objects but in
CHAP. Ill The Earliest Objects of Worship ^iZ
its living processes. In a multitude of curious rites,
some of which still survive in local usages, and have only
recently been explained, primitive man brought him-
self into relations with nature in its growth, decay, and
resurrection. He sympathised with it and imitated it,
and he thus sought to make himself sure of the benefits
which he saw bestowed by some power which he
apprehended in its processes and believed able to
further him.
2. Ancestor - worship. — A set of beings of a very
different kind comes next. If man found in the world
which he beheld outside him a number of objects he
could make gods, his domestic experience forced him
to consider certain beings of a different kind, of whom
the outward world could tell him nothing. The worship
of the dead, of ancestors, is diffused throughout nearly
the whole of antiquity, it is practised by most savages.
Man at an early stage does not fully realise the meaning
of death. He interprets death after the analogy of
dreams, in which he judges that the spirit leaves the
body and traverses distant regions, coming back to
the body again when the journey is ended. A vision
is to him an instance of the same thing. He sees a
friend, who, he afterwards learns, was far from him
at the time, and he judges that it was the spirit of his
friend which visited him. Thus there arises in his
mind the conception of a human spirit which is able
to leave the body and dwell at a distance from it. It
is called by various names, — the shade, the image, the
heart, as perhaps when Elisha says his heart went with
Gehazi when he went to meet Naaman the Syrian (2
Kings v. 26), the breath, the soul. When the breath
or spirit goes away and stays away (in spite of efforts
made to bring it back) the man dies. But the spirit
is not dead. It has gone away and is staying somewhere
else. The spirit resembles the body in shape, but it is
of a thin and light consistence, and is able to move
about and to pass through the smallest openings, to
C
34 History of Religion part i
make unpleasant noises, and to cause its presence to be
felt in a variety of ways. In the very earliest times,
the savage regards the spirit which has left the house
as an enemy, and uses a variety of precautions to keep
it from coming back to trouble him (vampires, ghosts,
lemures). Whether from such fear or from more liberal
motives, much is done to please the spirits of the
departed and to increase their comfort in the abodes to
which they have gone. At their burial or cremation all
they may be supposed to want where they are going,
i.e. the things they used on earth, are made to accom-
pany them ; food and weapons are placed beside them ;
servants are killed whose spirits are to wait on them, even
a wife, voluntarily or without being asked, gives up her
earthly life to accompany her husband. Offerings of
food and drink are made to them afterwards, prayers
are addressed to them, memorials of them, of various
kinds, are preserved in the houses they occupied.
It was the universal belief of the early world that
the person continued to exist after the death of the
body ; and this furnished the materials for a religion
which was more widely prevalent in antiquity than
the worship of any god. In some forms of it, indeed,
the spirit appears to have been treated as an enemy,
and this worship might be judged to fall short of
religion, which is the cultivation, not the avoidance, of
intercourse with higher powers. The savage has no
hope from the spirit, and does not seek his intercourse.
But in most forms of the belief in the continued life
of the departed, other sentiments than fear prevail ;
natural affection is felt for the lost relative ; the ancestor
represents the family, to which the individual is called
to subordinate and to some extent even to sacrifice
himself; the spirit of the dead is the upholder of a
family tradition which the living must hold sacred.
Even in those cases in which nothing but fear is
apparent, these latter sentiments may also be to some
extent operative.
CHAP. Ill The Earliest Objects of Worship 35
3. Fetish - worship. — The early world has still
another kind of deity. In the case of all those we
have considered, the god stands in some respect above
the worshipper ; man reverences the sun, spirit, or
animal, for some quality in them that is admirable
or that gives them a hold over him ; they are in some
ways beyond him. Among certain sets of savages,
however, notably in South Africa, this feature of
religion partially disappears, and objects are reverenced
not for any intrinsic quality in them that makes them
worthy of regard, but because of a spirit which is
supposed to be connected with them. Stones, trees,
twigs, pieces of bark, roots, corn, claws of birds, teeth,
skin, feathers, articles of human manufacture, any con-
ceivable object, will be held in reverence by the savage
and regarded as embodying a spirit. Anything that
strikes his fancy as being out of the common he will
take up and add to his museum of objects, each of
which has in it a hidden power. That power, be it
repeated, is not connected with the natural quality of
the object, but is due to a spirit which has come to
reside in it, and which may very possibly leave it again.
Having chosen this deity and set it up for worship,
the man can use it as he thinks fit. He addresses
prayers to it and extols its virtues ; but should his
enterprise not prosper, he will cast his deity aside as
useless, and cease to worship it ; he will address it
with torrents of abuse, and will even beat it, to make
it serve him better. It is a deity at his disposal, to
serve in the accomplishment of his desires ; the indi-
vidual keeps gods of his own to help him in his under-
takings.
The name " fetishism," by which this kind of worship
is known, is of Portuguese origin ; it is derived from
feitiqo, "made," "artificial" (compare the old English
fetys, used by Chaucer) ; and this term, used of the
charms and amulets worn in the Roman Catholic
religion of the period, was applied by the Portuguese
36 History of Religion part i
sailors of the eighteenth century to the deities they
saw worshipped by the negroes of the West Coast of
Africa. De Brosses, a French savant of last century,
brought the word fetishism into use as a term for the
type of religion of the lowest races. The word has
given rise to some confusion, having been applied by
Comte and other writers to the worship of the heavenly
bodies and of the great features of nature. It is best
to limit it, as has been done above, to the worship of
such natural objects as are reverenced not for their
own power or excellence but because they are supposed
to be occupied each by a spirit.
Can this be called religion? In the full sense of
the term it cannot. We should remember that it is
not the casual object, but the spirit connected with
it that the savage worships; but even then we shall
be obliged to hold that the fetish worshipper is rather
seeking after religion than actually in possession of it.
4. A Supreme Being. — Is it necessary to add another
class of deity to these three, and to say that besides
nature-gods and spirits early man also worshipped a
Supreme Being above all these ? In most savage
religions there is a principal deity to whom the others
are subordinate. But if we carefully examine one by
one the supreme gods of these religions, we shall find
reason to doubt whether they really have a common
character so as to form a class by themselves. Many
of them are nature gods who have outgrown the other
deities of that class and come to occupy an isolated
position. The North American Indians, as we saw,
worship the Great Spirit, the heaven with its breath,
to whom sun and moon and other ordinances of nature
act as ministers. In many cases heaven is the highest
god. In others again the sun is supreme. Ukko the
great god of the Finns is a heaven- and rain-god.
Perkunas the god of the Lithuanians is connected with
thunder. On the other hand there are instances in
which the supreme god appears to be a different being
CHAP. Ill The Earliest Objects of Worship 'i^']
from the nature-god. The Samoyedes worship the sun
and moon and the spirits of other parts of nature ; but
they also believe in a good spirit who is above all.
The Supreme Being of the islands of the Pacific bears
in New Zealand the name of Tangaroa, and is spoken
of in quite metaphysical terms as the uncreated and
eternal Creator. Here we may suspect Christian
influence. With the Zulus Unkulunkulu the Old-old
one might be supposed to be a kind of first cause.
But on looking nearer we find he is distinctly a man,
the first man, the common ancestor ; beyond which
idea speculation does not seem to go. Among many
North American tribes it is usual to find an animal
the chief deity, the hare or the musk-rat or the coyote.
It is very common to find in savage beliefs a vague
far-off god who is at the back of all the others, takes
little part in the management of things, and receives
little worship. But it is impossible to judge what
that being was at an earlier time ; he may have been
a nature-god or a spirit who has by degrees grown
faint and come to occupy this position. We cannot
judge from the supreme beings of savages, such as
they are, that the belief in a supreme being was
generally diffused in the world ^ in the earliest times,
and is not to be derived from any of the processes
from which the other gods arose. We shall see after-
wards how natural the tendency is which, where there
are several gods, brings one of them to the front while
the others lose importance. For a theory of primitive
monotheism the supreme gods of savages certainly do
not furnish sufficient evidence ; they do not appear
to have sprung all from the same source, but to have
advanced from very different quarters to the supreme
position, in obedience to that native instinct of man's
mind which causes him, even when he believes in many
gods, to make one of them supreme.
' Cf. K. Lang, The Making of Religion (1898); Galloway, i'/«(/w in
the Philosophy of Religion (1904), p. 123, sqq.
38 History of Religion part i
Which Gods were First Worshipped?— If then early
man formed his gods from parts of nature and from
spirits of departed ancestors or heroes, and even, should
the more backward races now existing represent a stage
of human life belonging to the early world, from spirits
residing in outward objects, which of these is the original
root of all the religions of the world ? The claim has
been made for each of these kinds of religion, that it
came first.
I. Fetish-g-ods came First. — Till recently the view
prevailed that all the religion of the world has sprung
out of fetishism. First the savage took for his god
some casual object, as we have described, then he chose
higher objects, trees and mountains, rivers and lakes,
and even the sun and stars. The heavens at last
became his supreme fetish, and at a higher level, when
he had learned about spirits, he would make a spirit
his fetish, and so at last come to Monotheism.
This view is attractive because it places the beginning
of religion in the lowest known form of it and thus
makes for the belief that the course of the world's faith
has been upward from the first. But it presents the
gravest difficulties ; for why should the savage make
a god of a stick or a stone, and attribute to it super-
natural powers? Who told him about a god, that he
should call a stick god, or about supernatural powers,
that he should suppose a stick to work wonders ? There
is nothing in the stick to suggest such notions ; that he
should make gods in this way, that the belief in wonder-
ful powers should originate in this way, is surely quite
incredible. Much more likely is it, surely, that he got
the notion of God from some other quarter and applied
it in his own grotesque and degraded way ; than that
the notion of God was taken first from such poor forms
and applied afterwards to objects better suited to it.
Religion and civilisation go hand in hand, and if civilisa-
tion can decay (and leading anthropologists declare that
the debased tribes of Australia and West Africa sliow
CHAP. Ill The Earliest Objects of Worship 39
signs of a higher civilisation they have lost) then religion
also may decay. A lower race may borrow religious
ideas from a higher and adapt them to their own
position, i.e. degrade them. And the progress of
religion may still have been upwards on the whole,
although retrograde movements have taken place in
certain races. On these and other grounds it is now
held with growing certainty that fetishism cannot be
the original form of religion, and that the higher stages
of it are not to be derived from that one. The races
among whom fetishism is found exhibit a well-known
feature of the decadence of religion, namely that the
great god or gods have grown weak and faint, and
smaller gods and spirits have crowded in to fill up the
blank thus caused. Worship is transferred from the
great beings who are the original gods of the tribe and
whom it still professes in a vague way to believe, to
numerous smaller beings, and from the good gods to
the bad.
2. Spirits, Human or Quasi-human, came First. — Is
the worship of spirits then the original form of religions.
This has been powerfully maintained in this country
by Mr. Herbert Spencer and Mr. Tylor. According to
Mr. Spencer " the rudimentary form of all religion is
the propitiation of dead ancestors." Men concluded, as
soon as they were capable of such reasoning, that the
life they witnessed in plants and animals, in sun and
moon and other parts of nature, was due to their being
inhabited by the spirits of departed men. With all
respect for the splendid exposition given by Mr. Spencer ^
of the early beliefs of mankind regarding spirits, it is
impossible to think that he has made out his case when
he treats the gods of early India and of Greece as
deified ancestors. If the natural incredulity we feel
at being told that Jupiter, Indra, the sun, the sacred
mountain, and the stars all alike came to be worshipped
* Sociology, vol. i. Also Ecclesiastical Institutions, p. 675 ; "ghost-
propitiation is the origin of all religions."
40 History of Religion part i
because each of them represented some departed human
hero, is not at once decisive, we have only to wait a
little to see whether some other theory cannot account
for these gods in a simpler way.
Mr Tylor also derives all religion from the worship of
spirits, but in a different way. His is the most com-
prehensive system of Animism, using that term in the
narrower sense of soul - worship. Starting from the
doctrine of souls, reached by early man in the way
described above (p. 33, sgg.), he argues that when once
this notion was reached it would be applied to other
beings as well as man. Not having learned to dis-
tinguish himself clearly from other beings, man would
judge that they had souls like his own ; and so every
part of nature came to have its soul, and everything
that went on in the universe was to be explained as
the activity of souls. It was in this way, according to
Mr. Tylor, that the view of the universal animation of
nature, characteristic of early thought, was reached.
" As the human body was held to live and act by virtue
of its own inhabiting spirit-soul, so the operations of
the world seemed to be carried on by other spirits."
At this point the soul is an unsubstantial essence
inhabiting a body, it has its life and activity only in
connection with the body ; but the step was easily
taken to the further belief in spirits like the souls, but
not attached to any body. The spirits moved about
freely, like the genii, demons, fairies, and beings of all
kinds, with whom to the mind of antiquity the world
was so crowded.
Three classes of spirits we have up to this point :
those of ancestors, those attached to the various parts
of the life of nature, and those existing independently.
Can the higher nature-deities be accounted for by this
theory as well as the minor spirits of the parts of nature ?
Mr. Tylor considers that they can ; he declares that the
"higher deities of polytheism have their place in the
general animistic system of mankind." He acknow-
CHAP. Ill The Earliest Objects of Worship 41
ledges that, with few exceptions, great gods have a
place as well as smaller gods in every non-civilised
system of religion. But in origin and essence he holds
they are the same. " The difference is rather of rank
than of nature." As chiefs and kings are among men
so are the great gods among the lesser spirits. The
sun, the heavens, the stars, are living beings, because
they have spirits as man has a soul, or as a spring has
a spirit that haunts it. Thus in the doctrine of souls
is found the origin of the whole of early religion. Mr.
Tylor confesses, however, that it is impossible to trace
the process by which the doctrine of souls gave rise
to the belief in the great gods.
The weakness of this view is that it involves a denial
that the great powers of nature could be worshipped
before the process of reasoning had been completed
which led to the belief that they had souls or spirits.
But how did early man regard these great powers
before this ? Did they not appear to him adorable by
the very impressions they made upon his various senses ?
Did he really need to argue out the belief that they had
souls, before he felt drawn to wonder at them, and to
seek to enter into relations with them ?
Animism. — The word Animism, it should here be
noticed, is used in the study of religions in a wider
sense than that of Mr. Tylor. Many of the great
religions are known to have arisen out of a primitive
worship of spirits and to have advanced from that stage
to a worship of gods. The god differs from the spirit
in having a marked personal character, while the spirits
form a vague and somewhat undistinguishable crowd ;
in having a regular clientele of worshippers, whereas the
spirit is only served by those who need to communicate
with him ; in having therefore a regular worship, while
the spirit is only worshipped when the occasion arises ;
and in being served from feelings of attachment and
trust, and not like the spirits from fear. When gods
appear, some writers hold, then and not till then does
4^ History of Religion part i
religion begin ; before that point is reached magic and
exorcism are the forms used for addressing the unseen
beings, but when it is reached we have worship ; inter-
course is deHberately sought with beings who hold
regular relations with man. The word Animism is
best employed to denote the worship of spirits as dis-
tinguished from that of gods. Whether or not early
man derived his belief in the multitude of spirits by
which he believed himself to be surrounded, from his
belief in the separable human soul, there is no doubt
that he did consider himself to be so surrounded.
Animism in this sense is undoubtedly the beginning
of some at least of the great religions.
3. The Minor Nature - worship came First. — M.
Reville holds ^ that the tree and the river and other
such beings were the first gods, and that the deifica-
tion of the great powers of nature came afterwards as
an extension of the same principle. Mr. Max Miiller
seems to share this view when he says that man was
led from the worship of semi-tangible objects, which
provided him with semi-deities, to that of intangible
objects, which gave him deities proper. The Germans,
as a rule, hold the view that the great nature-worship
came first, and that the sanctity of the tree and the
river came to them from above, these objects being
regarded as lesser living beings deserving to be
worshipped as well as the greater ones. The English
school let the sanctity of these objects come to them
as it were from below ; when man has come to believe
in spirits, he concludes that they have spirits too, and
worships the spirits he supposes to dwell in them. It
does not seem that these theories are entirely exclusive
of each other. French writers suppose that the minor
nature-worship first sprang up of itself, half-animal man
respecting the animals as rivals, the trees as fruit-bearers
for his hunger, and so on, and that spirits were added
* Reville, Hhtoiri des religions dcs f tuples non-civilisis^ ii. 225.
CHAP. HI The Earliest Objects of Worship 43
to these beings when the great animistic movement of
thought in which these writers beHeve took place, of
course at a very early period.^
4. The Great Nature-powers came First. — We come
in the last place to that class of deities which we spoke
of first — the powers of nature. By several great writers
it is held that the worship of these is the original form
of all religion. We shall give two of the leading theories
on the subject, that of Mr. Max Muller and that of Ed.
von Hartmann.
Mr. Max Muller has written very strongly against the
view that fetishism is a primary form of religion, and
holds that the worship of casual objects is not a stage
of religion once universally prevalent, but is, on the
contrary, a parasitical development and of accidental
origin. He does not tell us what the original religion
of mankind was. The work in which he deals most
directly with this question ^ is concerned chiefly with
the Indian faith, the early stages of which he regards
as the most typical instance of the growth of religion
generally. He does not, however, tell us definitely
out of what earlier kind of religion that of the Aryans
grew, which India best teaches us to know, or what
religion they had before they developed that of the
Vedic hymns. We may infer, however, what his view
on this point is from the very interesting sketch he
draws of the psychological advance man could make,
in selecting objects of reverence, from one class of
things to another (p. 179, sqq?). First, there are tangible
objects, which, however, Mr. Max Muller denies that
mankind as a whole ever did worship ; such things as
stones, shells, and bones. Then second, semi-tangible
objects ; such as trees, mountains, rivers, the sea, the
earth, which supply the material for what may be called
semi-deities. And third, intangible objects, such as the
' This view is the basis of M. Andre Lefcvre's La Religion. Paiis,
1892.
^ Lectures on the Origin of Religion^ 1882.
44 History of Religion part i
sky, the stars, the sun, the dawn, the moon; in these
are to be seen the germs of deities. At each of these
stages man is seeking not for something finite but for
the infinite ; from the first he has a presentiment of
something far beyond ; he grasps successive objects of
worship not for themselves but for what they seem
to tell of, though it is not there, and this sense of the
infinite, even in poor and inadequate beliefs, is the germ
of religion in him. When he rises after his long journey
to fix his regards on the great powers of nature, he
apprehends in them something great and transcendent.
He applies to them great titles ; he calls them devas,
shining ones ; asiiras, living ones ; and, at length,
amartas, immortal ones. At first these were no more
than descriptive titles, applied to the great visible
phenomena of nature as a class. They expressed the
admiration and wonder the young mind of man felt
itself compelled to pay to these magnificent beings.
But by giving them these names he was led instinctively
to regard them as persons ; he ascribed to them human
attributes and dramatic actions, so that they became
definite, transcendent, living personalities. In these,
more than in any former objects of his adoration, his
craving for the infinite was satisfied. Thus the ancient
Aryan advanced, " from the visible to the invisible, from
the bright beings that could be touched, like the river
that could be seen, like the thunder that could be heard,
like the sun, to the devas that could no longer be
touched or heard or seen. , . . The way was traced
out by nature herself."
This famous theory is, when we come to examine
it, rather puzzling. It does not account for the first
beginnings of religion except by inference, and it does
so in two contradictory ways ; for, on the one hand,
Mr. Max Miiller enumerates tangible objects first as
those from which men rose to higher objects, and on
the other he denies that fetishism is a primitive forma-
tion. He suggests that there were earlier gods than the
CHAP. Ill TJie Earliest Objects of Worship 45
devas, but he tells us nothing about them, except that
they were not fully deities ; they were only semi-deities,
or not deities at all. The worship of spirits he leaves
entirely out of consideration ; religion did not, in his
view, begin with Animism. When he does tell us of
the beginnings of religion, what is his view? The
religion of the Aryans began, and it is a type — the
other religions presumably began in the same way,
e.g. those of China and of Egypt — by the impression
made on man from without by great natural objects
co-operating with his inner presentiment of the infinite,
which they met to a greater degree than any objects
he had tried before. Religion was due accordingly
to aesthetic impressions from without, answering an
aesthetic and intellectual inner need. Those needs,
then, which led men to make gods of the great powers
of earth and heaven were not of an animal or material
nature, but belonged to the intellectual part of his
constitution. Those who framed such a religion for
themselves must have been raised above the pressing
necessities and cares of savage life ; they were not
absorbed in the task of making their living, but had
leisure to stand and admire the heavenly bodies, and
to analyse the impressions made on them by the waters
and the thunder. Nay, they had sufficient power of
abstraction to form a class of such great beings, to
bestow on them a common title, not only one but
several progressive common titles, each expressing a
deeper reflection than the last. Thus did they reflect
on the nature of the cosmic powers, taken as a class.
This, evidently, is not the beginning of religion. It is
the religion of a comparatively lofty civilisation ; lower
stages of civilisation, and of religion also, must have
preceded this one. Even the heavenly bodies, it appears
to many scholars, must have been worshipped by men
who regarded them not with aesthetic admiration and
intellectual satisfaction only, but in the light of more
pressing and practical interests.
46 History of Religion part i
We take Edward von Hartmann as the repre-
sentative of those who, like Mr. Max Miiller, trace the
origin of religion to the worship of the heavenly powers,
but who carry back that worship to the earliest stage.
Writers who disagree with his philosophy take grave
exception to his treatment of religion, for he regards
religion, as he considers consciousness itself, not as an
original and inseparable element of human nature, but
as a thing acquired by man on his way upwards ; and
he finds the original motive of religion to have lain in
egoistic eudaemonism, in the selfish desire of happiness,
which at that stage of man's life determined all his
actions. The account, however, given by Von Hart-
mann of the beginning of religion in the adoration
of the powers of nature is of singular freshness and
power, and we can deduct from it, after stating it, the
peculiarities arising out of his philosophical system.
The first religion that existed in the world had for
its objects the heavenly powers. The objects worshipped
are known, indeed, before religion begins ; the illusions
of early thought have settled on the heavenly powers
before they are worshipped ; on the outward object the
mind has conferred the character of a living and acting
being, which it is henceforth to wear. This transforma-
tion, poetic fancy, not mere logic and not merely
utilitarian considerations, has brought about. But
religion only begins when man sets himself to worship
these beings, and to this he is driven by his material
needs. Religion begins in a being as yet without
religion and without morality. The need for food is
the motive that brings about the change, for that pure
egoist early man has seen that the powers of nature are
able to help or hinder him in his search for a living ;
the sun can set his plants growing or can burn them up,
and the thunderstorm can revive them. His happiness
depends on these powers, and he seeks to set up relations
with them. He seeks to gain as an ally the heavenly
power who is so able to further or to thwart his aims';
CHAP. Ill The Earliest Objects of Worship 47
he makes known to it his wishes by calHng upon it, and
he offers presents to it. He worships the heavenly
powers, and reUgion has begun. Worship lends to these
powers, though they were known before, a fixity and
reality they did not formerly possess. Von Hartmann
is inclined to trace all the various worships of these
powers, which have prevailed in the most different parts
of the earth, to the same original centre, while at the
same time he maintains that even if all the instances of
this worship cannot be referred to any common origin,
it must have arisen in this way, wherever men of the
same nature dwelt ; the psychological necessity of this
development accounts for the appearance of this same
religion in different lands and among dissimilar races.
The worship of the heavenly powers, accordingly, is
with this writer the original religion. While admitting
that the worship of domestic spirits grew up in the way
described by the English anthropologists, he denies that
Animism is ever a religion by itself without being
combined with higher beliefs. He denies also that
fetishism could ever be an original religious product,
or that men could ever pass from having no religion to
the religion of fetishism. Wherever it appears, it is a
religion of decay. All the religion in the world has
come from the worship of nature, which, whether arising
at one centre or at several, spread over the world, and
is to be recognised, clearly or dimly, in the religions of
all lands.
This view of the origin of religion is shared in the
main by Otto Pfleiderer,^ and other German writers.
It was from the impressions made on man by the powers
of nature, these scholars hold, and not from his belief
in spirits, that his religion came. But it was not
necessarily due to pure egoism, as Von Hartmann
represents ; the earliest religions need not, they hold,
have been a mere attempt at bribery. The motives
which first caused man to worship the heavenly powers
^ rhilosophy of Religion, vol. iii. cliap. i.
48 History of Religion part i
surely arose from other needs than that for food alone.
The intellectual craving, the desire to know the nature
of the world he lived in, and to refer himself to the
highest principle of it, as far as that could be attained ;
the aesthetic need, the desire to have to do with objects
which filled his imagination ; the moral need, the desire
not to occupy a purely isolated position, but to place
himself under some authority, and to feel some obliga-
tion, these also, though in the dimmest way, as matters
of presentiment rather than clear consciousness, entered
into the earliest worship of the heavenly powers. This
view has the great advantage over that of Von Hart-
mann, that it makes the development of religion con-
tinous from the first, instead of representing it as being
originally a purely selfish thing, into which the character
of affection and devotion only entered at some subse-
quent stage. If man's nature is essentially religious,
then all that constitutes religion must have been with
him from the first, in however unconscious and un-
developed form.
Conclusion. — We have enumerated the different kinds
of gods worshipped by early man — fetishes, spirits, the
powers of nature. We have found a general agreement
that fetishism is not an original form of religion, but a
product of the decay of higher forms in unfavourable
conditions. As to the other two kinds of deities, it is
impossible to deny that gods have been formed from
the very first in each of these two ways. The domestic
worship of the early world cannot be derived from
nature-worship, but grew out of the belief awakened
in early man, by the familiar experiences mentioned
above. That the greater nature-worship, on the other
hand, can be derived from the belief in spirits is an
assertion which can never be proved, or even made
probable ; that it arose from the impressions produced
on early man by the great objects and forces of nature,
is a thing we can understand and believe. The minor
nature-worship is also a very intelligible thing, evexi
CHAP. Ill The Earliest Objects of Worship 49
without Mr. Tylor's theory of souls to explain it. What
more natural than that the savage should worship the
great oak or the waterfall, or should think himself
surrounded by invisible beings, even if he did not frame
the latter on the model of the human soul ? We arrive
therefore at the conclusion that with the exception of
the doctrines about death and the abode of spirits, we
must regard the worship of nature as the root of the
world's religion.
We must beware, however, of imputing to the thoughts
of early men about their gods, any such qualities as
consistency or regularity. The power of holding at one
and the same time religious beliefs which are incon-
sistent with each other, is one which even in the most
developed religions is by no means wanting; and how
much more was this the case among men who lived
before there was any exact thought ! The savage could
have a variety of gods of very different natures, who
formed in his mind quite a happy family. When he
found a new god, that did not oblige him to part
with any old one ; it was one god he was seeking, but
he could not settle on one god as yet, when there were
so many beings with a good claim to the position. He
made his gods not out of nothing, but out of a great
variety of experiences and impressions, and they acted
and reacted on each other in an endless variety of ways.
One god came to the front here and another there ; an
object was deified here from one reason and there from
another ; new gods in time turned old and were less
thought of while forgotten gods of former days came
back to memory and were worshipped once more. End-
less change, endless recurrences of growth and of decay
filled up those great spaces and periods, measureless and
trackless almost as the expanses of the ocean, that were
covered by the prehistoric life of mankind.
50 History of Religion part i
Books Recommended
Jevons, Introduction to the History of Religion, 1896.
E. S. Hartland, in Proceedings of Oxford Congress of the History of
Religion, p. 21, sqq.
Of the large class of books reporting the manners and beliefs of special
savage races we may specify —
D. G. Brinton, The Myths of the New Woild, 1896.
W. W. Gill, Myths and Songs from the South Pacific, 1876.
Kingsley, Miss, H^est African Studies, 1899.
Callaway, The Religious System of the Amazuhi, 1863-72.
Duff Macdonald, Africana, the Heart of Heathen Africa, 1 882.
G. Grey, Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North ■ Western
and Western Australia, 1841.
Spencer and Gilpen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, 1899.
CHAPTER IV
EARLY DEVELOPMENTS — BELIEF
We have seen from what materials early man made his
gods. As the gods differed in their origin, they differed
also from the very first in the mode of their develop-
ment. The great nature - gods gave rise to one kind
of religion, and the minor nature - gods to another, the
thought of the departed members of the household to
a third. But these various religions could not develop
side by side without influencing each other. These
different worships began in the very earliest times to
get mixed up together ; there is none of the great
religions which we do not find to be a combination of
them. It will be well to consider them in the first
place separately.
I. Growth of the Great Gods. — Taking them in the
order we have already followed, we come first to the
great nature-worship, of which heaven, the sun, the
moon, the stars, dawn and sunset, and then the phe-
nomena of the weather, rain, storm, and thunder and
lightning, are the objects. It cannot be too clearly
borne in mind that what was worshipped was origin-
ally the natural object itself, regarded, after the earliest
habit of thought, as living. To heaven itself, to the
sun as he rose or set, to the storm itself, men addressed
prayers and made offerings ; and in many quarters,
both among savages and in the great religions, the
same thing occurs to this day.
But it was impossible for man to stop here, his
51
52 History of Religion part i
imagination would not allow him to do so. In some
races, imagination was more active than in others, but
nowhere was it quite inoperative ; and so it happened
that man was led, here to a greater there to a less
extent, beyond the direct and simple adoration of the
powers of nature. When he began to give them names,
a first and a great step was taken in advance of the
original simplicity. A name is a power ; if it is any-
thing more than a mere title or label, and all primitive
names are more than this, it brings with it associations
of its own, and thus men are led to ascribe to the object
indicated by the name, a new character and new powers.
They proceed to argue about the name and draw con-
clusions from it as to the nature of the being they
worship, and so come to think of their deity in quite
a different manner. Even to classify objects together
and give them a common title, "the bright ones," or
" the living ones," as the early Aryans did, gives them
an independent position of their own, and tempts the
imagination to go further in describing them. Striving
to find names for those beings he worships and thinks
about so much, early man gives them the names of
living creatures with whom he is familiar, and in this
way he brings them much nearer to himself, and at the
same time appears to himself to know a great deal
more about them. The moon, for example, has horns,
the moon is a cow. Heaven is over all, heaven is a
father. And as he knows all about a cow, and all
about a father, he at once has these deities made much
more real to him, they have an independent existence
to him. But, on the other hand, he has got some-
thing more in his deity than there is in the natural
object. It is no longer the mere naked heaven or the
mere moon he worships ; but these beings with addi-
tions made to them by his own imagination.
As time goes on the additions grow more and more.
Having got living persons for his deities, early man
readily goes on to weave their histories and their
CHAP. IV Early Developments — Belief 53
relations. If the moon is a cow, the sun is a bull
chasing her round the sky. This is an instance of a
principle which obtains in many at least of the early
religions and which it is important to remember, viz.
that the powers of nature were first identified with
animals. The zoomorphic stage of the nature - gods
comes before the anthropomorphic {cf. the signs of the
zodiac), and in many savage tribes it still survives.
But it is when the gods begin to be thought of after
the likeness of human beings that the decisive step is
made in their development. If heaven is a father, it
is easy to go on from that. Earth will be the corre-
sponding mother (an idea found all over the world) ;
and all m.en will be their children. If the sun is in-
vested with a name of masculine gender (but the sun
is frequently feminine), he must do feats becoming
such a character. If the stormi is a male god, he will
be a warrior or a huntsman. Thus the god acquires
a personal character and an independent movement ;
what is told about him has reference, of course, to the
natural object he sprang from, or the season with
which he is connected ; but the deity is becoming
more and more separate from the natural object, and
acquiring a character and history of his own. The
stories connected with the god vary according to the
habits and the imaginations of different peoples ; in
some cases the gods remain pure and exalted beings,
in others savage and indecent myths are accumu-
lated around them, and these primitive myths adhere
to their persons long after they themselves have felt
an upward tendency and acquired a civilised char-
acter with the moral elevation of their peoples. We
shall see in many instances how the nature-gods were
personified, made into beasts, made into men, and sur-
rounded with myths and legends. That is the natural
history of the nature-gods; the process through which
they must pass if they grow at all.
Polytheism. — Another general feature of the worship
54 History of Religion part i
of the great natural objects has to be mentioned. Each
god has a history of his own ; he has grown up separ-
ately as men concentrated their attention upon him.
But as one god grows up after another, or as the gods
who grow up in two countries are afterwards brought
together, it comes to pass that there are many of them,
and none of them is necessarily supreme. What is the
worshipper to do? The least reflection will convince
us that in any act of worship man fixes his attention
on one object only. That belongs to the very nature
of religion ; as a child could not treat several men at
once as its father, nor a servant be equally faithful to
several masters, so man naturally tends to have one
god. He turns to the highest he knows, who is most
likely to be able to help him, and there cannot be two
highests, but only one. But man's position in the early
world does not allow him to be true to this religious
instinct. As he sees one aspect of the world to-day,
and another to-morrow, he cannot, when his god is a
power of nature, always see the same god before him.
But can he not worship another god when the first one
is out of sight and out of mind ? Though he worshipped
heaven yesterday, can he not worship the sun to-day,
or the storm, or the great sea ? And though the former
generation worshipped one of these beings in the fore-
most place, may not the existing generation devote
itself principally to another 1 That power does not
cease to be a deity which is not immediately before his
mind. It is still a deity, and in a while he will turn
to it again, and make it first. Thus it comes about
by inevitable logic that when man gets his gods from
nature, he has a number of them. When he gets a
new god he does not deny the god he had before ; he
is not yet in a position to conclude that there can only
be one god. When he is worshipping he feels as if
there were only one ; but this feeling applies at different
times to a number of different beings, and from such
inconsistency he lacks the power to free himself. The
CHAP. IV Early Developments — Belief 55
other is a god too ; all the gods he has ever worshipped
he may on occasion worship again. Nor can he refuse
to recognise the gods of others ; to them no doubt they
are gods, if not to him ; they are beings of the same
class with his god. And thus early man is a polytheist.
Polytheism is a complex product ; it is the addition
to each other of a number of cults which have grown
up separately.
In Polytheism, however, very different religious
positions are possible. Men may feel that the whole set
of the gods in whose existence they believe have claims
on them, and may regard themselves as worshippers of
them all, resorting, as feeling and old association moves
them, now to one and now to another, or defining the
places or occasions at which each of them is to be
sought, or in some other way adjusting their various
claims ; or, on the other hand, while believing in the
existence of many gods, they may confine their worship
to one. A man knows that there are many gods, but
says that he has only to do with one of them. This
is a religious position very frequently met with in
antiquity. A circle of gods is believed in, but one of
them comes into prominence at a time and is worshipped
as supreme. This is called Kathenotheism : the worship
of one god at a time. The title was invented by Mr.
Max Muller, who also gives the title of Henotheism
to that position in which many gods are believed in
as existing, but worship is given to only one. The
following are examples of the various positions : —
The language of Polytheism is — " Father Zeus that
rulest from Ida, most glorious, most great, and
thou sun that seest all things, and ye rivers and
thou earth, and ye that in the underworld punish
whosoever sweareth falsely — be ye witnesses."
— Iliad, iii. 280.
The Jews at the time of Josiah were accomplished
polytheists, as we may see from the catalogue of the
worships suppressed at Jerusalem by that monarch,
56 History of Religion part i
2 Kings xxiii. The gods of each of the surrounding
tribes appear to have been worshipped there, and the
old gods of the separate tribes and famihes of Israel
appear to have been kept up.
Kathenotheism. — The Vedic poets, as we shall see,
speak of the god they are immediately addressing as
supreme, and heap upon him all the highest attributes,
while not thinking of denying the divinity of other
gods.
The language of Henotheism is — " Thou, O Jehovah,
art far above all the earth ; thou art exalted far
above all gods " (Ps. xcvii. 9). " There is none
like unto Thee among the gods, O Lord ! . . .
Thou art great, and doest wondrous things :
Thou art God alone" (Ps. Ixxxvi. 8, 10). Here
the other gods are recognised as existing, but
only one is worshipped. Compare also St Paul :
" There are gods many, and lords many, but to
us there is one God" (i Cor. viii. 5, 6).
The language of Monotheism is — " All the gods of
the peoples are idols: but Jehovah made the
heavens" (Ps. xcvi. 5), and "Thou shalt have
no other god before Me."
A further religious position to be noticed here is that
of Dualism. Not all dualism comes from nature-
worship, but in a land where a beneficent and a harm-
ful natural force are in striking antagonism to each
other, this may take place. Man, when he interprets
the kindly influences of nature as the blessings of the
good god, naturally interprets the agencies which blight
or ruin as being also the manifestation of a living power,
but of an evil one. Thanks to the good god alternate,
in this case, with efforts to counteract or to appease
the bad one ; if the two appear to be nearly balanced,
then neither is supreme, and both overawe the mind
and receive worship. But in general we may remark
that the greater nature-worship is of an elevating
tendency. It brings man into relations with powers
CHAP. IV Early Developments — Belief 57
which are truly great, and places him even physically
in the position of looking up, not down. Where the
nature-power is a harsh one, a scorching sun, a tem-
pestuous sea, the self-command and self-sacrifice called
out by the worship of them may be, if not carried to
extremes, a bracing discipline ; but with some excep-
tions the nature-gods are good, and have to do with
light and with kindness.
2. The Minor Nature - worship. — The worship of
the great powers of nature has a universal character ;
it can be carried on anywhere ; wandering tribes carry
it with them ; heaven and the sun and the winds can
be addressed in every land. The minor nature-worship
differs from it in this respect : an animal is only wor-
shipped in the country where it occurs, and the worship
of the tree, the well, the stone, is altogether local.
With this local nature-worship the world was, in early
times, thickly overspread ; and manifold survivals of
it are still to be found even in lands where the primi-
tive religion has been longest superseded. This is the
religion of local observance and local legend, which
clings to the face of a country in spite of public changes
of creed, and, when the old religion has departed, is
found to have secured a shelter for itself in the new
one.
In this minor nature-worship which spreads its net-
work over all the early world, the character of primitive
society is clearly represented ; the small communities
have their small local worships — each clan, almost each
kraal, has its shrine, its god, and limits itself to its own
sacred things. Religion is a bond connecting together
the mem.bers of small groups of men, but separating
them from the members of other groups. The follow-
ing are some of the more important developments
of this.
{a) The Worship of Animals. — Primitive man had to
hold his own against the animals by force of strength
and cunning ; and he was well acquainted with them.
58 History of Religion part i
He respected them for the qualities in which they
excelled him, the hare for his swiftness, the beaver for
his skill, the fox for his craftiness. What he worshipped,
however, was not the individuals of a species, but the
species as a whole, typified perhaps in a great hare or
a great fox, the mythical first parent of the species,
and possessing its qualities in a supreme degree. It
happened apparently over the whole world, with the
exception of most branches of the Aryan family, that
men at a very early stage regarded themselves as
related by the tie of descent, some to one species of
animals or of plants and some to another. From this
belief tribes took their names, each member tattooing
the figure of his animal ancestor on his person. The
Bechuanas, for example, are divided into crocodile-men,
fish-, ape-, buffalo-, elephant-, and lion-men, and so on.
The hairy or scaly ancestor is the " totem " of the tribe,
and they consider that animal sacred, and will not eat
the flesh of it. All who bear the same totem regard
each other as of kindred blood, as descended from the
same ancestor. The totem may also be a vegetable, in
which case no member of the stock will gather or eat it.
Totemism is to be seen in operation at the present
day in various parts of the world. North America is,
perhaps, its classic land in modern times. It is, how-
ever, a stage of society through which all races have
at one time or another passed. According to the latest
investigations totemism is not to be regarded as itself
a religion ; the totem being regarded not as a superior
but as an equal. Its influence on the early growth
of religion, however, was great, and widely ramified.^
From this two important consequences follow which
will meet us again and again in our study of the great
^ J. G. Frazer, "Totemism," in the Encydopcedia Britantiica, vol.
xxiii., and now his Totemism and Exogamy. It was formerly held that the
Semites were an exception, having never passed through the totemistic
stage. Mr. Robertson Smith, in his Religion of the Semites, maintains that,
though they are past that stage when we first know them, the traces of it are
apparent in their institutions, and that their sacrifices especially arc based
on ideas belonging to it. Wellhausen does not agree with him in this.
CHAP. IV Early Developments — Belief 59
religions. The first is animal-worship, a phenomenon
of frequent occurrence and of perplexing import. Mr.
M'Lennan has shown that much at least of the wide-
spread worship of animals is to be traced to an early
totem-stage of society,^ when animals were held sacred
as the ancestors of men. In the second place, totemism
explains the view taken in the early world of the nature
of religious fellowship. In modern times people regard
each other as brothers in religion when they believe the
same doctrines. It is belief, an intellectual or spiritual
agreement, that binds them together. The ancient
religious union was of a quite different nature. People
then regarded each other as brothers because they were
of the same blood, descended from the same ancestor.
In the Bible the Hebrews are all descended from
Abraham, the Edomites from Esau, etc. That is the
necessary condition of brotherhood in early times ; only
those could join in a religious rite who were of the same
blood. For men of another blood there was another
worship, another god. It is an earlier stage of this
view, when men are of the same worship because they
are descended from the same animal, and when they
worship that animal.
{b) Trees, Wells, Stones. — The worship of each of
these three is in itself a great subject, and we can do
no more than mention the leading views which appear
to have entered into them. Mannhardt in his Feld-
und Waldkulte and Frazer in The Golden Bough have
studied the survivals of tree - worship in the local
customs of the peasantry of Europe. Early man
appears to have worshipped trees as wonderful living
beings ; but his thought soon advanced to the concep-
tion of a tree-spirit, of which the tree itself was either
the body or the dwelling, and which possessed various
powers, such as that of commanding rain, or that of
causing fertility in plants or in animals. From the
^ Fortnightly Review^ 1869-70. See also Mr, Lang's Myth, Ritual and
Religion in many passages.
6o History of Religion part i
tree-spirit, again, the tree-god was further formed, a
being who was able to quit the sacred tree or who
presided over many trees. Of these beHefs the fast-
decaying usages of the Maypole and the Harvest May
still remind us.
The well, in a similar manner, may first have been
worshipped in and for itself, and then a nymph may
have been added to it. The worship of wells consisted
in throwing precious articles into them, or hanging
such offerings on the surrounding trees, and asking some
boon from the deity .^ Rivers and lakes were also held
sacred. The worship of stones, that is of stones not
treated by art, but regarded as sacred in the form in
which they were found, was widely diffused among
early races ; but this is a subject on which light is
still called for. The Caaba of Mecca and the stone of
the temple of Diana at Ephesus are famous isolated
instances of it ; but it has been suggested that the
standing stones or menhirs which are found in every
part of Europe, and in the south and west of Asia,
were objects of this worship. In Palestine these stones
are not found, though they occur in the neighbouring
lands ; and this is attributed by Major Conder ^ to the
zeal of the orthodox kings, who, we know from the
Bible, destroyed all the monuments of idolatry in their
territory.
What is common to these cults, and cannot be dis-
regarded, is their local nature. This gives its colour
to all the religion of early man. The god of the sacred
tree cannot be worshipped anywhere else than where the
tree stands, and he who would have his wishes granted
by the well must come to it. The deity of this kind of
religion has his abode at a certain spot, and he is a
* In Mr. G. A. Gomme's Ethnology in Folklore many sacred wells
are mentioned which are still, or were lately, frequented in England.
St. Wallach's well and bath, in the parish of Glass, Morayshire, was
much resorted to within living memory.
2 Scottish Review, 1894, vol. xvii. p. 33, " Rude Stone Monuments
in Syria."
CHAP. IV Early Developments — Belief 6i
fixed, not a movable deity. There is a story, or a
set of stories, connected with his shrine, and there are
observances of one kind or another to be done there ;
and this goes on from age to age. Now a deity who
is fixed to one spot will be worshipped by the people
who dwell around that spot. The god will have his
own people and dwell among them, and they alone will
be his worshippers. And thus the surface of the earth
comes to be parcelled out among a number of deities,
each seated, like a little prince, at his own court among
his own people. In passing from his own home to a
distant spot, a man will leave the territory of his own
god and enter on that of another, and as the god can
only be worshipped at his own shrine, the man will
leave his religion when he leaves his home, and either
be compelled to serve the gods of strangers, or to
perform no religious duties at all.^ Thus the ideas
connected with totemism meet and harmonise in many
old countries with those connected with local shrines.^
Those dwelling around the shrine form a kindred of
one blood, of which the local god is both the progenitor
and the living head. Religion is thus both strictly
tribal and strictly local. It is for his brethren of the
tribe, for those in whose veins the blood of the same
divine ancestor runs, that a man's enthusiasm is kindled
in acts of worship ; it is his duty to his clan that he
then realises, the prosperity of his clan that he desires.
To those of other stems no religious bond unites him,
they are men of another blood, of another worship.
His religious duty is to love his neighbour, or fellow-
tribesman, to hate his enemy, the man of another tribe.
And on the other hand, as religion consists in approaches
to a particular spot and the performance of certain rites,
it is left behind when these rites are accomplished, and
^ Asi llustrating this circle of ideas, compare the following passages in the
Bible: Genesis xxviii. ; Ruth i. i6 ; i Sam. xxvi. 19; 2 Kings v. 17 ; and
of a later period, Psalm xlii.
2 See on this whole subject Mr. Robertson Smith's Religion 0/ the
Semites.
62 History of Religion parti
the man is away from his god. The sanctuary is re-
garded with extreme veneration, often with shrinking
and terror, but distance makes a change, the religion
alters with travel, and is left behind. This religion was
on the whole a more exciting and intense thing than
that of the great nature powers ; and was far more
interwoven with social life ; but it also presented the
greatest obstacles to progress, limiting men's affections
to their own kin and their own land, and confining
them in an inveterate conservatism.
3. The State after Death.— The belief that the human
spirit was not extinguished at the death of the body,
but entered on an existence without the body some-
where else, opened the door to a wide range of specula-
tion ; and the ideas arrived at by early man as to the
place of spirits and the life beyond, are a principal part
of that antique religion of which the great systems are
the heirs. The funeral practices of prehistoric times,
when various articles were placed in the tomb along
with the body of the departed hero or father, and
various sacrifices made to him at his burial or cremation
and at anniversary festivals afterwards, show that the
spirits of the dead were conceived as carrying on the
same kind of existence as they had led here, though an
existence unsubstantial and of little power ; "strength-
less heads " Homer calls them. Food and drink were
of use to them ; for the finer part of it was supposed
to reach them. The taste of blood revived them ; and
various pleasures were possible to them.^ This belief,
it will be seen, differs from all the modern doctrines of
a continued existence. It is not the resurrection of the
body that the savage believes in. He knows well enough
that the body does not rise ; but he also knows that the
spirit can exist and move and do a number of things
that were done in life, without the body. Nor can he
be said to believe in the immortality of the soul. That
* On this subject compare Mr. Tylor's Primiiive Culture^ twelfth and
thirteenth chapters.
CHAP. IV Early Developments — Belief 63
term describes a free and unfettered existence after
death, but to the savage the spirit after death has but a
troubled and frail existence ; it is tethered to certain
spots on the earth, known to it formerly ; it cannot do
much, it lives under many limitations and constraints.
Nor, again, can it be said that retribution after death is
a true designation of the early belief That may be
found here and there in early times, but generally the
other life is less under a divine government than this
one ; death takes a man away from his god as well as
from his family, and the dead are left to themselves.
While, however, this is the general background of
primitive belief about the other life, imagination is at
work on the subject very early, and various features of
that life are touched with more vivid colours, here in
one way and there in another. The place where the
departed stay, their occupations, their delights, are
variously described ; the land where they dwell is
modelled on a land that is known, with the addition of
ideal features ; they do very much what they did on
earth, hunt or feast, make music or carry on discussions.
In some cases there is a judgment-seat before which the
soul appears for its trial, and here of course the spirit-
world must be divided into two parts or more, for the
reception of those who are approved and of those who
are condemned. The detailed description of the abodes
of the blest and of the damned, by no means peculiar
to Christianity, are later developments in the early
world. Hell, Mr. Tylor says, is unknown to savage
thought. The doctrine of transmigration, however,
whether into plants or into lower animals, is of early
growth.
Growth of the Great Relig-ions out of these Beliefs.—
These various developments of thought about the gods
did, as a matter of fact, take place in primitive times,
and that is almost all that can be said. In the religion
of savages the various elements we have so briefly
indicated cross and recross each other, in endless
64 History of Religion part i
combinations ; none of them is to be found entirely by
itself. There is no fetish worship which is not accom-
panied by traces of an early belief in great gods ; there
is no belief in great gods which is not accompanied by
a belief in lower spirits. With regard to every savage
religion the student has to ask what the constituent
elements of it are, in what way the various beliefs of
the early world, beliefs arising from such different
sources, meet in it and combine with one another.
In each of the higher religions, too, the same questions
have to be asked. The beliefs which we have sketched
are the materials out of which they also arose. They
did not originate the belief in high gods with power
over nature, nor the belief in the lesser spirits which
busy themselves with man's affairs. They did not
originate the belief in a life after death, nor was it left
to them to appoint sacred seasons in the year, or to
consecrate the spots to which worship has always
clung. All these beliefs are prehistoric, and what
remained for the great religions was not to bring them
forward for the first time, but to surround them with
a new kind of authority, and to establish as a matter
of positive ordinance or revelation what had formerly
grown up without any ordinance by the unconscious
work of custom. It was not left for any of the great
founders to plant religion in the world as a new thing,
but only to add to the old religion new forms and new
sanctions.
It may be said that if these are the elements of which
religion as a whole is made, then religion arose at first
out of illusions. That is no doubt true, in a sense. It
was an illusion on the part of early man to suppose
that the powers of heaven were animated beings who
could be his allies and answer his appeals ; it was
an illusion to think that the tree or the stone contained
a spirit, and an illusion to think that men's spirits can
go and wander about the earth by themselves, leaving
their bodies untenanted. But these illusions were after
CHAP. IV Early Developments — Belief 65
all only the outward and inadequate expression in which
the spirit of religion then clothed itself. Religion must
always express itself in terms of the knowledge which
exists in the world at a particular time ; and if the
knowledge is defective to which the world has attained,
religious beliefs must share in its defects. But, on the
other hand, religion is something more than knowledge ;
it is also faith and communion, and these can be deep
and true, even when the knowledge which provides their
forms of expression is greatly mistaken. And when the
forms of knowledge in which religion has clothed itself
are found to be mistaken, religion has power to leave
them behind and to adopt other forms, as the tree is
clothed with fresh leaves in place of those which are
withered.
Yet it would be wrong to admit that even in its
character as knowledge early religion was illusion and
no more. The poetic faculty, the faculty which prompts
us to find outside us what we feel to be within us and to
assert its reality, led man right and not wrong. What
he worshipped was not the bare object which met the
eye and ear, but the thing as he conceived it. He
conceived that there was without him that of which
his inner consciousness bore witness, an ideal, a being
not grasped by the senses, which could help him, with
which he could hold intercourse, which had the power
he himself had not. This, not the faulty outward ex-
pressions in which the sentiment clothed itself, was the
living and growing element of his religion.
In addition to the books cited in this chapter, we may mention —
C. "Bbiiich^r, Der Baumkulius der Hellenen, 1856.
J. Ferguson, Tree and Serpent Worship, 1868.
,, Rude Stone Monuments in all Countries, 1872.
J. G. Fraser, Totemism and Exogamy, 4 vols. 1910. An immense
collection of material on the subject of totemism, with fresh con-
clusions as to the origin and meaning of the system.
CHAPTER V
EARLY DEVELOPMENTS — PRACTICES
In early religion it is important to remember that belief
counted for much less than it now does ; a man's religion
consisted in the religious acts he did, and not in the
beliefs or thoughts he cherished about his god. Worship,
moreover, is that element of religion which in all ages
and lands is apt to advance most slowly. Even in times
of ferment of ideas and change of belief, we often see
that the worship of a former time, be it simple or stately,
goes on in its old forms, as if it were a thing that could
not change. Men alter their beliefs more readily than
their habits, especially the habits connected with their
faith. If this is the case generally, it was much more
the case in the early world than it is now. The religion
of a shrine in old times consisted of a certain story about
the god, and certain acts done before or near the object
which represented him. There was no compulsion, how-
ever, to believe the story if a man did the acts or took
part in them. As to his private beliefs no one inquired ;
if he took part in the proper acts of worship he counted
as a religious man, unless he went so far as openly to
flout the current opinions of his time.
Nor were the acts which went to make up religion of
an elaborate or difficult nature. No minute ritual regu-
lated in early times the approaches to the deity ; they
were a matter of common knowledge, and were fixed
not by law, which did not yet exist in any form, but
by public custom and public opinion. The manner in
06
CHAP. V Early Developments — Practices 67
which a god is to be served is known of course to his
own people who dwell around him ; others do not
know it. The immigrants from Assyria had to send
for a Hebrew to teach them the ritual of the God of
Palestine, as they were on his ground and did not
know the right way to worship Him (2 Kings xvii, 24
sqq^. It is later that the rite becomes a mystery, known
only to the professional guardian of the shrine or to
the initiated few.
Sacrifice is an invariable feature of early religion.
Wherever gods are worshipped, gifts and offerings are
made to them of one kind or another. It is in this way
that, in antiquity at least, the relation with the deity
was renewed, if it had been slackened or broken, or
strengthened and made sure. Sacrifice and worship are
in the ancient world identical terms. The nature of the
offering and the mode of presenting it are infinitely
various, but there is always sacrifice in one form or
another. Different deities of course receive different
gifts; the tree has its roots watered, or trophies of
battle or of the chase are hung upon its branches ;
horses are thrown into the sea. But of primitive
sacrifice generally we may affirm that it consists of
such food and drink as men themselves partake of.
Whether it be the fruit of the field or the firstling of
the flock that is offered at the sacred stone, whether the
offering is burnt before the god or set down and left
near him, or whether he is summoned to come down
from the sky or to travel from the far country to which
he may have gone, it is of the materials of a meal that
the sacrifice consists. In some cases it appears to be
thought that the god consumes the offering, as when
Fire is worshipped with offerings which he burns up,
or when a fissure in the earth closes upon a victim ;
but in most cases it is only the spirit or finer essence
of the sacrifice that the god enjoys ; the rest he leaves
to men. And thus sacrifice is generally accompanied
by a meal. The offering is presented to the god whole,
68 History of Religion part i
but the worshippers help to eat it. The god gets the
savour of it which rises into the air towards him, while
the more material part is devoured below. Every sacri-
fice is also a festival.^ If this be the case it is unneces-
sary to spend much time in considering a number of
theories formerly regarded with favour as to the original
meaning and intention of sacrifice. The view that it is
originally simply a bribe to the deity to induce him to
afford some needed help, receives a good deal of counte-
nance from primitive expressions. ''■Do ut des" " I give
to thee that thou mayest give to me." " Here is butter,
give us cows ! " " By gifts are the gods persuaded, by
gifts great kings." Was early sacrifice then simply a
business transaction, in which man bringing a prayer
to the deity brought a gift too, as he was accustomed
to do to the great ones of the earth, in order that the
deity might be well disposed towards him and grant his
petition? Even if this was the case, if sacrifice were
offered with the direct and almost the avowed intention
of getting good value for it, yet if it takes the form of a
meal, it is lifted above the most sordid form of bribery.
There is a difference between slipping money into a
man's hand and asking him to dinner, even if the object
aimed at be in both cases the same; and when the
invitations are numerous and formal, there must be a
moral, not an immoral, relation between the two parties.
Where the sacrifice is a meal, intercourse is sought for ;
a certain sympathy exists between worshipper and
worshipped ; they stand to each other not only in the
relation of briber and bribed, buyer and seller, but in
that of patron and client, or of father and son.
But granting that early sacrifice was for the most
part a meal, an observance, with a social element in
it, between the god and the worshipper, what was the
object of this meal, what was the motive for holding it ?
1 Mr. Tylor {Prim. Cult. vol. ii. p. 397) states that "sacrifices to
deities, from the lowest to the highest levels of culture, consist, to the
extent <rf nine-tenths or more, of gifts of food and sacred banquets."
I
CHAP. V Early Developments — Practices 69
In some cases it looks as if the intention had been to
strengthen the god, and to make him more vigorous, so
that he might be able to do what was wanted of him.
In the Vedic hymns this motive undeniably is to be
met with. The notion is by no means unknown in
early thought, that not only does man need God, but
that God is also dependent on man, and capable of
being aided and encouraged. In rites which are not
strictly sacrifices, we notice men seeking to sympathise
with their gods in what the gods are doing, and to take
a share in it by doing similar things themselves. The
Christmas and Easter fires in pagan times connected
with the worship of the sun, are examples of this, and
many other instances might be cited.
This, however, is not the principal motive of early
sacrifice. All the incidents of it suggest that it is not
merely a thing offered to the deity, but a thing in which
man takes part ; if it is a meal, it is one of which the
god and the worshippers partake in common. In China
the ancestors are invited to the family feast ; their place
is set for them ; their share in the feast is placed before
them. In the Iliad} we have an account of a solemn
religious act : after prayers the victims were slaughtered,
choice slices were cut from them and cooked at the
fire by the worshippers, who then ate and drank their
fill; after this "all day long they worshipped the god
with music, singing the beautiful paean to Apollo, and
his heart was glad to hear." In the Bible we know
that the blood is poured out for the Deity, and in
various sacrifices the parts He is to have are specified,
while the rest is to be eaten by the priests. In the
earlier sacrifices of the Hebrews there are no priests;
those who present the sacrifice consume it after the
act of presentation, and the occasion is one of mirth
and jollity, as at a banquet (i Sam. ix. 12, 13, and
the following description ; see also Exod. xxxii. 5,
6). In fact it is a banquet. This is specially plain in
' I. 457 :qq-
70 History of Religion part i
the sacrifices of the Semites, as Mr. Robertson Smith
has shown. Early Semitic usage exhibits clearly how
sacrifice was an act of communion, in which the god
and his human family proclaimed and renewed their
unity with each other. The details may differ in other
races, but in general it may be said that early sacrifice
was an act done not by an individual, though plenty
of individual sacrifices are also to be met with, but by
a tribe, in which all the partakers of the blood of the
tribe took part before the god who was their common
ancestor, and who, as it were, presided over and shared
in their feast. In some cases of totem-clans the totem
animal is sacrificed, and all the members of the clan eat
their animal ancestor (only on such a solemn occasion
could the totem be eaten), and so renew their bond of
membership and brotherhood. A covenant is made by
sacrifice, to which the deity and all the members of his
people are parties.
To these primitive conceptions others no doubt should
be added. The mood was not always the same which
prevailed when the tribe renewed its union with its god ;
that depended on circumstances. In general the sacrifice
of early days is a joyous thing, but to a fierce god cruel
rites belonged. When cannibalism was practised it also
was such a primitive sacrifice, and the most powerful
means, no doubt, of cementing the union of the god
with the members of the tribe. When the god was
noted for suffering, a tragic tone prevailed, and the
sacrifice might have a dramatic character and represent
the leading incident in the history of the god.
If we trace the history of sacrifice in any particular
people we find two opposite tendencies at work in
connection with it. On the one hand there is a disposi-
tion to smooth matters, to drop the harsher practices,
to let an animal victim suffice where a man used to be
sacrificed, to let the man off with some slight mutilation,
such as circumcision ; or to allow poor people to offer
a less costly victim than the former custom claimed
CHAP. V Early Developments — Practices yi
— the rite, in fact, becomes civilised, and adapts itself
to the feelings of a humaner period. On the other
hand there is a tendency to add to the value of the
offerings, and to reckon the efficacy of sacrifice by its
cost and painfulness. In periods of outward distress
sacrifice attains a deeper earnestness, nothing is to be
left undone, and no cost to be spared to bring the
deity back to his people ; darker customs which had
become obsolete are revived again,^ the ceremonial is
made more elaborate, new kinds of sacrifice are intro-
duced. The old social aspect of sacrifice grows faint ; it
becomes a propitiation or a trespass-offering ; the notion
is entertained that sacrifice is the more efficacious the
more it has cost, or the more magnificent and awful its
mode of presentation.
Prayer is the ordinary concomitant of sacrifice ; the
worshipper explains the reason of the gift, and urges
the deity to accept it, and to grant the help that is
needed. The prayers of the earliest stage are offered
on emergencies, and often appear to be intended to
attract the attention of the god who may be engaged
in another direction. The requests they contain are
of the most primary sort. Food is asked for, success
in hunting or fishing, strength of arm, rain, a good
harvest, children, etc. The prayers have a ring of
urgency ; they state the claims the worshipper has on
the god, and mention his former offerings as well as
the present one; they praise the power and the past
acts of the deity, and adjure him by his whole relation-
ship to his people (and also to their enemies) to grant
their requests. As life grows more secure, the note of
immediate urgency fades out of prayer ; being a feature
not of an occasional worship arising from some press-
ing need, but of a worship statedly offered at set times,
it tends to run into forms, and to become fixed and to
have the nature of a liturgy. Then it comes about that
^ An instance of human sacrifice has just taken place in a remote part of
Russia^
72 History of Religion part i
the words themselves are regarded as sacred, and that
the efficacy of the sacrifice is supposed to be partly
dependent on them. They are incantations which the
deity cannot resist, — charms which in themselves have
virtue to secure the desired result.
Sacred Places, Objects, Persons. — The early world
had no temples, nor idols, nor priests. The worship
of nature does not suggest the enclosing of a space
for religious acts. The natural object itself being the
sacred thing, worship is brought to it where it stands ;
the gift is carried to the tree or to the well, and if the
deities are conceived as being above the earth, then the
tops of hills are the spots where man can be nearest to
them. High places are sacred in all lands. Groves
and remote spots are also sacred. When man was
carrying on his struggle with the wild beasts he would
regard with terror the places where they had their lairs
and strongholds ; it was in this form that the feeling of
mystery with which moderns regard places where they
are cut off from all human intercourse, first appealed
to man. After this earliest stage had passed, and the
grove had come to be regarded as the dwelling of a
deity, it became a place man did not dare to approach
except with the necessary precautions. We may here
explain a notion which plays a great part in early
religion, but is not specially connected with any one
institution of it, the notion, namely, of taboo. Taboo
is a Polynesian term, and indicates that which man
must not use or touch, because it belongs to a deity.
The god's land must not be trodden, the animal dedi-
cated to the god must not be eaten, the chief who
represents the god must not be lightly treated or
spoken of. These are examples of taboo where the
inviolable object or person belongs to a good god, and
where the taboo corresponds exactly with the rule of
holiness.^ But instances are still more numerous among
* Religion of the Semites, by W. R. Smith, p. 142, sqq.
CMAi'. V Early Develop77ients — Practices 73
savages of taboo attaching to an object because it is
connected with a malignant power. The savage is
surrounded on every side by such prohibitions ; there
is danger at every step that he may touch on what is
forbidden to him, and draw down on himself unforeseen
penalties. The nature of the early deities also excludes
idolatry in connection with them ; there is no need for
a representation of a being who is visibly present, and
can be extolled and worshipped in his own person. It
was at a later stage, when the god came to be per-
sonified and separated in thought from his natural basis,
that the need arose to make representations of him to
aid the imagination. The stones of early religion are
not idols. They are natural, not artificial stones ; they
are not images of the god, but the god himself, or at
least that in which the divine spirit dwells,^ or with
which it associates itself for the purpose of worship.
And, further, the earliest time knows no priests ; there
is no special class to whom alone the celebration of
sacrifice is entrusted. It would be quite inconsistent
with the whole view of sacrifice which then prevailed,
to suppose that it could be done by proxy. It was a
man's own act, by which he identified himself with his
god and with his tribe, and that could only be done
by a personal service. We often find kings and chiefs
sacrificing. Agamemnon does so, Abraham and Saul
do so, though the sacrifice of the latter is disapproved
of by the priestly writer. David does so without being
rebuked for it. The king or chief does this as the
natural head of his clan ; some one must take the lead-
ing part in the transaction. As religion is the principal
part of politics, and the first business of the state is to
keep itself right with the gods, the head of the state is
its most natural representative on such an occasion.
The head of a household also sacrifices for his house,
not only to the spirits of the house, but in cases like
^ Religion of the Semites, by W. R. Smith, p. 192.
74 History of Religion part i
that of Job, where there is no question of ancestor-
worship. Early custom did not fix in any uniform
manner by whose hands a sacrifice was to be made.
Mag'ic — In another direction, hov/ever, we see in the
earhest times the growth of a class of persons with
religious functions and attributes. While the ordinary
worship of the gods does not require the services of
any special class, there is everywhere found the man of
special knowledge and gifts, to whom men resort for
needs lying outside the scope of that worship. Every
savage religion contains a certain amount of magic, of
practices, that is to say, by which it is thought possible
to influence or to foretell outward events. Early man
is not limited in his views of what may happen by any
accurate knowledge of natural laws, or of the sequence
of cause and effect, and he imagines it possible to
influence nature in various ways. He imitates what
he supposes to be the causes of things, judging that
the effect will also follow ; or he uses such powers as
he may have over spirits, to induce or compel them to
accomplish his wishes ; or he manipulates objects he
believes to have a hidden virtue, in a way he believes
calculated to bring about the desired result. Magic
is thus related both to the cult of spirits and to that
of casual objects, both to animism and to fetishism.
There is generally a special person in a tribe who
knows these things, and is able to work them. It
may be the chief or king, — there are many instances
in which the chief is believed to have power to bring
rain, — or it may be a separate functionary, medicine-
man, sorcerer, diviner, seer, or whatever name be
given him. He has more power over spirits than other
men have, and is able to make them do what he likes.
He can heal sickness, he can foretell the future, he
can change a thing into something else, or a man into
a lower animal or a tree, or anything ; he can also
assume such transformations himself at will. He uses
means to bring about such results ; he knows about
CHAP. V Early Developments — Practices 75
herbs, he has stones or other objects endowed with
special virtues, he also has recourse to rubbing, to
making images of affected parts of the body, and to
various other arts. Very frequently he is regarded as
inspired. It is the spirit dwelling in him which brings
about the wonderful results ; without the spirit he could
not do anything. While the details of course vary
infinitely in different tribes, the figure of the worker
of magic is an essential feature of any general sketch
of early religion. He is often a person of great political
importance ; being supposed to be in closer alliance
than any one else with spiritual beings, he has a power
which is much dreaded, and which even the chief cannot
disregard.
Of Sacred Seasons there can be but few in the
earliest human life, when there is no fixed measure
of time, nor any notion of regularity, but all depends
on the occurrence of need and of danger. As soon
as agriculture was engaged in, however, attention must
have been fixed on the recurrence of the seasons, and
the measures of time afforded by the moon must, at
least, have been observed. The summer and the winter
solstice, the equinoxes, the new moons, these were to
the early cultivator epochs to be observed ; and certain
annual feasts are found to have come into use in very
early times, epochs of man's simplest and earliest
calendar, and occasions for tribal gatherings and for
such fixed religious observances as we have described.
A private religious emergency arising in the interval
between two feasts is dealt with by means of a vow ;
the help of the deity, that is to say, is claimed at
once, but the payment of the due consideration for it
on man's part is deferred till the time of sacrifice comes
round.^
Character of Early Religrion. — We have now passed
in review the principal observances and usages of
primitive religion ; but before concluding this chapter
* Genesis xxviii. 20 ; Judges xi. 30 ; 2 Sam. xv. 8.
76 History of Religion part i
some remarks have to be made as to the position
religion held in the life of ancient times, and as to
the spirit and temper which it exhibited. In the first
place, as we remarked above, religion was in these
times the most important branch of the public service.
Every uncommon occurrence had to be laid before the
god, and no important step could be taken without
consulting him ; and it was a principal duty of the
head of the state to keep the god on good terms with
the tribe, and to apply to him for all the aid and
protection the tribe required from him. In attending
to this, however, the chief was acting for his tribes-
men ; where there was no chief these matters were not
neglected, but were looked after by common spontaneous
action by the members of the tribe. The god was their
lord, their father, and they must always take him along
with them. This identification of the god with the
interests of his subjects is so close that the latter are
troubled with no doubts as to whether or not their
god is with them. If they observe the customary rules
for cultivating his friendship, he must be with them ;
they never imagine that he can be estranged from them.
It is the habitual attitude of early religion to take it
for granted that the god goes with his people (he
generally has no other people to go with) and helps
them against their adversaries. To doubt this and
to resort to sacrifices of atonement to bring him back
from his estrangement is a later stage of religion. But
if religion is in this way a public matter, a matter of
the tribe and its concerns, what place is there in it
for the individual? Individual cares and needs may
form the subject of prayers and vows, but religion on
the whole has to do with the tribe, not with the
individual, or with the individual only as a member
of the tribe. It is the duty of every one to take his
part in the public approaches to the god ; he must
either do so or be cut off from his tribe. For his
own griefs there is little comfort in the tribal worship ;
CHAP. V Early Developments — Practices yj
indeed, personal sorrows and perplexities meet with
but little consideration in early religion. As the tribe
is in no doubt of the goodwill of its god, and regards
him as a firm ally not easily turned away, old religion
has a confident and joyous air, strongly contrasting
with the doubts and the contrition of modern faith.
The acts of worship are feasts at which the members
of the tribe rejoice and make merry before their god.
To the delights of feasting those of dance and song
are added (" The people sat down to eat and drink,
and rose up to play "), and frequently the merrymaking
goes to the pitch of frenzy ; the worshippers dance
themselves into an ecstasy ; they feel the god taking
possession of them, and are hurried along by the sacred
inspiration to behaviour they would not dream of at
any other time.
Early Religion and Morality. — How did this early
religion bear upon morality? In how far was it a
power for righteousness ? There are two sides to this
question. In the first place, the religion of the infant
world was a strong influence for the restraint of
individual excess. The god being the parent of the
tribe, its customs had his sanction, he had no higher
interest than its welfare, he was identified with all its
enterprises, its battles were his battles also. The
worship of the god therefore made strongly for loyalty
to the tribe, and for the observance of its customs ; it
caused a man to forget his own interest where that of
the tribe was concerned, and unhesitatingly to sacrifice
himself for the public cause. But, on the other hand,
primitive religion was an intensely conservative force ;
it subjected the whole life to the customs of the tribe,
and discouraged spontaneity and independence in moral
action. The duties it prescribed were of a conventional
order ; a man had no duties to those beyond his tribe,
and to his fellow-tribesmen religion bade him rather
walk by rule than consult his own feelings. Of the
morality which consists in discipline and subordination
78 History of Religion part i
to the community, early religion was an efficient school ;
to the higher morality, the law of which is found written
in the heart, and which aims at rendering higher services
than those of custom, it did not attain. The worship of
the higher nature-powers, the heavenly powers of light
and kindness, tending as it did to transcend the limits
of place and of nationality, was destined powerfully
to foster a more generous morality than that of the
tribal worship, and this tendency was no doubt dimly
felt by early man long before it was possible for him
to follow it.
CHAPTER VI
NATIONAL RELIGION
We now leave behind us the behefs and practices of
savage and barbarous tribes, and turn to those of mighty
empires. The gulf which lies between these two parts
of our subject is obviously a wide one ; and in many
instances there is no bridge by which the student can
pass from one to the other. Often it is a matter of
inference rather than of direct proof that the great
systems are built out of the materials accumulated,
as we have seen, in the prehistoric period. But the
inference is sufficiently strong to rest upon ; in some
cases we are able to see quite clearly how the religion
of the empire arose by an uninterrupted growth out
of that of the tribe ; and in the cases where this cannot
be so fully made out, we yet judge that the result came
about in a similar way. We pause therefore at this
point to ask what is the nature of the transition at
which we have arrived, or, in other words, what con-
stitutes the difference between the primitive and the
later religions ? The difference is probably not one of
magnitude only ; it consists not merely in the fact that
the religion of the empire is that of a much larger
number of people than that of the tribe ; there is a
difference in character as well as in dimensions. With
a view to the examination of this point it will be found
convenient to consider some of the proposed classifica-
tions of religions, as most of these, though for different
;9
8o History of Religion part i
reasons, place the religions of the early world in a
different category from those known to us historically.
The old-fashioned Classification of Religions was
that of the true and the false. This our principle for-
bids us to accept, since we regard the various faiths of
the world as stages in the development of religion, and
therefore all relatively true.
Another division which has done good service is that
into natural and revealed religion. By natural religion
has generally been understood such religion as human
reason could attain to without supernatural aid. But
this description does not apply to any religious system
that ever prevailed largely in any country ; the actual
religions have all been the work of custom and age-
long tradition, not of the deliberate operation of reason.
Natural religion therefore is a term which is of no use
to us in classification ; since none of the actual religions
which we have to study answers to that title. Nor is
revealed religion a term we can conveniently use in
such a work as this. Many religions claim to be the
result of revelation, but few make it at the outset of
their career. The title tells us nothing about the
original character of a religion, but only that at some
period in its career the claim was made for it that its
origin was supernatural. If we grouped the revealed
religions together we might find that the members of
the group had no similarity to each other beyond the
accidental circumstance that the claim of revelation
had been made for them. Besides, science cannot
possibly take the revealed character of any religion for
granted, but must examine each such faith to see if its
growth cannot be accounted for without that assumption.
The term " natural " religion has, however, other
meanings than that just mentioned, and some of these
we may find to be of more service. It is proposed to
divide religions into "natural" and "positive," or into
those which have grown up and those which have been
founded. The earlier religions were not due to the
CHAP. VI National Religion 8j
personal action of outstanding individuals (at least it
they were, as surely they must have been in part, the
individuals and their struggles are unrecorded), but
were the work of unconscious growth, and were pro-
duced by forces, which, as they were at work in every
part of the early world, may be called natural. These
religions do not appeal to the authority of any founder,
but are borne forward by custom and tradition. Some
of the later systems, on the contrary, bear the names
of their founders, and are said to have been introduced
into the world at a certain time and place. Their
beginning is fixed, and they have a body of beliefs
and practices which belong to their original constitu-
tion, and possess authority for all subsequent genera-
tions of believers.
This classification promises well at first, but it is
difficult to apply it ; some religions pass imperceptibly
from the stage of custom to that of statute, and in many
religions both elements are so largely present that it is
difficult to strike the balance between them. We are
led to the conclusion that the real difference between
the earlier and the later religions is a more vital one
than any of these classifications would indicate. The
authority and the positive character of the later systems
is a symptom of the change which has produced them,
but the change itself lies deeper. The higher form of
religion is due to a great step which has been taken
in civilisation ; it is one of the features of the advance
of society to a new stage.
Rise of National Relig^ion. — It is an immense step in
human progress when a set of barbarous tribes unite to
form a nation. Under the strong hand of some chief
or under the pressure of some great necessity, they give
up the isolation which is both the weakness and the
strength of the tribal state of society, they choose some
strong place for their centre, they submit to a common
government, and while still remembering their separate
tribal traditions and usages, they learn to act as members
§2 History of Religion part i
of a greater community than the tribe. This is the
beginning of civilisation proper. Law takes the place
of custom ; the state undertakes to punish crime, and
private vengeance is discouraged ; the state also under-
takes the protection of the weak, so that humane
sentiment appears, and a security is engendered in
which the arts and sciences can spring up and flourish.
When this takes place a new type of religion also
makes its appearance. While each of the tribes may
long retain its own gods, and its peculiar rites, some one
god, perhaps the god of the strongest tribe, assumes a
higher position than the rest ; his worship becomes the
central religion of the community, round which the
other worships arrange themselves by degrees, until
there comes to be a system embracing them all, but
itself possessing a new character. In this way a
national religion comes into existence. The details
of this process are in every case beyond our observa-
tion. It is not perhaps for centuries after the national
religion has come into operation, that reflection is
turned towards it ; not till the art of writing has come
to some perfection is it described and formulated and
made statutory ; and by that time all accurate memory
of its beginnings has faded away, and its origin is
explained instead by a set of legends. But though its
beginnings, like all beginnings, are obscure, the national
religion is there. It has its history ; the great man
who brought the tribes together, or who first devised
for them a higher form of worship, is remembered as
its founder ; the foundation is ascribed to the inspira-
tion of the chief god himself; its sacred forms are
written down and obtain the force of divine laws, th-^
will of the deity is a thing clearly known and expressed
in positive terms.
It is not asserted that this description will apply to
the origin of all the national religions ; the character
and the circumstances of one nation differ from those
of another, and it need not be supposed that they all
CHAP. VI National Religion %2i
reached their state worships in the same way. Some
reh'gions have become national by conquest rather than
growth ; while some which may truly be called national
never attained to any national organisation. The pro-
cess we have described, however, may be regarded as
the typical one for the rise of a national out of tribal
religions, and indicates to us what we may regard as
the real and substantial difference between the stage
with which we have been occupied and that to which
we are now to turn. All other differences between the
prehistoric and the historical religions may be traced
to this one. Before the religion of a nation has
systematised its doctrine and its ritual so as to merit
the name of positive, before it has provided itself with
a detailed ritual or a fixed creed, or a regular priest-
hood, or a set of sacred books, the momentous step
has already been taken, the new form of religious con-
sciousness has appeared. Men have begun to believe
not only in the tribal but in the national god or gods,
and a national religion has come into existence.
The advance from tribal to national worship is one
of the most momentous in the whole history of religion.
The nature of the change involved in it may be summed
up as follows.
I. Men obtain a Greater God than they had before.
Formerly a man believed in the god of his tribe, one
deity among many, as his tribe was one among many,
each having its own god ; but now he comes to know
a god who is higher than the other tribal gods, as the
king whom the tribes have united to obey is greater
than the tribal chiefs. The god stands at a greater
distance than before from the worshipper ; familiarity
is lessened, and religion becomes capable of a deeper
reverence and adoration. Although the worship of the
tribal god is still kept up, yet if the new-born national
consciousness is strong, the national form of religion
rather than the tribal will determine the religious senti-
ment of the individual.
84 History of Religion part i
2. New Social Bond. — The nature of the social force
exerted by religion is altogether changed. In tribal
religion the tie of the worshippers both to their god
and to each other is that of blood ; the god is their
common lineal ancestor, whose blood is in the veins
of all the tribesmen. The social bond supplied by such
a religion is limited to the members of the tribe ; a
man's fellow-tribesmen are his brothers, but all other
men are his enemies ; with them he is at war as his
god is. Social duty is a matter of blood relationship,
and extends only to the kindred. When a national
religion is arrived at, a social obligation of a new kind
will evidently make its appearance. The national god
is related by blood to only one of the tribes composing
the nation ; the bond between him and the other tribes
must be of another nature. He has conquered their
gods or they have voluntarily accepted him as their
chief god ; in any case it is not the tie of blood
that binds them to him, but some more ideal tie, like
that between a king and his subjects, or between a
patron and his clients. And they now have a religious
connection also with men who are not their kindred.
The national worship is inconsistent with the gross
materialism of the system of kinship, and places instead
of it the belief in a god further above the world, and
therefore more spiritual, and obligations to men which,
as they are not derived from a common blood, are
somewhat more purely moral.
3. A Better God. — The new god of the nation as he
is higher above the world is a being of higher and
better character. He belongs to all the tribes, and is
not the mere partisan of any ; like the king, he is
above tribal jealousies, and is interested in checking
the violence of all, and securing justice to all. He
may be appealed to by those who have suffered
violence and who have no earthly helper ; and thus
he tends to become an ideal of justice and fatherly
kindness, and to reflect in the world above the senti-
CHAP. VI National Religion 85
merits springing up in the world below, in favour of
the repression of violence and the administration of
even-handed justice.
In these directions the religion of the nation tends to
rise above that of the tribe. The tribal worships may-
continue almost as they were, the tribal gods may still
be worshipped, the tribal jealousies and conflicts still be
carried on in spite of the new union, and all the super-
stitions of early religion may long survive ; yet a new
religious force has appeared which will in time produce
a complete new system. The true principle of classi-
fication, therefore, must be drawn from the difference
between tribal and national religion, as this is the most
vital difference, and that from which all the others
which we mentioned may be derived.
The transition thus sketched took place at widely
different periods in different parts of the world ; it
began early and has taken place even in modern times,
while very many tribes in various parts of the globe
have not yet arrived at it. It is a transition of which
it is manifestly impossible to exhibit the detail ; in
most cases the detail is not known, and it were a
profitless task to trace how primitive religions met,
united or remained apart, and how their crossings in
one case led to a national religion, and in many others
led to no such result. Much, no doubt, is to be found
on such points in special works, and much still remains
to be discovered. Various instances of the formation
of national religions will meet us in our subsequent
chapters.
The Inca Religion. — We give, however, at this point
an example of the transition we have described, drawn
from a quarter remote from the great movements of
history, and in which the facts are plain and uncon-
tested. Of the two great civilised communities of the
New World, discovered by the Spaniards in the six-
teenth century, Mexico presents a worship compounded
of many elements, which, along with high and lofty
86 History of Religion part i
morality and great magnificence of ritual, yet retains
an extraordinary amount of cruelty and savage horror.
In Peru, however, we find a state religion which super-
seded savage cults still remembered in the country, and
from the Royal Conmietitaries of the Incas, written by
the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega in the beginning of
the seventeenth century,' we are able to describe
the religion of Peru both before and after the Inca
reformation.
"Before the Incas," this writer tells us, "each province,
each nation, and each house had its own gods, different
from one another, for they thought that a stranger's god
could not attend to them but only their own." They
worshipped all manner of deities; of these are mentioned
herbs, plants, floweis, all kinds of trees, high hills, great
rocks, and the chinks in them; caves, pebbles, emeralds.
They also worshipped animals ; the tiger, the lion, and
the bear for their fierceness, and the monkey for his
cunning; these they did not kill, but went down on the
ground to worship them and would even suffer them-
selves to be devoured by them, since they regarded
these animals as their own ancestors. All kinds of
animals they treated in this way ; there was not an
animal, how filthy and vile soever, so the quaint words
tell us, they did not look on as a god. Other Indians,
again, worshipped things from which they derived
benefit, such as great fountains and rivers ; some
worshipped the earth, and called it mother, because
it yielded their fruits ; some the sea, calling it Mama-
cocha ; and a great number of other objects of adora-
tion are mentioned. They sacrificed animals and
maize, but also men and women, and these not only
captives taken in war but also their own children,
smearing the idol with the blood. (In other quarters
of the globe this is a symbolic act showing that the
idol and the worshippers all partake in the same life.)
Some tribes were fiercer than others, and practised
* Printed by the Hakluyt Society.
CHAP. VI National Religion Z"]
cannibalism more extensively. They were also well
provided with sorcerers and witches.
All this the Incas altered. They were a princely
family, regarding whose origin and accession to power
various legends are told ; the god they worshipped was
the sun, and they considered and called themselves the
children of the sun. Their father the sun, they said,
had sent their forefathers to teach the tribes various
things they very much needed to learn; to cultivate
the fields, to breed flocks, to live in peace, to respect
the wives and daughters of others, and to have no more
than one wife. The Incas knew better, it was said,
than the rest how to choose a god, and they declared that
men should worship the sun, who gave light and heat
and made things grow ; they should be grateful for
his benefits, and he would reward them if they were
obedient. The Indians accordingly took the sun for
their god " without father or brothers " ; they considered
the moon to be his sister and wife, but did not worship
her. Besides this, we hear the Incas sought a supreme
god, and called him " Pachacamac," that is " soul of the
world." This being gave life to the world and supported
it, but they did not build temples to him or offer him
any sacrifice ; they worshipped him in their hearts as
an unknown god.
The practice of the Inca religion as described to us
by several Spanish writers falls a good deal short of
this doctrine. Many beings were worshipped besides
the sun ; a number of prayers were addressed to the
Creator and the sun and thunder. Many sacred objects
also were adored, such as embalmed bodies of ancestors
and various idols. They practised all kinds of magic,
and, worst of all, many boys and girls were offered in
sacrifice, even before the Incas and on great public
occasions. The reformation of the Incas is evidently
not complete ; if it had not been arrested by the
arrival of the Spaniards it may be that the purifying
agency of the new religion would have found much
88 History of Religion part i
still to do. Enough, however, is seen to afford strong
confirmation of the principle that religion gains infinitely
in elevation when a national worship appears. The
Incas were no doubt the heads of a tribe which had
conquered others, and imposed its religion on them.
The lesser conquered worships do not die out at once,
but continue along with the central one. But the
latter expresses the national spirit and aspirations ;
and, as settled life fosters the growth of intelligence
and of public spirit, the central worship must more
and more supersede the others, while itself casting off
its superstitious and backward elements and becoming
reasonable and elevating.
It will be convenient to indicate at this stage the
further line of study to be followed in this volume.
As it is our aim to trace, however inadequately, the
growth of the religion of the world as a whole, it is
necessary that we should confine ourselves to those
parts of religious history which lie in the line of that
growth, or which serve in a conspicuous manner to
illustrate the principles according to which it has taken
place. It is by no means our purpose to give an
account of all the religions of the world, nor do we
seek to form a complete magazine of the curious
phenomena with which this vast field of study is in
every part so well supplied. If we have interposed
the foregoing brief account of the religion of the Incas,
it is not because of its own intrinsic importance, but
because it supplies within so brief a compass such an
apt example of that process which occurs so often in
the growth of religion, by which the unorganised rites
of a multitude of clans and families give way when
the nation comes into being, to the higher and better
religion of the state. In the same way the great
religions of which we must next speak have, no doubt,
only a loose connection with the central line of the
world's religious progress. No work professing to deal
ever so cursorily with our subject could omit to deal
CHAP. VI National Religion 89
with the religion of China nor with that of Egypt ;
yet neither of these faiths perhaps has permanently
enriched the religious consciousness of mankind. The
religion of Babylonia, with which each of these is
connected, was also of isolated and independent growth,
and is far away from us both in time and in historical
connection. Like great and solitary mountains of
ancient formation, each on a continent distant from
ours, these faiths attract us not because we depend on
them, but because they are interesting in themselves.
It was out of the same jungle of primitive beliefs
and rites, out of which our own religion has at length
grown, that each of these lifted its head to such heights
as it attained.
After disposing of these great systems we come to
the developments, much later in point of time, which
have led to the highest religion yet attained. And
here two great races or groups of peoples have to be
considered, each in its own way singularly gifted and
each contributing in a distinctive manner to the growth
of religion. These are the Semitic and the Indo-
European families. Under each of these heads we
find several well-marked religions ; and the nature of the
case itself points out our further procedure. Taking up
first the Semitic group, — including Islam, — since this
part of the subject lies at a greater distance from our-
selves, we shall inquire whether there is any common
element in the various religions it comprises, or, in other
words, if there is a Semitic religion which may be
regarded as the origin from which the Semitic religions
alike sprang, and which gave them a common character ;
and we shall then proceed to discuss the Semitic
religions each by itself. We shall then discuss the
common belief of the Aryans, and go on to the religions
of the more important Aryan nations. Our last chapters
will deal with Christianity and will point out the nature of
development which our study as a whole may have taught
us to recognise in the religion of mankind.
90 History of Religion part i
Books Recommended
On the classification of Religions see Tiele's article on "Religion" in
the Encyclopcedia Britannica, Ninth Edition.
Alb. Reville, Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as illustrated
by the Native Religions of Mexico and Peru. Hibbert Lectures, 1884.
De la Saussaye, Third Edition, pp. 5-16, gives a good conspectus of the
various classifications which have been proposed.
PART ir
ISOLATED NATIONAL RELIGIONS
CHAPTER VII
BABYLON AND ASSYRIA
The religion of Babylonia, of which that of Assyria is
a late form, as the Assyrians appropriated all they
could of the religion and the literature of this southern
empire which they conquered, cannot be classed along
with any other without some inconvenience. In point
of remoteness in time it takes precedence even of the
religions of China and of Egypt ; like these great faiths
it also is, in its earlier stage, a growth by itself in a land
and people of its own, where apparently it grew up
independently from rude beginnings. It is undoubtedly
one of the Semitic religions ; but it had a character
of its own which other Semitic religions did not share,
and of the simple and early Semitic religious attitude
which will be set forth in another chapter it retained
but little. It had an immense influence. Its ideas
entered the religion of the Old Testament by several
roads. Abram came to Canaan through Haran from
Ur of the Chaldees ; and in Canaan the religious ideas,
myths, a".d legends of Babylon must have been well
known. The discovery of this code of Hammurabi has
shown that many of the laws of Moses were laws of
Babylonia long before Moses. In a later period the
tread of Babylonian soldiery was heard in Palestine
many a time before the great captivity, in which Israel
sat down and wept remembering Zion by the waters of
Babylon. In Greece also we find that ideas which
came from Babylon had become known, by way of
93
94 History of Religion part u
Phenicia, at a very early period. Recent discoveries,
however, seems to make it impossible to assign to the
religion of Mesopotamia any other place than the first
among the great faiths of the world. The ancient
connection between Mesopotamia and Egypt, surmised
till now rather than known, is coming to light, and it
appears, at least, possible that the first of these countries
may have to be regarded as the source of all the
civilisations of antiquity. The pantheon of Egypt has
striking similarities to that of Babylonia, and some of
the Egyptian temples show traces of derivation from
the lands of the Tigris and Euphrates. The similarities
in the case of China are not so marked, but they are
substantial. In Babylonia, therefore, we may be deal-
ing not with one of three isolated religions, but with
the mother of the other two. If, as Mr. Lockyer holds,i
Egypt borrowed astronomy from Babylon in connection
with temple-building, more than 5000 years B.C., the
religion of Babylon must indeed be carried far into the
past.
People and Literature. — Certain parts of Babylonian
religion are much ruder and more superstitious than the
exalted star-worship which is its central feature, and
these have been ascribed to peoples who dwelt in
Babylonia before the supposed Semitic conquest, viz.
the Accadians in the north and the Sumerians to the
south, peoples not related to the Semites in blood or
in language, but generally called Turanian, and thought
to be perhaps akin to the Chinese. The cuneiform
writing which remained in use for millenniums after the
Semitic immigration as the sacred literary form, was
supposed to have been the invention of these peoples,
who had also made some progress in plastic art.
There is, however, no direct evidence of the alleged
early Semitic invasion, and the Sumerian hypothesis
of which it is a feature is now regarded by some with
less confidence. It is based on linguistic phenomena.
^ Dawn of Astronomy, 1894.
CHAP. VII Babylon and Assyria 95
Hammurabi, 2250 B.C., reigned over a realm whose
subjects were of different tongues, and entrusted his
records to two methods of writing. The old Sumerian
language, which cannot, in the opinion of the best
scholars, be shown to have affinity with any language of
the ancient world, came to be confined to matters of
religion and magic, and was superseded by the Assyro-
Baby Ionian, which was Semitic. But the feeble ray of
the Sumerian hypothesis can be dispensed with in the
light which is shining on ancient Babylonia from other
quarters. For its information about that ancient land
the world was formerly dependent on the scanty notices
of Greek and Latin writers, but within the last half-
century astonishing new sources of information have
been opened up. Explorations carried on by scholars
of many lands have made us acquainted with Babylonian
and Assyrian temples and palaces, and with many a great
royal inscription. Great libraries, made of brick tablets,
have been discovered buried under the ruins of the
cities, and the gradual decipherment and arrangement
of this old literature is proceeding as fast as able and
devoted workers can overtake it. Those who know
the subject best declare that no complete history of
Babylonian religion can yet be written. The texts now
in our possession embody many documents of much
more remote age, yet the information is as yet too
fragmentary and often of too doubtful interpretation,
while the proportion it bears to the whole of Babylonian
life is too little known to supply a solid foundation for
history. With this caution we proceed to state the
results which are considered likely to prove well founded.
As we saw, several features remain in the religion in
later times which appear to throw light back upon its
early condition, and it may be best to begin with these
before describing the noble structure presented on the
whole by this religion.
I. Worship of Spirits. — The Babylonians, like the
Chinese, believed the world to be thickly peopled with
96 History of Religion part ii
spirits of all kinds ; and saw in each movement in
nature the action of a " zi " or spirit. These spirits
could be to some extent controlled ; though their
character was not known, yet certain charms and
incantations were believed to have power over them,
and communication with the unseen world took, there-
fore, the form of magic. The earliest portions of the
sacred literature consist of spells or charms believed
to possess this virtue, and these were never displaced
from the collection ; on the contrary, new spells were
written even after higher spiritual beings were known
and more ethical forms of addressing them had been
devised. Especially were all pains and diseases ascribed
to the agency of spirits or of sorcerers and witches, their
human allies, and the sick person naturally sent for an
exorcist to expel the spirit which was tormenting him.
Some spirits were more powerful than others, and the
stronger spirit was invoked to rebuke and drive out the
weaker. The spirit of heaven and the spirit of earth
were adjured to conjure the plague-demon, the demon
who was afflicting the eye, the heart, the head, or any
other part of the body. Assertions are not wanting in
the cuneiform literature that beliefs and practices of this
kind formed no part of the true religion of Babylonia,
and some scholars regard it as a late degeneration.
The analogy of similar cases points, however, to the
conclusion that magic is everywhere an early form of
religion which is only overshadowed, not killed, when a
great religion arises, and which tends to reappear. It
may be said that there is no evidence of any break in
Babylonian religion ; if the Sumerians yielded to the
Semites, this led to no religious revolution ; the religion
is Semitic from first to last.
2. Animals. — A step above this trafficking with spirits
is the worship of animals, which Mr. Sayce considers to
have been an early form of Babylonian religion, and to
afford an explanation of various features in it. Like the
gods of Egypt and those of Greece, many of the gods of
CHAP. VII Babylon and Assyria 97
Babylon have animal emblems ; this appears both in
the representations of them and in their legends. The
winged bulls and eagle-headed men of Babylonian art
represent the same rise of the gods which we know to
have taken place in Egypt, from the animal to the
semi-human, and then to the fully human form. An
intermediate stage in Babylonia is that the god stands
on the back of the animal with which presumably he
was formerly identified. We have an Assyrian Dagon
whose head and shoulders are covered with a fish's skin ;
we have gods and goddesses who are human figures
with the exception of their wings ; we have winged
dragons ; we have the great bulls with human head and
wings which stood as guardian deities to ward off evil
spirits at the portal of a palace. The following animals
were also connected with gods : the antelope, the serpent,
which came to be the embodiment of cunning and
wickedness, the goat, the pig, the vulture. We thus see
that the rise from zoomorphism to anthropomorphism
which the Greeks afterwards carried to the highest point
attainable by the resources of art, began in Babylonia.
Like all early religions, that of Babylonia is broken
up into a multiplicity of local worships. There is no
common system, but each place has its own god or
gods and its own sacred rites. In Egypt we shall find
reason to believe that this state of matters had its origin
in an early totemistic arrangement of society ; whether
the same was the case in Babylonia or not, it is vain
to speculate. Babylonian religion as we see it has
risen far above the direct worship of animals. Each
god comes before us in a certain local connection and
with a special character, but they tend to grow like
each other, and their worship is organised on the same
plan. The gods of Babylonia undoubtedly belonged to
different towns, and though attempts were made in
later times to bring them all together in an imperial
Babylonian religion, and to settle their relations to
each other, these attempts led to no system which
G
98 History of Religio7t part ii
was finally accepted. The number of the recognised
great gods varied, and there was always a large number
of minor gods. Each god has his own early history ;
here as everywhere it is the case that the individual
gods are earlier than the system which seeks to connect
them together.
The Great Gods. — The great gods of Babylonia
belong to the elements and to the heavenly bodies.
When we first see them, they are not, like the gods of
the western Semites, lords and masters, characters taken
from human families ; they are not husbands and
fathers but creators and universal powers. Another
mark about them is that they have originally no wives.
When they come to have wives, these are simply
doubles of themselves with no special character. A
consort is given to the god by adding a feminine ter-
mination to his name, thus Bel receives Belit, Anu
has Anat. Finally Babylonian religion is more and
more directed to the heavenly bodies. It is Astral
religion carried to its furthest point. This fixed the
arrangement of its temples, the occupations of its
priests.
We rapidly pass in review the principal Gods. One
of the oldest is Ea of Eridu, a town which stood in old
times at the head of the Persian Gulf. He is a god of
the deep, whether it was that he was considered to
have come over the water from another land, or whether
he is connected with the belief which was held in
Babylonia as elsewhere, that all things originally arose
out of the abyss. In later forms of the legend his name
appears as Cannes, and he is an amphibious being, half-
fish, half- man, who rises from the deep and instructs
men in arts and sciences. Works were preserved bear-
ing his name, for he was an author. He continues, even
when little direct worship is addressed to him, one of the
greatest of the gods. Ana the sky, is the god of Erech
on the lower Euphrates. Like the Chinese, the men
of Erech regarded the sky itself as the highest god,
CHAP. VII Babylo7i and Assyria 99
and the maker and ruler of all things. In Babylonia,
however, the notion became spiritualised more than
in China ; at first we hear that his dwelling became
the refuge of the gods during the Deluge, but in later
times he is regarded as a being quite above heaven
and all created beings, and even all the gods. A third
great god is Bel of Nippur, not the later Bel of Babylon,
but an older one, identical with the Accadian Mul-
lilla, the lord of the under-world. The earliest gods
of this religion are those of the sea, the earth, and
the sky. As they belong to different districts of the
country, they can scarcely be called a trinity. A better
approach to a trinity is formed by Ea of Eridu, Davkina
his wife who is the earth, and the sun-god Dumuzi,
their offspring. The son of Ea, also named Miri-Dugga
or Merodach (Marduk), is identified with the Egyptian
Osiris ; they have the same symbol, each is a sun-god,
and each has a sister who is also his wife, Merodach
has Istar, and Osiris, Isis. In Sergul the principal
deity was the fire - god, sometimes called Savul ; in
Cutha they worshipped NeFgal the god of death, the
" strong one " who had his throne beneath. Cutha was
a favourite place of sepulture with the Babylonians.
Rimmon was a god of wind, Matu of storms. There
is a dragon Tiamat, with whom the great gods have
to contend.
The sun and the moon were worshipped everywhere ;
each city had its own sun-god and its own moon-god.
The preference generally shown by nomads for the
moon, since their journeys are made by night, is kept
up in early Babylonia, where the moon-god is regarded
as the father of the sun-god, and as the greater being.
In Ur of the Chaldees the moon was the principal
deity. There were also towns such as Larsa and
Sippara, where the sun was the chief god ; and many
of the great gods of later times were originally sun-
gods. The Chaldeans, moreover, were proverbially
star - watchers, and a '* zigurrath " or observatory, a
lOO History of Religion part ii
building of seven spheres corresponding to those of
the planets as they pass through the signs of the
zodiac, and Hke them rising up to the seat of God at
the North Star, was a regular part of the later Baby-
lonian temple. To Babylonia is due the practice of
the orientation of temples ; that is to say, the arrange-
ment of the building in such a way that its principal
axis shall point exactly in a desired direction. Some
of the Babylonian temples were oriented so that the
sun should shine to the western end of them on the
day of the spring equinox when the inundation of the
rivers began on which the prosperity of the country
so much depended. Tlie temple was thus an astro-
nomical instrument of a high degree of accuracy, and
the priests who directed its building and served in it
when built were men of science and learning. A
religion which is connected with the heavenly bodies,
though it does not fully supply the needs of the lower
orders and has too little energy to cope with supersti-
tion, tends to produce a priesthood who form centres of
enlightenment and civilisation throughout the country.
This was in the highest degree the case in Babylonia.
To these old astronomers the world owes the signs
of the zodiac, which were fixed not later than in the
fifth millennium B.C., and in which we see how early
man beheld in the nightly heavens the creatures which
on earth he regarded as divine, so that he worshipped
them in both regions. The institution of the Sabbath
is also Babylonian ; whether it was connected with
the changes of the moon, or with a week of days
named after the seven planets, is not certain. Seven
is a sacred number in Babylonia, as we find in many
a connection.
Mythologry. — We come lastly, in our attempt to
enumerate those parts of Babylonian religion which have
entered deeply into human thought, to the myths. The
heroic legends and romances are the most interesting
and the best - known portions of the newly - recovered
CHAP. VII Babylon and Assyria loi
literature. We have already noticed some fragments
of mythology, such as the story of the fish - god who
comes up daily from the sea, the moon being the father
of the sun, and the family history of Ea and Davkina,
with the sun their child. The two latter are evidently
inconsistent with each other. But the story about
the son of Ea and Davkina has an important further
development. His name is Duzu or Dumuzu, and he
is the Tammuz of whom we hear in the Bible (Ezekiel
viii. 14), who is adored by women raising lamentations
for him. He is said to be the sun-god of spring, to
whom the heat of summer is fatal, and who dies in
June. It is when moisture is failing from the ground
that he is bemoaned. His home is in Eden, for Eden
belongs to Babylonian legend, which places it near
Eridu. There grows the great world-tree which the
gods love; it rises from the centre of the world, and
is nourished from springs which Ea himself replenishes.
It is a cedar (Yggdrasil, the ash-tree, we shall find,
occupies the same position with the Northern Teutons) ;
it is sometimes found in a highly conventional form with
the figure of a cherub at each side of it, each of whom
holds in his hand a fruit. In this tree scholars recognise
both the tree of life and the tree of knowledge with
which we are familiar. The knowledge of the priests
in Babylonia was not for every one, but was jealously
guarded, and kept for the initiated alone.
From Tammuz we naturally pass to Istar, one of the
few goddesses of old Babylonia, and by far the most
famous of them. Istar was originally the goddess of
the earth, and both mother and sister of the sun-god,
for we are led to believe that she is at first the same
as Davkina, The great myth of the descent of Istar
describes how she goes down to the kingdom of the
shades to seek the waters that shall give life again to
her bridegroom Tammuz. The poem in which the
narrative is preserved gives a description of the " house
of darkness, where they behold no light," and then
I02 History of Religion part ii
tells how, at the orders of Ninkigal or Allat, queen of
Hades, I star is deprived, successively, in spite of her
remonstrances, of all her ornaments, and how the
plague-demon Namtar is bidden to strike her with all
manner of diseases. The result of Istar's disappearance
under the earth is that all love and courtship cease
both among men and the lower animals, and Ea him-
self is appealed to, to bring to an end so unnatural a
state of affairs. A messenger is sent to the lower
regions to cause the release of Istar and the reascent of
Tammuz. This goddess, however, is known not only
from this legend ; she has many forms, and passed
through various fortunes. The Istar of Erech herself
lures Tammuz to his destruction. In early times Istar
is also the evening star, the bright companion of the
moon. Her leading character, however, seems to be
that of a goddess of love. Fertility depends on her ;
she goes under the earth to find her lover. In this
character she attracted in Babylonia a worship noted
for impurity, which under the name of Ashtoreth is
found also in Phenicia and in Syria. There is also,
however, a warlike Istar, a strict goddess served by
Amazons, and capable of identification with the Greek
Artemis, as the Istar of love is identified with Aphrodite.
Much more primitive than the legend of Istar are
some parts of the Babylonian accounts of the creation.
There are several of these accounts, some newly dis-
covered. In one the old god Ea peoples the original
chaos with a variety of strange monsters. In another
the birth of the gods is narrated as well as that of the
world ; we find also that chaos is itself conceived as a
female monster, a dragon of evil, and the god has to
do battle with this power of darkness and evil, and to
bring light and the habitable world up from its realm.
It is certainly true that the Babylonian legends of the
creation are crude and inconsistent with each other, and
that the account in Genesis belongs to a much higher
order of thought. The Babylonian account of the
CHAP. VII Babylon and Assyria 103
deluge and the ark is more closely parallel to the Bible
narrative ; the two cannot possibly be independent of
each other, and there may be no impropriety in hold-
ing that the Hebrew writers were acquainted with
myths of general diffusion in the world they lived in.
The State Religion. — The Babylonian and Assyrian
religion of which we hear in the Bible {cf. Isa. xl.-lxvi.)
is the splendid worship of mighty empires ; it has
forgotten its humble beginnings, and under the guidance
of large priestly and learned corporations has grown
much in depth and purity. Of its outward magnificence
the monuments furnish ample proof The temple of
Bel-Merodach at Babylon was a wonder of the world.
Being the god of the prevailing city of the empire,
Merodach was the greatest of all the gods, and was
reverenced and extolled as befitted the friend and patron
of the greatest of monarchs. His son Nebo was a
prophet and a god of wisdom. What Merodach was
to Babylon, Assur was to Assyria ; in fact, he was the
only god peculiar to Assyria. The rule that as religion
grows in outward splendour it also gains in inward
strength and spirituality is strikingly exemplified in
the case before us. The gods have come to be moral
powers, who really care for men, not only for the king,
their earthly representative, but for their worshippers
in general. Merodach is praised for his mercy ; he not
only accompanies the king in his wars, of which the
inscriptions give us so many a wearisome catalogue,
but he heals the sick, he brings relief to him who is
mourning for his transgressions, and he brings life out
of death and receives the soul committed to his mercy
to a blessed dwelling above. Perhaps we pass here
somewhat beyond the early period of the religion and
touch on its ultimate phase. The penitential hymns
of the later literature form a strong contrast to the
magical incantations, which fill so much space in the
Babylonian sacred literature. The confessions they
contain are not very spiritual ; the supplicant bewails
I04 History of Religion part n
his sufferings rather than his sins. Indeed, he rather
infers from his sufferings that he has sinned, trodden,
it may be, where he ought not to have trodden, or
eaten what he should not have eaten, than confesses
that he deserved to suffer for sins of which he is aware.
What is implored is outward redress or ease, not inward
peace. The removal of outward ills is taken as forgive-
ness. There can be no comparison between these
hymns and those of the Bible. But what they do show
is the rise in Babylonia of a religion for the individual.
The gods are sought not only officially by the state
or for state ends, but by the individual. They are
believed to have regard to individual sufferings ; and
the friends of a dying person believe that the gods care
for and will receive his soul.
Our knowledge of the religion of these lands is too
imperfect to admit of wide conclusions being drawn
from it. We know what the higher religion of
Babylonia was ; and we also see that the higher
worship never entirely prevailed in this land ; the god,
like Bel or Assur, who bore the character of a human
over-lord, never drove out the old set of spirits, nor
brought the service of them to an end. As in the case
of Egypt, so here the attempts made in the direction
of a pure and spiritual worship met with no ultimate
success. Babylon and Assyria never came so near to
Monotheism as did Egypt three millenniums before
Christ. Nabonidos, the last king of Babylon, collected
all the gods together in his capital, and endeavoured to
organise them in a system under Merodach as their
head ; but this led to religious discord rather than to
peace, since the minor deities vehemently resented the
removal of their images from their accustomed shrines,
and were understood to refuse their aid to the state on
the new conditions. The religion of Babylon was too
much broken up into independent local cults to admit
of such a unification. The highest that was reached
was that one great god was adored in one city, another
CHAP. VII Babylon and Assyria 105
in another, with some depth and spirituality. To
nations which had attained a higher faith, that of
Babylon appeared to be an idolatrous worship of many
gods. That is a harsh judgment. This religion also
had life in it and advanced from a lower to a higher
stage ; from a timid trafficking with spirits to a service
of gods who were ideal heads of human communities,
and friends of individual men. It was not a mere
system, as the world has been accustomed to think, of
astrology and of divination of other kinds. But when
Babylon and Assyria ceased to be independent powers,
and became provinces of Persia, Bel bowed down and
Nebo stooped, not to rise again. The world of that
day had no need of them. It had already attained in
more than one country to a higher religion than that of
these deities.
Books Recommended.
The Histories of Antiquity, viz. —
Maspero, Histoire ancienne des Peuphs de t Orient.
Duncker, The History of Antiquity, from the German, by Evelyn
Abbott.
Rawlinson, The Fiiie Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World:
Chaldea, Assyria, Babylonia, Media, and Persia.
Ed. Meyer, Geschichte des Alterthums, 18S4. The first volume
embraces the History of the East to the foundation of the Persian
Empire.
Schrader, Die Keilinschriften und das alte Testament, 1 903.
Hilprecht, Old Babylonian Inscriptions chiefly from Nippur, 1893.
Records of the Past, i, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11.
Sayce's Hibbert Lectures, 1887.
Tiele, Egyptische en Mesopotamische Godsdiensten.
Jastrow, The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, 1898. The most
complete account of the whole subject.
„ " Religion of Babylonia," in Dictionary of the Bible, vol. v.
,, " On the Religion of the Semites," in Oxford Proceedings, vol. i.
p. 225, sqq.
F. Jeremias in De la Saussaye, pp. 246-347.
Bezold, Niniva atid Babylon, 1903.
E. H. W. Johns, The Oldest Code of Laws in the World, 1903,
" On the Code of Hammurabi." E. H. W. Johns, in Dictionary of the
Bible, vol. v.
CHAPTER VIII
CHINA
The Chinese have always been a world in themselves,
remote from other races of men ; yet they developed a
civilisation which is in many respects worthy to be
compared with that of India or of the West. The
people who made gunpowder and paper and who
printed books, long before any of these things were
done in Europe, might naturally think themselves the
foremost nation of the earth. Their civilisation, how-
ever, has exercised no influence on the world outside of
China, nor has it advanced to the higher achievements
of the human mind. As their great wall secludes them
from other nations, so do their mental habits prevent
them from a free interchange of ideas with foreigners.
The Mongolian race, indeed, from which, like the
Hungarians and the Finns, they are descended, is so
different from other races in many respects that some
anthropologists suppose it to have a separate origin.
Phlegmatic and matter-of-fact by nature, exact and
careful in practical matters, and to a high degree
imitative and industrious, the Chinese are singularly
devoid of imagination and indisposed to philosophy.
Their monosyllabic and uninflected language, belonging
to one of the earliest strata of human speech, and ill
fitted to express abstract or poetical ideas, is an index
to their whole nature. If an awakening, as various
signs appear to indicate, is now at hand for them, no
io6
CHAP. VIII
China 107
one can tell how fast it will proceed, or what the final
issue of it may be.
China has at present three religions, all recognised
by the state and represented in every part of the
country — viz. Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism.
For our purpose the first of these is very much the most
important, as Taoism, originally a philosophy, quickly
degenerated into a system of magic, and Buddhism is
imported into China, and has to be spoken of elsewhere.
Confucianism, being the direct descendant of the old
state religion of China, is the native growth of the mind
of the nation. Like the Chinese language, the state
religion belongs to a very early formation, and presents
the symptoms of a development which was rapid at
first but was early arrested.
History of China. — Legend goes back to very remote
antiquity and tells in a shadowy way of the arrival of
the Chinese from the West (which scholars are agreed
in regarding as a fact), and of early potentates, patterns
to all their successors, who treated the people as their
children, and invented for them the arts on which life
in China most depends. History proper begins about
2000 B.C., though the Chinese had the art of writing
a thousand years before that. Researches, however,
which are now being made by several scholars, seem
likely to lead to the conclusion that China received at
least the seeds of civilisation and some religious ideas
from Mesopotamia. That Chinese religion resembles in
some respects that of Babylonia was mentioned in the
last chapter (p. 94). In a work like this and in the
present state of knowledge it is necessary to deal with
the religion of China as an isolated one. When the
history of the country opens, the character, manners,
and institutions of the people are already fixed. They
are already civilised and have an organised religion,
though how all this came about we cannot tell. The
early kings are men of piety, inventors of arts, and
authors of fundamental maxims of policy ; but as time
io8 History of Religion part n
went on the kings grew worse and lost the affections of
their people. In the twelfth century B.C. the Chow
dynasty came into power and gave China some of its
best rulers, but it also soon fell off; the country broke
up into a number of separate feudal principalities over
which the central government lost all control, and in
the sixth century Confucius is found wandering from
one independent state to another. This confusion led
in the third century B.C. to the displacement of the
Chow by the Tsin dynasty. Shi-Hoang-Ti, fourth
ruler of this line, one of the strongest rulers China ever
had, assumed the title of Universal Emperor. He beat
back the enemies of China beyond the frontier, began
the building of the great wall, and broke down the
power of the feudal rulers. It was found, however, that
the feudal system still lived in the affections of the
people, and as it was the religious books which mainly
kept the past in veneration, the emperor ordered their
destruction and enforced the edict with great rigour.
The House of Han, however, which replaced that of
Tsin in 206 B.C., recovered the ancient literature of the
country from the hiding-places where copies of the
books had been preserved, and established in accord-
ance with them the very conservative constitution
which has lasted to this day.
Sources. — The books thus condemned and thus re-
covered supply us with our knowledge of ancient China
and of its religion. They are political rather than
religious in their nature. China has no Bible, no book
guarded by the ministers of religion as the basis of the
system they conduct ; the religious teachers of China,
if there are any, are the literati, the books they preserve
and study are the Classics. These are connected with
the name of Confucius, who collected or edited them, and
himself wrote one of them. They are not thought to be
inspired, but are revered because of their immemorial
antiquity. No people was ever more completely under
the influence of a book, or set of books, than the
CHAP. VIII
China 109
Chinese. The learned class, who constitute the only
nobility of China, receive their whole education from
the books ascribed to Confucius ; which, like other
authoritative literatures, contain matter of various kinds.
The Chinese collection consists of the five Classics
(King) and the four books (Shu). The former were
edited by Confucius ; the latter are by the disciples
of that sage or by Mencius, a distinguished teacher
in his school about a century after him. The five
Classics are the most sacred of all. They are as
follows : —
I. — I. The Y ill-king, or Book of Changes. This is
a divining book ; it consists of a set of interpreta-
tions by princes of the twelfth century B.C., of a set
of lineal figures. The system is in itself of childlike
simplicity, but use and age have collected mysteries
about it. It was exempted from the proscription of
Shi-Hoang-Ti.
2. The Shu - king, or Book of History, contains
speeches and documents of the early princes from the
twenty-fourth to the eighth century B.C.
3. The Shi-king, or Book of Poetry, consists of a
collection of 300 songs, selected by Confucius from a
mass ten times as great. Some of these pieces are
extremely old.
4. The Le ke, or Record of Rites. This book is
said to have been composed by the duke of Chow
in the twelfth century B.C., and is the principal source
of information about the ancient state religion of China.
It contains precepts not only for religious ceremonies,
but also for social and domestic duties, and is the
Chinaman's manual of conduct to the present day.
5. Chun Tsew, Spring and Autumn, contains the
annals of the principality of Loo, of which Confucius
was a native, from 721-480 B.C. They are extremely
dry ; and if we could understand the statement of
Mencius that Confucius by writing them (for they are
his own work) produced a great effect on the minds
no History of Religion part n
of his contemporaries, many things about Chinese
religion and manners would be clearer to us than they
unfortunately are.
To these five Classics is sometimes added, as a sixth,
the Hsiao-king, or Book of Filial Piety, a conversation
on that subject between Confucius and a disciple.
It is impossible to tell how much Confucius did for
these old books. Some hold that he did not change
them much, nor put into them much of his own, and
that, in fact, he was himself indebted to these books
for all he is reported to have taught. On the other
hand, it is declared that he made the ancient books
teach his own doctrine, and left out all that did not
suit him ; and, in confirmation of this view, the fact
is pointed out that while these books as we have them
teach pure Confucianism, another religion of a different
spirit was growing up in China in Confucius's own day,
which must have had some support in the old system.
It may be that Confucius did not care to report to us
all the features of the old religion, but only those of
which he approved. But the information given us
about that old religion is admittedly correct so far as
it goes ; and there is little doubt that what Confucius
thought best in it, and what passed through him into
the subsequent religion of China, was its most char-
acteristic and most important part.
II. — The Classics of the second order comprise four
books : —
1. The Lun Yu, or Digested Conversations of the
Master ; or, as Dr. Legge calls it, T/ie Confucian
Analects. It is from this book that we derive our
information about the sage ; it was compiled probably
by the disciples of his disciples.
2. The Ta-Heo, or Great Learning, and
3. The Chung Yung, or Doctrine of the Mean, are
smaller works, giving a more literary form to the
doctrine of the sage.
4. The Mafig-tsze contains the teachings of Mencius.
CHAP. VIII China iii
The State Relig-ion of Ancient China.— Confucius
never imagined himself to be a reformer of the religion
of his country. The religion of China is in the main
the same to this day^ as it was before he appeared,
and what is called Confucianism is simply that old
system. That the worship of Confucius himself has
been added to it does not involve any change of its
structure. It is already well developed when we first
see it, and what is very peculiar, it has already parted
with all savage and irrational elements. There is no
mythology ; the universal legend of the marriage of
heaven and earth is dimly recognisable, but there is
no set of primitive stories about the gods. Of human
sacrifice there is only one ancient instance ; there are
no rites with anything savage or cruel about them.
Everything is proper, dignified, and well arranged.
The deities are beings worthy to be worshipped, and
they exact no meaningless services. There is nothing
in any part of the religion to disturb the propriety of
the worshipper or to suggest any doubts to his mind.
In no other religion of the world do we find every-
thing in such excellent order.
On the other hand, it is not a highly-developed
religion. Its beliefs are those of extremely early times,
and represent a stage of thought at which no other
national religion stood still. The organisation common
to developed systems is entirely wanting ; there is no
idol, no priestly class, no Bible, no theology ; the
most important doctrines are left so vague and un-
determined that scholars interpret them in opposite
ways. It is a religion in which, just as in the primi-
tive stage, outward acts are everything, the doctrine
nothing, and which is not regulated by an organised
code but by custom and precedent. All these marks
point to a formation in very early times, and to a
very early arrest of growth, before the ordinary develop-
^ The working religion of the present day is fully described by Prof, de
Groot in De la Saussaye, Lehrbuck, Third edition.
1 1 2 History of Religion part ii
ments of mythology and doctrine, priesthood, ritual,
and sacred literature had time to take place. They
also point to the operation of some powerful cause,
which, when the religion had developed its main features,
was able to suppress older beliefs and practices, and
lead the nation to devote itself altogether to the newer
faith. How this took place we can only conjecture,
but certainly it could never have been done unless
the new faith and the national character had fitted
each other perfectly. The classical religion may, as
Prof de Groot says, have come into existence along
with the classical constitution set up by the Han
dynasty 2000 years ago. But it must have been
ready to enter into this position.
The objects of worship in the Chinese religion
arrange themselves in three classes. The Chinaman
of old worshipped and his descendant of to - day
worships still —
1. Heaven.
2. Spirits of various kinds, other than human.
3. The spirits of dead ancestors.
1. Heaven (Thian) is the principal Chinese deity; in
strictness we must say the sole deity, for there is no
family of upper gods ; heaven receives all the worship
that is directed aloft. It is the clear vault, the friendly
ever-present and all-seeing blue that is meant, not the
windy nor the rainy sky, but that which is above all
agitations, and which all beings of the air or of the
earth look up to and serve. It is conceived as living.
It is not a separable spirit, not a power behind, that
is worshipped, but heaven itself, — the living heaven
of that early thought, which has not yet come to
distinguish between matter and spirit, — the living
heaven which is over all, knows all, orders and governs
all.
To this heaven other names are given, even in the
oldest writings — Ti, Ruler ; or Shang-ti, Supreme
Ruler. Did the Chinese conceive this ruler as identical
CHAP, viii China 113
with heaven, or as a personaHty dwelling in it or above
it? It has been held that the two beliefs are not the
same ; that the Chinese of the earliest times worshipped
the Supreme Ruler, i.e. the one God, Ti, and afterwards
fell away from that position of pure monotheism and
declined to the worship of the material object, heaven.
The early Catholic missionaries argued that the Chinese
Shang-ti was equivalent to the Christian "God," and
signified a being other than the sky, the Supreme
Power of the universe. The Chinese, however, gener-
ally denied that they made any such distinction/ and
even declared that they could not understand it. The
names Heaven and Supreme Ruler are used by them
indiscriminately : one notices that Confucius does not
use the personal form, but only speaks of heaven ;
" heaven," he says, when feeling distressed, " is destroy-
ing me." We have here, therefore, an early form of
nature-worship.
The Supreme Power directs all things, and is an
ever-present governor both in the natural and in the
moral sphere. These two spheres indeed are not
regarded as distinct. Nature reveals in all its changes
the mind of its ruler, and human conduct is regarded
as an outward thing, as a phenomenon on the same
plane with the movements of nature ; the two are
supposed to be part of one system and to act directly
on each other. As Heaven both governs the weather
and looks after men's actions, for " every day heaven
witnesses our actions and is present in the places where
we are," these two aspects of providence are closely
* Dr. Legge, while admitting that the Chinese originally worshipped
the vault of heaven itself, maintains that they got past the early mode
of thought which considers every natural object as animated, before the
dawn of history, and became pure theists, believers in a supreme spiritual
being. Confucius he considers to have held a lower religious position than
his countrymen had already attained to. He also regards the worship of
spirits and of ancestors as a later perversion and degradation of the original
religion of one god. In these positions he is followed by Professor Giles,
Oxford Proceedings, vol. i. p. 105, sqq.
H
114 History of Religion part ii
blended and are in fact the same. Heaven makes its
will known in a natural way. It is one of the most
peculiar features of Chinese religion that it knows no
revelation, no miracles, no divine interferences. It has
a belief in destiny, Ming ; every one has his Ming,
but it is only known when it is accomplished. " Does
Heaven plainly declare its Ming?" Confucius is asked;
and he replies, " No, heaven speaks not ; by the order
of events its will is known, not otherwise." Man learns
by the external occurrences how Heaven is disposed
towards him. When there is excessive ram or long
drought, this shows that the harmony between Heaven
and the earth is disturbed. It belongs to the emperor
to put this right. He alone is entitled to offer sacrifice
to Heaven ; he stands in the closest relation to Heaven,
who is the ancestor of his house ; and when Heaven
is seen to be displeased, the emperor must restore
the harmony by governing his subjects better or by
sacrifices. In an extreme case, when the emperor
is seen to have fallen under the displeasure of Heaven,
the conclusion is drawn that he must no longer be
emperor. The people then are entitled to depose him
and to set up a new ruler, through whom the necessary
transactions with Heaven can be carried on. The belief
has always been held in China, at least theoretically,
and is operative to this day, that it can be known when
Heaven has rejected a ruler, and that it belongs to
the people to carry out that sentence.
2. The Spirits. — The worship "of the spirits" is a
primary religious duty for the Chinaman. The spirits,
however, are an ill-defined set of beings ; they are
generally spoken of in the plural number, and sacrifice
was offered to them as a body, no particular spirits
being named. The spirits are connected with natural
objects, every part of nature has its spirit. The sun,
the moon, the five planets, clouds, rain, wind, the five
great mountains, but also every smaller mountain, the
rivers, each district, and a thousand other things, all
CHAP, viii China 1 1 5
have their spirits.^ The spirits are not flitting about
capriciously, but have been collected together and
organised in a hierarchy, and this has loosened their
connection with natural objects. They are spoken of
as a set of beings who may be addressed as a body.
A prince alone may sacrifice to the spirit of the earth,
and to those of the mountains and rivers of his territory.
But to the spirits in general all may and should pray ;
they assist those who pay them reverence and sacrifice
to them. It will be seen that the worship of heaven
and that of the spirits are kept separate. The former
is the imperial worship ; the emperor alone is competent
to attend to it. The latter is the ofificial worship of
minor states. Nor are the two sets of deities wrought
into a homogeneous system ; we hear that the spirits,
while subordinate to Shang-ti, are not his messengers.
The surmise is not to be avoided that these two
worships came originally from different circles of ideas,
and have not been perfectly blended. The worship
of heaven belongs to the higher nature-worship, that
of the spirits to the lower ; the latter is animistic, it
is a worship of detached spirits, while the former is
a worship of the natural object itself The spirits are
all good ; there are scarcely any bad spirits in Chinese
belief.
3. Ancestors. — The worship of ancestors is that which
is assigned to the private individual. He does not
approach Shang-ti any more than he would address
the emperor on earth ; his working religion is directed
to his ancestors. The Chinese believed in the continu-
ance of the soul after death, and addressed solemn
invitations to it to return to the body it had forsaken.
Their belief can scarcely be described as that in personal
^ The Japanese ofticial religion, "Shin-to" ( = wayof the gods, as dis-
tinguished from Butsudo, way of Buddha, i.e. Japanese Buddhism), an
easy worship of numberless spirits, without sacrifices and without any
moral doctrine, is allied to this branch of the religion of China ; as also
is the religion of Corea. Shin-to is not ancestral worship, and recognises
no life after death.
ii6 History of Religion part ii
immortality ; it is the continuance of the family rather
than of the person that is thought of. The individual
does not look forward to his own future life or allow
that to influence him ; there is little trace of any belief
in future rewards and punishments. China has no
heaven and no hell. It is the past, not the future,
that influences the present ; the departed members of
the family are believed to be still attached to it, and
to have become its tutelary spirits. In every house
there is a hall of ancestors, where worship and sacrifice
is offered to them, and many even of the details of this
worship remind us strongly of the way in which the
Romans served their family heroes. Tablets belonging
to the ancestors are placed in this hall ; and to these
they are supposed to come when properly invoked, so
as to be present with the family. At every important
family event they are summoned to attend. This
worship has to be rendered by husband and wife jointly,
so that marriage is necessary for its performance, and
an early marriage is a religious duty.
The family sacrifice, like all sacrifices in China, is
of the nature of a banquet, at which the living members
of the family, and the spirits who have been summoned,
eat and drink together. To heighten the illusion, the
grandson was sometimes dressed in the clothes of the
departed head of the house and made the principal
figure of the celebration —
The dead cannot in form be here,
But there are those their part who bear ;
We lead them to the highest seat
And beg that they will drink and eat :
So shall our sires our service own,
And deign our happiness to crown
With blessings still more bright.*
It is not only in the family that ancestors are adored.
The emperor sacrifices in a public capacity to all the
ancestors of his own line, and also to all his predecessors
* Shi-king, II. vi. 5.
CHAP. VIII
China 117
on the throne ; a magistrate to all who have occupied
his office before him. Ancient China possessed an
elaborate ritual, and occasions of sacrifice were frequent.
Every change of season every portent of nature, every
important step either in public or in private life, required
its consecration. It is in accordance with the genius of
the people that the sacrifices are not of the nature of
propitiation, but expressions of gratitude and devotion
merely. Asceticism has no place in this religion; every-
thing in it is bright and sensible. He who is to offer a
sacrifice prepares himself by prayer and retirement to
do so worthily ; but beyond this reasonable measure
there is no afflicting of the soul, and in the prayers
belonging to the occasion self-humiliation and con-
fession have no place, but only thanksgivings and
petitions. The petitions are for worldly benefits and
furtherance ; the sacrifices are means of procuring these
from the heavenly powers. They consist chiefly of
animal victims, but fruits are also used, and with the
importance of the occasion the variety and costliness
of the offerings increase. Elaborate music also accom-
panies great sacrifices, and is thought to be very accept-
able to the heavenly powers. Religion is not separated
from life in China. There is no special class to take
care of it ; every one has to attend himself to those
sacrifices which are incumbent on him; this is a natural,
matter-of-course part of a man's duty. As there is no
Bible, there is no religious instruction, and the doctrine
is quite vague and undefined. The ritual, however, is
fixed by tradition in every detail, and if a man attends
to it he does his duty ; religion is a set of acts properly
and exactly done, the proper person sacrificing always
to the proper object in the proper way.
Confucius was not a man who tried to change the
religion of his country ; indeed, he disliked to talk of
religious subjects, and he practised reverently the
religion which had long prevailed in China. His con-
versation was chiefly about what we should call worldly
ii8 History of Religion part ii
matters, and it is hard to see why the reh'gion of China,
the same after him as it had been before him, should
be called by his name. What led to the connection
was: (i) That he taught in a clear and simple way, as
had never been done before, the theory of government
and morals which lies at the root of Chinese religion,
and thus did something, though unconsciously, to
provide that religion with a doctrine. And (2) that
he collected and edited the books which are the only
literary documents the religion has, and which have
formed ever since the study of the ruling classes
in China. Receiving these books at his hands, they
have naturally looked to him as the prophet of their
faith.
His Life. — Kung-fu-tsze {i.e. Master Kong ; the name
was Latinised by the Jesuits) is better known to us than
most other religious founders. He lived to the age of
seventy-three, surrounded by admiring disciples, who
remembered what they saw in him and heard from
his lips ; and this tradition is preserved in the Lun
Yu, Digested Conversations,^ a work compiled, as we
observed, by disciples of the second generation. The
supernatural element which in other cases gathered so
quickly round a venerated figure, is here entirely absent;
in China such growths do not take place. There may
be some tendency to idealise the moral greatness of
the sage, but there are also passages in which this
tendency evidently has not been at work ; both in its
candour and in the homeliness of much that is reported,
the book invites confidence as a genuine record. We
see the sage as the diligence of students in the present
generation enables us to see Kant or Wordsworth ;
we hear his opinions on a great variety of subjects ;
we see how he behaved on occasions of state and at
his meals in private, towards princes and towards
common men ; we laugh at his jokes and sigh with
him at his privations.
^ Dr. Legge, Confucian Analects.
CHAP. VIII
China 119
He was born in 551 B.C. in a good rank of society, but
was brought up in poverty, and owed all his success to
his own merits. The bent of his mind showed itself
early ; as a child he amused himself with playing at
ceremonies ; at thirteen, he tells us, he bent his mind
to learning, the subject of his studies being history and
poetry, the ceremonies and the music of the empire.
He early arrived at the views he always afterwards
held as to the proper way to govern a people, and he
believed with all the faith of an enthusiast that a vast
improvement of society would follow the adoption of
his method. It was to public employment that he
aspired from an early period of life ; but he did not
readily find it in the unquiet times in which his lot was
cast. He did enjoy office for certain brief periods, and
marvellous things are told of the reformation of manners
which at once attended his efforts as a governor. All
got their due ; there was no thieving, and there was
no occasion to put the penal laws in execution, for no
offenders showed themselves. What was the method
which was held to have had such results ? In the
counsels which he gave to various rulers who applied
to him this is set forth. He believed the power of
example to be capable of effecting all that a ruler
should desire. Punishments might be dispensed with,
and excessive pains need not be bestowed on the
machinery of government, but a prince who has
"rectified" himself will soon have his people "rectified"
too. The first task of a ruler is to " rectify names " ;
i.e. there is good government when the prince is really
a prince and the minister a minister, when the father
is a real father and the son a real son. The perfect
order consists of the due observance by each rank of
the duties belonging to it; there is to be a well-
regulated hierarchy in which each understands his
function and acts it out. The people are naturally
good and docile, he held, and if they are well governed
they will not do wrong even though rewards be offered
I20 History of Religion part ii
for it. Thus by docile respect to tradition and authority,
which all men are willing to pay if properly guided
towards it, the pillars of the state are established.
His Doctrine. — This is the truth which Confucius
preached most earnestly. He spoke of heaven but
seldom, and of the spirits he professed no certain
knowledge ; he declared towards the end of his life
that he had not prayed for many years. He was a
diligent frequenter of all religious ceremonies and a
strong upholder of the old order, but his interest in
these things was not speculative or mystical, but
entirely practical. He regarded himself as a teacher
of virtue, not of religious doctrine ; his watchword was
"propriety," the dutiful observance of all right and
customary rules of conduct. Yet there is not wanting
an ideal element in his doctrine. He enounces the
theory, of which the whole of Chinese religion is the
outward expression, that the universe in all its parts,
in nature and in man, is an order ; that that order is
declared to man alike in the ordinances of outward
nature, in the constitution of society with its various
ranks and classes, and in the ritual of religion ; and
that it is the whole duty of man to know that order
and to conform himself to it. The theory is one in
which the state is all, the individual nothing, and in
which the present is entirely crushed under the dead
hand of the past, and all originality and progress con-
demned even before they appear. If religion has been
delivered from all that is unseemly and irrational, it
has also, at least to Western eyes, lost much of its
interest ; the enthusiasms and excitements of its early
stages have departed, and no new enthusiasm has come
in their place ; no great god-wrought deliverance thrills
the memory of posterity, no local cults excite excep-
tional devotion, no divine historical figure attracts to
itself personal affection. Religion has cast off fear but
has not yet risen to the inspiration of love. The
domestic worship came nearest to this, for the other
CHAP. VIII
China 1 2 1
worships are cold and distant indeed ; but that worship
was a powerful influence for the prevention of progress.
The Christian text which hallows individual daring and
innovation, by bidding a man put his convictions above
his father and mother, would be a shocking impiety to
Chinese ears.
A temple was built to Confucius after his death and
his worship was added to the state religion. The
attempt made by the emperor Shi-Hoang-Ti in the
third century after his death to suppress his memory
and the books connected with his name, was, though
conducted with great vigour, unsuccessful. The teach-
ing of Mencius (371-288 B.C.), the most distinguished
of his disciples, added no new element to that of
Confucius. Two movements, however, have to be
noticed, which in different ways aimed at giving some-
thing richer and deeper than Confucianism, and to
which China owes the two additional religions of
Taoism and Buddhism.
Taoism looks to Lao-tsze as its founder ; but it has
no personal founder and is composed of older elements.
Lao was a philosopher who lived at the same time with
Confucius, though half a century older ; Confucius met
him, as we hear in the Analects, and spoke of him with
great respect. His work, the Tao-te-kutg, has been pre-
served, and though few profess to understand it, a general
idea of his thought may be gathered from it. Lao, like
Confucius, founds on the existing system ; he quotes
largely from older works, and there are sayings common
to both the sages. Metaphysical thought, however, which
with Confucius was implied rather than reasoned out,
here stands in the forefront. Lao's system is a philo-
sophy applied practically. Tao, the ruling idea of the
system, from which both it and the religion which
followed it are named, is variously rendered Reason,
Nature, the Way ; the last is !the nearest, though by no
means a full rendering of it. By the manifold opera-
tions attributed to it, it reminds us of the Indian
122 History of Religion part ii
Brahma, and the riddle of Lao's obscurity has been
proposed to be solved by the supposition that he was
dealing with a doctrine imported from India which
Chinese forms of speech could but imperfectly express.^
Tao is not personal, but something that precedes all
persons, all particular beings. It was there before
heaven was ; all things are from it and return to it at
last. It is the principle at the root and the beginning
of all things, by which they move, without haste or
struggle, ambition or confusion. Existing first absolute
and undeveloped, it has now been expressed ; men can
know it, and the secret of all goodness, all success both
for the individual and for the state, is to know Tao and
live in ft. This makes a man superior to all rules
and conventions ; at home with himself he is superior
to the world ; he does not dissipate his energies in
learning a great number of outward things, but acts
spontaneously from an inner impulse. In this way the
philosopher looked for a return of society to simpler
manners ; he even imagined that men might consent
to put away the material arts of which they thought
so much, and content themselves with living according
to wisdom and being governed by the wisest.
The moral precepts of Lao are often of singular
beauty and show a much deeper insight than the
cold teaching of Confucius. Lao taught the golden
rule: "Recompense injury," he said, "with kindness."
Confucius, on being asked about this, did not agree
with Lao, but declared that kindness ought to be
recompensed with kindness, but injury with justice,
as if private morality ought not to rise higher than
public policy. " Resent it not when you are reviled,"
Lao teaches; and "He who overcomes others is strong;
he who overcomes himself is mighty." "He who knows
when he has enough is rich." " The weakest things
in the world subjugate the strongest." The Book of
* " Lao-Tzeu et le Brahmanisme," by E. Guimet in the Verhandhtngen
of the Basal Conference, 1904.
CHAP. VIII China 123
Recompenses^ which is the practical manual of Taoists
and is universally read in China, sets up a high ideal
of goodness, and claims to be studied with devotion and
earnestness. The task of self-discipline is represented
as one requiring faith and courage, the continuous
efforts of a lifetime, and unceasing watchfulness. If
we judge Taoism either by its philosophy or by its
morals, we must assign it a high rank among the
efforts which have been made to guide men in the
way of wisdom. As a religion, however, it is a dismal
failure, and shows how little philosophy and morals
can do without a historical religious framework to
support them. Taoism was not at first a religion,
and was not fitted to become one, as it neither offered
any sacred objects of its own for pious sentiment to
cling to, nor, like Confucianism, leant upon the state
system. The religion which looks to Lao as its chief
figure is not based on his teaching ; at most it is con-
nected with some of his less important doctrines. It
did not take a place in the world till five centuries
after the philosopher's death, and its rise was due
partly to the emperor named above (p. 121), who was
opposed to Confucius, and partly to teachers who
brought forward isolated doctrines of Lao's system
which admitted of a popular application. When the
religion appears it is a system not of philosophy but
of magic. Lao had spoken of immortality as the
portion of those who lived according to Tao ; under
the Chin dynasty (220 B.C.) Taoism is engaged in a
search for the fairy islands, where the herb of im-
mortality is to be found ; in the first century of our
era the head of Taoism is devising a pill which shall
renew his youth. When Buddhism enters China, in the
same century Taoism borrows from it the apparatus of
religion, temples, monasteries, and liturgies, and sets
out on its career as a church.
It was not without reason that Buddhism was sent
for, if we are truly informed, by the rulers of China,
124 History of Religion part ii
or that it spread over the country, in the first century
of our era. Neither Confucianism nor Taoism is a
religion, in the full sense of the term, as supplying
by intercourse with higher beings an inspiration for
life. The former is regulative and no more ; the latter
is a mere set of devices for obtaining benefits from
mysterious powers. Buddhism, on the contrary, appeals,
as we shall see when we consider it in connection with
India, to unselfish motives, and insists on the solemn
responsibilities of individual life in such a way as to
raise the value of the human person. As it appeared
in China it is richer than we shall find it in India ;
it has a god, unknown to southern Buddhism, and it
has a goddess Kouan Yin, " the being who hears the
cries of men," sometimes represented with a child on
her knee, just like a Western Madonna. While still
essentially monastic, it offers salvation and a way of
life to all. To faith in Buddha the merciful one is
also ^ added a belief in the paradise in which he
receives believers. Thus a popular worship is pro-
vided, which neither of the older beliefs supplied.
It remains true that China has no religion worthy of
the name. The phenomenon may there be witnessed,
which is seen with certain differences also in Japan, that
several religions exist side by side, all of which are
supported by the state and live together without rivalry,
and to all of which a man may belong at the same
time. This could not be the case if any of the three
appealed strongly to patriotic sentiment, or gave full
expression to the ideals of the nation.
Books Recommended.
In the Sacred Books of the East, vols, iii., xvi., xxvii., and xxviii. contain
translations of Chinese Classics, by Dr. Legge. The same writer has
published three convenient volumes of his own, containing : i. The
Life and Teachings of Confucius. 2. The Life and Works of Mencius,
3. The Shi-King.
Dr. Legge has also written a popular work. The Religions of China, 1880.
Also The Notions of the Chinese concerning God and Spirits ^ 1852.
CHAP, vni China 125
The best account of the old State Religion is that of J. H. Plath, Die
Religion nnd der Cultus der alien Ckinesen, 18C2.
Reville, La Religion chinoise (1889). The third volume of his History.
R. K. Douglas, Confucianism and Taoism, 1876. S.P.C.K.
De Groot, in De la Saussaye.
,, ,, The Religious System of China, \o\?,. \.-\v,, 1892-1901. Also a
small book, The Religion of the Chinese, 1910.
Beal, Buddhisfn in China, 1884.
Murray's Guide to Japan.
J. Edkins' Religion in China, 1878, the account of a modern missionary,
may be consulted.
On Taoism, Pfizmaier, Die Losung der Leichname und Schwerter, 1870 ;
and Die Tao-lehre von dem wahren Menschen und den Unsterblichen,
1870. Julius Grill, Lao-tsze's Buch vom hochsten Wesen und voiu
hochsten gut. Tao-te-King, 1910. Vols, xxxix.-xl. of the S.B.E.
give Taoist Texts.
Revon, Le Shintoisiiie, 1907.
CHAPTER IX
THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT EGYPT
Egypt is a land of still more ancient civilisation than
China, and its civilisation is of more interest to us, since
from it the nations of the West obtained in part the seeds
of their arts and sciences. Even to antiquity everything
Egyptian appeared venerable and mysterious, and the
air of mystery is not yet removed from the country of
the Nile. We have discovered the sources of the river
and have learned to read the writing on Egyptian
monuments ; but the sphinx has other riddles than
these — riddles not yet solved. Who are the Egyptians,
and where did they come from ? In ancient times
they were thought to have descended from the interior
of Africa ; now the opinion gains ground that they were
at a very early period connected with the ancestors of
the Semitic races ; their language is thought to show
signs of this remote relationship. How, by whom, and
when were they formed into a nation ? No one can
tell ; they come before us four thousand years before
Christ, a fully - formed nation, with an elaborately
organised public service, and with a civilisation both
broad and rich. And lastly. What is the religion of
Egypt? What are the earliest gods of the land, and
in what relation do the various gods which were
worshipped in it stand to each other? That question
cannot at the present time be fully answered. Even
should it be proved, as it appears likely to be, that
126
CHAP. IX The Religion of Ancient Egypt 127
Egyptian civilisation was derived originally from
Mesopotamia, much will still be dark and enigmatical.
The foremost scholars in Egyptology confess that no
history of Egyptian religion can as yet be written.
Those who have tried to sketch it differ from each
other as widely as possible, some alleging monotheism
as its starting-point, and some the worship of animals.
The religion also comes into view at the early period
we have mentioned as a fully-formed and stately public
system, whose youthful struggles, if it had any, are long
past. What is most peculiar in that religion is, that it
embraces elements which appear at first sight to have
nothing whatever in common, nay, to be quite irre-
concilable with each other. We shall do well not
to attempt any construction of Egyptian religion as
a whole, but to content ourselves with examining one
after another the various elements, almost amounting
to different religions, which are found in it side by
side. We shall no doubt learn something of the rela-
tions in which they stood to each other, but it may
prove that we shall find ourselves unable to adopt any
of the theological theories by which Egyptian priests
or Greek philosophers sought to combine them in one
system.
History and Literature. — The principal thing to be
remembered, in order to understand the history of
ancient Egypt, is that the country was divided into a
number of provinces or nomes, which, there is every
reason to think, were originally independent of each
other. Of these nomes there were about twenty in
Upper Egypt — that is, in the long gorge of the Nile
from Elephantine in the south to Memphis in the
north ; and about the same number in Lower Egypt
— that is, in the flatter country from Memphis to the
sea. King Mena or Menes, founder of the first
dynasty, whose date, if he was a historical character at
all, and not a mythic founder like Minos of Crete,
Manu of India, or Mannus of Germany, cannot be
128 History of Religion part ii
later than 3200 B.C., is said to have united for the first
time the two crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt.
But though they became united under one ruler, the
nomes never forgot their independence, nor did they
cease to maintain their separate existence as states
within the empire, each having its own army, its own
ruler, its own system of taxation, its own worship.
The supreme power resided now in one nome and
now in another. The first two dynasties belonged to
that of Abydos ; the succeeding dynasties, to which
the earliest monuments belong, so that Egypt here
begins its real history, had their seat at Memphis.
The twelfth dynasty, which is known to us, but is
both preceded and followed by a gap of half a
millennium in Egyptian history, made Thebes the
capital. Thebes was also the seat of the eighteenth
and nineteenth dynasties, which came after the foreign
domination of the shepherd kings, and under which
Egypt was at the summit of its power. Ramses II.
and his successors, the Pharaohs of the book of Genesis,
belong to the nineteenth dynasty.
How splendid the Imperial Court of Egypt was at
various periods, the monuments tell us ; these palaces,
temples, and tombs are in proportion to a power which
considered itself to have the world at its feet, and to be
the manifestation of the greatest gods. Literature is at
the same high level of development with the other arts,
and writing is used for every branch of the public
service. This, the most ancient of the literatures of
the world, is spread over the immense surfaces of
ancient temples and tombs, and stored up in masses
of papyrus rolls, much of which is still to be explored.
Our knowledge of ancient Egypt and its religion is
still in its infancy. The story of the decipherment
of the various characters and of the recovery of the
early language of Egypt is one of the most wonderful
triumphs of scholarship. Only one remark, however,
do we now make in connection with Egyptian writing,
CHAP. IX
Egypt 129
namely, that it illustrates in a singular manner the
conservatism of the Egyptian people, a feature of their
character which is strikingly manifested in their religion
also. The ancient Egyptian did not cast away an old
usage when a new one, even a very superior one, had
been introduced. Long after metals had come into use,
he still employed for various purposes, especially those
connected with religion, implements of stone. The
flint knives found in mummy-cases are connected with
the work of embalming, and show the retention of an
archaic usage. The same is true of the matter of
writing. The earliest Egyptian writing was that which
is called hieroglyphic, or picture-writing. In this system
what is written down does not represent the sounds of
words the writer uses, but the ideas in his mind ; it is
writing without words ; a clumsy system we should say,
and presenting the greatest possible difficulties to the
reader. At a very early time, however, what is called
hieratic writing was invented, in which the symbols
used represent not things but sounds, though the
symbols used are adapted from those of the earlier
picture-writing. It is in this hieratic character that
the great mass of Egyptian literature is preserved to
us ; but here again we find that the new system did
not banish the old one from use. Especially in religious
inscriptions and documents, the matter is given both in
the newer writing and in the older ; the piece is written
twice, first in hieroglyphic, the old and sacred form, and
then in hieratic, the new form, which could be easily
read. In the matter of different objects of worship, too,
it may perhaps be found that the same aversion to
discard anything old and sacred manifests itself, the
same disposition rather to carry on the old and the
new together.
130 History of Religion part h
I. Animal Worship
We begin with that element in Egyptian religion
which is to our eyes least rational. In the ages before
and after the Christian era, when a number of Greek
and Latin writers tell us about Egypt, we find that
the religion of the country is described as consisting
mainly in the worship of animals. This excited the
wonder of these writers in no small degree. Herodotus
asserts that the Egyptians counted all animals sacred,
and gives a list of those which were specially worshipped.
The hippopotamus, he says, is sacred at Papremis, the
crocodile at Thebes ; and some animals are sacred all
over the country. He has much to tell of the manner
in which the sacred animals are fed and tended, and
of the honours paid to them at their death. Lucian
says : " In Egypt the temple is a building of great
size and splendour, adorned with precious stones and
decorated with gold and with inscriptions ; but if you
go in and look for the god, you find an ape or an ibis
or a goat or a cat." The same statement is made by
Clement of Alexandria ; and Celsus, the early Roman
assailant of Christianity, speaks to the same effect.
Thus the popular religion of Egypt, before and after
the Christian era, had animals for its principal objects.
A representative of the sacred species sat or crawled
or hopped in the temple, and in that nome that animal
was not eaten. In the nome in which the cat was
sacred all cats were inviolable ; any insult offered to
a cat roused the whole population to frenzy, and one
who killed a cat, even though he was a stranger in the
place and unacquainted with its manners, forfeited his
own life. In the next nome the cat was not sacred but
some other animal ; and these local differences of religion
might occasion war between one nome and another.
Juvenal gives in his fifteenth satire an account of a
religious war of old standing between two neighbouring
CHAP. IX Egypt 131
nomes, each of which hated and insulted the animal
which was worshipped in the other. This may explain
why it was impossible for the Israelites to offer sacrifice
to Jehovah in Egypt. They had to go out into the
wilderness, off Egyptian soil, before they could sacrifice
animals Egypt held sacred.
The worship of a sacred animal in its own nome, a
member of the species dwelling in the temple and the
others enjoying respect and protection throughout that
nome, this is the normal state of affairs. Sometimes
an individual animal acquires sacredness for Egypt
generally, as the bull Apis of Memphis, the bull Mnevis
of Heliopolis, or the goat of Mendes. These, though
originally local deities, might obtain a wider reverence
if the nome they belonged to rose to greater power.
Animals of every size and kind were worshipped in
Egypt. Besides the large animals we have mentioned,
the ape, the dog, the little shrew-mouse, each had its
local sacredness ; also snakes, frogs, and various kinds
of fishes. The beetle {scarab) can by no means be left
without mention ; and a number of trees and shrubs
were also sacred,^ but, very curiously, not the palm.
It will be observed that our account of Egyptian
animal worship is drawn from very late sources and
applies to a late period of the religion. The religion
of the earlier ages of Egypt is of quite a different kind ;
the kings and priests who wrote the inscriptions of the
monuments tell us nothing about animal worship. Is
that because such worship did not flourish in their day ?
Not necessarily. Perhaps they knew it well, but were
not interested in it, or did not wish to encourage it.
The Egyptians certainly did not believe the worship of
animals to have been a late innovation. Manetho, an
Egyptian priest who wrote in the third century B.C.,
says that the worship of animals was introduced under
the second king of the second d)masty. That is as if
^ A very complete list of the sacred animals and trees will be found in
Wilkinson's Ancient EgypiianSf vol. iii. p. 258, sqq.
132 History of Religion part n
we should say that an old custom of which we did not
know the origin was introduced into Britain in the days
of King Arthur. The priests of Manetho's day wished
animal worship to be considered a corruption of the
original religion of their country, but they could not
specify the time at which it had come in, and placed
its origin in the mythical period of history. The story
of Manetho therefore goes to prove that the origin of
animal worship is anterior to written records.
But we have other evidence to the same effect. The
earliest representations of the deities of Egypt on the
monuments testify in a way which can scarcely be
mistaken that these great beings had originally some
connection with members of the animal kingdom. The
great gods of Egypt are designated on the monuments
in three ways. Their ultimate form is human, the god
is a man or woman, and as the human figures of all
the deities are drawn after one conventional male and
one conventional female pattern, a symbol is added
to the head to show which god or goddess is meant.
Hathor is a woman with a cow's horns on her head, Seb
has a duck on his head, and so on. But an earlier
form of the written symbols of the deities is that which
represents them partly in human and partly in animal
form. Horus appears as a man with the head of a
hawk, Hathor as a woman with the head and horns of
a cow, Bast is a woman with the head of a cat, Osiris
has the head of a bull or of an ibis, Chnum of a ram,
Amon has the head now of a ram now of a hawk.
Deities also occur with human bodies and the heads of
mythical animals such as the phcenix. But along with
these semi-human, semi-animal figures there are found
still simpler symbols for the deities ; they are drawn as
animals. It is only about the twelfth dynasty that the
change to the higher form takes place, but even after
the step was made of representing the gods as half-
human, the older pictures of them were not discarded,
but placed side by side with the new ones. Thus we
CHAP. IX Egypi 133
find on the same stone two representations of Horus,
one of which gives him as a man with a hawk's head,
while the other makes him simply a hawk ; and similar
double representations of the other gods occur. If the
gods of Egypt were thus conceived and represented in
the earliest times, then the animal worship described
by the Greek and Roman writers was not the invention
of a late age of decadence, but had its roots at least
far back in the past. The early gods of Egypt were
animals, whatever else, whatever more they were. It
may be that the animal worship of the later and weaker
Egyptian periods was a revival, such as takes place in
weak periods, of a style of worship which in earlier
centuries had to a large extent disappeared in favour of
a more spiritual faith.^ Of this only an Egyptologist
can judge, but at any rate animal worship was not a
new thing in Egypt, but a very old thing.
Theories Accounting" for Animal Worship. — What
did this worship mean ? and how are we to account for
it ? The Egyptians themselves, and the ancient writers
who turned their attention to Egypt, accounted for it by
a variety of theories ; and various theories are still held
on the subject. We can only enumerate the principal
ones, (i) The beasts were worshipped for their qualities,
as is said to have been the case in Peru before the Incas
(p. 86) ; each was reverenced for that divine excellence
or virtue which appeared to be manifestly resident in
it. Thus the dog was worshipped for his watchfulness
and faithfulness ; the hawk for its darting flight through
the upper air, like the flashing of the sunlight or of the
sun-god himself; the cow as a great kind mother; the
beetle for that wonderful procedure in the reproduction
of his kind, in which he so strikingly brings life out of
decay. (2) The beasts are not worshipped themselves ;
they are only the emblems of the deities with whom they
are connected, and it is the deity who is worshipped, not
^ This is held by Le Page Renouf, in his Hibbert Lectures, On the Origin
and Growth of Religion, as Illustrated by the Religion of Ancient Egypt.
134 History of Religion part n
the animal. This may be quite true of later practice, but
is by no means a satisfactory explanation of its origin ;
for how was it arranged, and who was it that ordained
at first, that the jackal should be the emblem of Anubis,
the cat of Bast, the crocodile of Sebak, and so on?
(3) Various mythological and quasi-historical accounts
of the origin of the practice are given, such as that men
long ago chose different animals for their standards in
war, or that some early king, wishing to keep his sub-
jects disunited, ordered that each nome should serve a
different animal. It is also told as a story of early
times that the gods when they walked on earth assumed
the forms of various animals ; thus the gods are still in
the animals. The gods hid in the beasts in order to
be near men and see how they did. But men found
them out and worshipped them in the disguise they
had assumed. (4) The gods cannot be present in the
world and cannot be satisfactorily worshipped unless
they have bodies to dwell in — that is involved in
Egyptian psychology ; and as the gods would be too
much alike if they all occupied human bodies, they
chose the bodies of different animals.
These theories of animal worship are evidently later
inventions, to account for a state of matters the real
origin of which was not known. Philosophical priests
could not accommodate themselves to the animal worship
of the temples without a doctrine to justify it to their
minds. But those who resorted to such theories about
animal worship could have nothing to do with calling
the system into existence. We may be sure that a
refined and cultivated people did not take up animal
worship and cling to it, in spite of its repulsive features,
with such tenacity as the Egyptians did, because of a
speculative idea of the likeness of certain beasts to
certain gods, or to express pantheistic views of the
emanations of deity in animal forms. The system, in
fact, cannot have sprung up after the Egyptians became
civilised, and could not continue to exist among a
CHAP. IX ^gyp^ 135
civilised people, if it was not hallowed by an im-
memorial antiquity. Only as a mystery, a thing of
which the origin was not known, could such a worship
continue among such a people.
A new explanation of Egyptian animal worship has
been put forward in recent times by the Anthropological
school of students of religion,^ and is rapidly gaining
ground. The religious circumstances of Egypt as
narrated by Juvenal and Diodorus have the strongest
resemblance to the totemistic state of society described
above (p. 57, sqq). Here, as in Peru before the Incas,
or among the North American Indians of to-day, we
have a number of communities each with its special
sacred animal, which it does not eat, but reverences
and defends. Other traces of totemistic arrangements
may be suspected here and there in Egyptian observ-
ances, but even did the analogy extend no further
than to the facts just mentioned, there would be a
case for considering whether the nomes were not first
peopled by a set of totemistic clans, who, even after
they were united in one people, preserved their early
separate traditions. The sacred animals of the nomes
would then be "the totems of the clans which first
settled in these localities." Later developments of
religion never displaced these venerable emblems, if
this be so, of tribal life.^
II. The Great Gods
A very different set of gods are those made known
to us by the monuments and books. It is the principal
problem of this religion to explain how, along with
the sacred animal, the cat or ibis or crocodile, there
was worshipped in the Egyptian temple the celestial
^ See A. Lang, I\}yth, Ritual, and Religion, Second Edition. Frazer's
Totemism. Most of the modern Egyptologists incline to the theory that
animal worship, though not the only, was one of the chief sources of
Egyptian religion. Pietschmann first took up this ground.
^ Compare the worship of animals in Babylonia, pp. 96, 97.
136 History of Religion part 11
being, the god of heaven or of the sun, whose nature
is Hght, who is righteous and good, and who more and
more fills the mind of the worshipper with noble adora-
tion, and leads him towards the high truths of theism.
These high gods of Egypt were represented, as we
have seen, from the earliest times of which we have
any knowledge, under animal forms. As far back as
we can see, Hathor is a cow, and Horus a hawk, and
Anubis a jackal. Did beast worship spring by a
process of degradation from the worship of the high
gods ? We have seen how difficult it is to maintain
such a view. Did the higher worship then spring by
a process of development out of the lower ? That also
would be hard to prove, for the high gods of Egypt are
not beasts, however magnified and spiritualised, but
beings of a different order; they are the sky, the sun,
the moon, the dawn. And as in our opening chapters
we saw reason to believe that the worship of the great
powers of nature is an original thing with early man,
and explains itself without being derived from lower
forms of religion, so we must judge with regard to
Egypt too. Even if some of the great gods came
from Mesopotamia, that helps us but little to under-
stand their history after they arrived in Egypt. In
this field also we are driven to recognise two religions,
different in nature and of independent origin, existing
side by side, and seeking to come to terms with each
other ; and the combination of the two is a process in
Egyptian religion which took place before the period
of which we have knowledge. It is prehistoric.
It was formerly considered that the nature-gods of
Egypt had very little mythology connected with them ;
only one considerable story of their doings was known ;
most of them had no history beyond the few phrases
applied by primitive thought to the great natural
phenomena to qualify them to be regarded as living
and active beings. But as more inscriptions are read,
more divine myths are coming to light, and further
CHAP. IX Egypt 137
discoveries of the same kind may be still in store for
us. These different myths, however, are formed after
the same pattern. The great gods of Egypt are simple
beings and easy to understand, and they were never
formed into an organised system like the gods of Greece,
but remain in separate dynasties or families, and are
very like each other. Many of them are sun-gods, or
gods of the morning and evening, and their stories
cannot differ very widely from each other, but they
belong to different districts of the country ; that is
what constitutes their difference from each other, and
keeps them separate.
The Great Gods also are Local. — The nature-god as
well as the animal-god was worshipped in his own
nome, where he dwelt in the midst of his own
community of worshippers ; he was not recognised in
other nomes unless there were special reasons for it.
But at the earliest period of our knowledge of Egypt
this simple early arrangement has already undergone
many modifications. Each nome has its own special
deity. Set is the god of Oxyrhynchus, Neith of Sais,
but more gods than one are worshipped in each nome.
Generally there are three ; in many places there is an
ennead, a nine of gods, but the nine is a round number ;
there might be one or two less or more. The god of
a nome which had risen to a commanding position
extended his influence beyond his own nome, and came
to share the temples of other gods, so that he was at
home in a number of places. Ra is said to have
fourteen persons — that is, fourteen views of his person
have been developed in so many different districts.
But if one god could thus be divided into several, the
converse also took place ; two or more gods were com-
bined, by the simple addition of their names together,
to form a new god. We have Ra-harmachis, Amon-ra,
Ptah-Sokar-Osiris, and some even more elaborately
compounded deities.
Thus thei e was a constant tendency to the production
138 History of Religion part n
of new deities ; even the attempts to combine existing
deities only add to the number. No attempt in the
direction of a system of gods had any success ; local
deities could not be suppressed ; the nomes retained
their separate deities and religious establishments to
the end. There never was a religious organisation of
Egypt generally ; a priest could in some cases pass
from the religion of one nome to that of another, but
there was never a high priest of Egypt as a whole,
however much a king might wish to organise all the
worships of the country in one system. This local
character of the Egyptian high gods was a source of
weakness in these great beings, and never ceased to
check their upward movement.
The temple of a nome had, as a rule, three gods, and
these formed a family, the chief god having his consort
and the third being their son. Of these triads we may
mention some : —
Amen-Mut-Chonsu are the triad of Thebes.
Ptah-Sechet-Imhotep „ Memphis.
Osiris-Isis-Horus „ Abydos (Philae).
Sebak-Hathor-Chonsu „ Ombos.
Har-hat-Hathor-Har-sem-ta „ Edfu.
The son is the successor of his father, and it is his
destiny in turn to marry his mother and so to repro-
duce himself, that is his own successor ; and so though
constantly dying he is ever renewed. The mother, not
being a sun-god, does not die. If we remember that
the gods have to do with the sun these things need
not shock us, nor need we wonder at the statement
which is very frequently met with, that a god is self-
begotten, or that he produces his own members.
Mythologry. — A few words may be said about
Egyptian mythology in general before we speak of
some of the principal gods. The usual stories of the
beginning of things are not wanting, as when the
principal god is said to have been born from a primeval
CHAP, IX ^gypt 139
egg, or a whole family of gods to be the children of
Seb and Nut ; Seb, the earth, being in Egypt the male,
and Nut, heaven, the female, of these earliest parents
of all things. More than one god, moreover, is held
to have been an earthly king, and to be the founder
of the royal house which now pays him homage. " The
days of Ra," for example, are spoken of as a golden age
in which perfect justice and happiness prevailed. Many
stories too may be found which profess to furnish an
explanation of some feature of nature or some institu-
tion of society, to account for the names of places or of
animals, or for the presence of the five days which were
added to the twelve lunar months in Egypt to produce
a satisfactory solar year. Many old stories of the gods
have magical efficacy when told in certain situations ;
one is good against poison, but must be told in a
certain way to produce the effect. After these stories
of the gods' early reign of peace, come those relating to
less happy periods, when the old god grew weak and
began to have enemies, when gods and men became
disobedient to him, when a war broke out among the
gods, which is not yet brought to an end but breaks out
ever afresh ; or when the old god succumbed to his
enemies, and his successor had to set out to avenge him.
In some of these stories very primitive and savage traits
appear, which show that they originated in a rude state
of society. But they are about men, not about beasts,
as we might have expected of Egyptian mythology,
and the men are undoubtedly solar heroes ; it is the
fortunes of the daily (not the yearly) sun, his splendid
and beneficent reign, his decline, his conflict with the
powers of darkness, his decease and his resurrection,
or the vengeance exacted on his behalf by his successor,
that are spoken of, in connection now with one god and
now with another.
Dynasties of Gods. — In the history of Egyptian
religion one set of such gods succeeds another as the
prevailing dynasty, according as the seat of empire in
140 History of Religion part n
the country shifts to a new nome. These religious
changes could take place without great convulsions. It
was only the attempt to extinguish old established
worships that was fiercely resisted, not the addition of
a new god, even as superior to those already seated in
the temple. In the earliest times known to us Ra of
Heliopolis is the chief god of Egypt ; Osiris of Thinis
(Abydos) is also a great god, but the most characteristic
development of Osiris-worship belongs to a later period.
Ptah of Memphis comes to the front in the earliest
dynasties. Much later is the rise of Amon to the first
place, which he held when the Greeks and Romans had
to do with Egypt. A very short account only can be
given of the sets of gods of which these are the heads.
Ra. — Ra means " sun " ; his seat is Heliopolis or " On,"
where Joseph's master Potiphera, or " Priest of Ra," lived.
Heliopolis is the " house of the obelisk," the obelisk
being a representation of the sun. First a kindly old
king, he is later a warrior ; he has to contend with the
serpent Apep, the dragon of darkness who appears
pierced by the shafts of Ra. But as Ra sinks in the
conflict he is comforted by Hathor, the goddess of the
western sky, and avenged by Horus, the ever young
and ever victorious winged sun.^ But Ra is a god of
the under as well as the upper world. King Pi'anchi,
of the twenty-second dynasty, entered into the great
temple of Ra at Heliopolis and penetrated to the
inmost chamber of it, afterwards sealing it up again.
We are told what he saw there.^ He looked upon "his
father Ra," and saw the two boats intended for the
daily journey of the god. Ra travels in his boat
through the sky, but also at night through the under-
world, of which also he is lord. The progress of the
* There are in Egyptian religion several gods called Horus ; this, the
oldest one, is fused with Ra, the first sun-god, in the double name Ra-
Harmachis, a being to whom the highest attributes are given. The symbol
of this god is a recumbent lion with a man's head, the figure in which also
the kings of Egypt are represented.
^ See the inscription in Records of the Past, ii. 98.
CHAP. IX Egypt 141
god of light through the world of darkness is a theme
which was worked out later in much detail in connection
with Osiris ; but it forms part of the earliest known
religious conceptions of the Egyptians, and Ra's voyage
through the " Am Duat " or under-world, is described
in considerable detail. Many figures accompany him
in this voyage, and many are the obstacles to be over-
come during the successive hours of night before he
reaches again the gates of day. The souls of men who
have died are also led by him through those nether
spaces ; by a hidden knowledge, if they have been at
pains to possess themselves of it, they are able to keep
close to Ra on the perilous journey. He gives them
fields to cultivate in the plains beneath, and they are
made glad by his appearance at the appointed hour in
the nights that follow.
Osiris, the sun-god of Abydos, is also reported to
have been a human being who was exalted to divine
honours. (The god of the under-world and judge of
the dead, who bears the same name, is a different figure ;
of him we shall speak afterwards.) He is the most
interesting and the best known of the gods of Egypt ; his
myth is found at length in Plutarch, with the mystical
interpretations proposed for it in ancient times ; he is
also the god in whom the affinity of Egyptian with
Babylonian religion appears most clearly : cf p. 99.
Born, according to the myth we mentioned above, at
one birth with four other gods, of the venerable parents
Seb and Nut (p. 139), he from the first has Isis for his
wife and sister, and his brother Set is also born along
with him, with whom he lives in perpetual hostility.
Neither can quite overcome the other, and many are
the incidents of their warfare. As a rule the gods of
Egypt are serene and good beings ; here only dualism
shows itself, Osiris is the good power both morally
and in the sphere of outward nature, while Set is the
embodiment of all that the Egyptian regards as evil, —
darkness, the desert, the hot south wind, sickness, and
142 History of Religion part ii
red hair. It is not the case that Set was an imported
god and belonged to Semitic invaders, but these
invaders found him more suited to their notions of deity
than any other god of Egypt, and sought to make him
supreme, in which, however, they could not succeed.
The story of the dismemberment of Osiris and of the
search of Isis for his loved remains, which she buried
in fourteen different places where she found them, is
one which is found connected with other names in other
lands. Horus is the avenger of his father. Here we
have this deity in three stages — Horus the child in his
mother's arms, Horus the avenger, and Horus the
successor of his father, the complete sun-god.
This family of gods is more human and living to us
than that of Ra or than any other set of Egyptian
deities. It was also more taken up in other lands, when
the gods of older peoples began to find acceptance in
the West. We see with special clearness in this case
the operation of the principle according to which the
contrast of light and darkness when represented in the
gods passes into that of moral good and evil, so that
the god of light becomes the great upholder of righteous-
ness and dispenser of beneficence. The good god of
Egyptian religion, moreover, is accompanied by a goddess
who is somewhat more than the pale reflection of the
male god, as most Egyptian goddesses are. The inci-
dents of the legend also lend to the divine characters a
tragic depth in which the prosperous and happy gods
of Egypt do not generally share.
Ptah is the god of Memphis, and adjoining his temple
is the chapel of the bull Apis, who is called the " second
life of Ptah." If these two resided side by side, some
theory of their relationship was needed, and the bull
became the earthly representative of the unseen deity.
Each had a worship of prehistoric antiquity, and it is
vain to theorise on their original relation to each other.
As for Ptah, his name means " he who forms," and the
Greeks called him. by the name of their own Hephaistos,
CHAP. IX J^i'yP^ 143
the artificer. In later times he came to be identified
with the sun, and was called the "honourable," "golden,"
" beautiful," and " of comely face " ; but earlier he seems
rather to have to do with the hidden source of the
world's heat, the elemental warmth which is at the
beginning of all life. He also is, like Ra and Osiris,
a god of the under-world to which men go after death.
He is said to open the mouth of the dead — that is to
say, that he hears them and judges them. But in the
upper-world too he has to do with justice ; he is called
the " Lord of the Ell," a title connecting him with
measurements and boundaries, matters of the greatest
importance in Egypt. His son is Imhotep, he who
comes in peace ; the Greeks regarded this god as a
physician, and called him Asclepios. The goddess of
the triad is Sechet, who was also worshipped at Bubastis
under the name of Bast, and whose symbol is a cat.
Ptah, it will be seen, is a less distinct figure than either
Osiris or Ra, and he very readily passes into combina-
tions with other gods. Ptah-Sokari and Ptah-Sokar-
Osiris are found much more frequently than Ptah
alone.
These are the chief gods of the old kingdom — that is
to say, of the first six dynasties. When we come to the
great twelfth dynasty, after the gap in the monuments
which extends from 2500-2000 B.C., we find that these
gods have become faint and new gods have become
supreme, namely, the local gods of Thebes, and of the
adjoining nomes. Of these, Amon, god of Thebes, has
the most distinguished history, though Chem, the agri-
cultural god of Coptos, and Munt of Hermonthis were
originally as important. Amon, the hidden, i.e. the
hidden force of nature, like Ptah, is seldom found alone ;
he is generally combined with some other god, especially
with Ra. The gods of agriculture bow their heads by
degrees before the sun-gods who tend to draw to them-
selves all Egyptian worship ; rude country representations
connected with the idea of fertility being discredited
144 History of Religion part n
before the religion of the royal temples which was
directed mainly to the god of light.
Was the Earliest Religrion Monotheistic ? — We have
mentioned only some of the chief gods of Egypt, out
of a countless number. These are the gods favoured
by kings and city priesthoods, who, we cannot doubt,
desired the religious elevation of the people. The gods
they praised were of a nature to promote that end. It
will be granted that the worship of the light-gods of
Egyptian religion was fitted to lead the minds of the
Egyptians to theism. In illustration of this statement
extracts may be here given from hymns, which date as
we have them from the eighteenth dynasty 1590 B.C.,
but which are probably much older.
To HORUS
The gods recognise the universal lord. . . . He judges the world
according to his will ; heaven and earth are in subjection to him.
He giveth his commands to men, to the generations present, past,
and future ; to Egyptians and to strangers. The circuit of the
solar orb is under his direction ; the winds, the waters, the wood
of the plants, and all vegetables. A god of seeds, he giveth all
herbs and the abundance of the soil. He afifordeth plentifulness,
and giveth it to all the earth. All men are in ecstasy, all hearts
in sweetness, all bosoms in joy, every one in adoration. Every
one glorifieth his goodness, his tenderness encircles our hearts,
great is his love in all bosoms.
To Tehuti OR Ptah
To him is due the work of the hands, the walking of the feet,
the sight of the eyes, the hearing of the ears, the breathing of
the nostrils, the courage of the heart, the vigour of the hand,
activity in body and in mouth of all the gods and men, and of
all living animals ; intelligence and speech, whatever is in the
heart and whatever is on the tongue.
To Ptah-tanen
O let us give glory to the god who hath raised up the sky and
who causeth his disk to float over the bosom of Nut, who hath
made the gods and men and all their generations, who hath made
all lands and countries and the great sea, in his name of " Let-the-
earth-b€."
CHAP. IX ^gyp^ X45
To Amon-ra
Hail to thee, maker of all beings, lord of law, father of the gods ;
maker of men, creator of beasts ; lord of grains, making food for
the beast of the field. . . . The one without a second. . . . King
alone, single among the gods ; of many names, unknown is their
number.
There is a beautiful hymn addressed to the Nile,
who is also conceived as the chief deity and the ruler,
nourisher, and comforter of all creatures. From these
hymns and others like them, important conclusions
have been drawn as to the nature of the earliest
Egyptian religion ; namely, that those who wrote
such pieces must have been acquainted with the one
true god and addressed him under these various names,
so that the true origin of Egyptian religion would be
a primitive monotheism.
There are some texts indeed which seem to point
even more strongly than those cited to the conclusion
that Egyptian religion started from the belief in one
supreme deity. Mr, Le Page Renouf quotes along with
the passages above, one from a Turin papyrus, in
which words are put into the mouth of the Almighty
God, the self - existent, who made heaven and earth,
the waters, the breaths of life, fire, the gods, men,
animals, cattle, reptiles, birds, etc. This being speaks
as follows : —
I am the maker of the heaven and the earth. ... It is I who
have given to all the gods the soul which is within them. When
I open my eyes there is light, when I close them there is darkness.
I am Chepera in the morning, Ra at noon, Tum in the evening.
M. de la Roug^ maintains that Egyptian religion,
monotheistic at first, with a noble belief in the unity
of the Supreme God and in His attributes as the
Creator and Law -giver of man, fell away from that
position and grew more and more polytheistic. " It
is more than 5000 years since in the valley of the
Nile the hymn began to the unity of God and the
K
146 Histoiy oj Religion part n
immortality of the soul, and we find Egypt arrived
in the last ages at the most unbridled Polytheism."
The sublimer part of Egyptian religion is demon-
strably ancient, as Mr. Le Page Renouf says ; yet we
are not shut up to the conclusion that Egyptian religion
as a whole is nothing but a backsliding and a failure.
If we were obliged to regard that monotheism which
Egypt had at first but failed to maintain, as a gift
conferred from above, which human powers proved
unequal to conserve, then the opening of the history
of this religion would be indeed most melancholy. But
though monotheism appeared in Egypt so early, there
is no necessity to think that it was not attained by
human powers. For all we know, it was not an early
but a mature product of thought, and was reached
after a long development. It is not impossible for the
human mind, starting from the works of God, to rise
by its own efforts to the belief in His invisible power
and Godhead. The beginnings of this rise of thought
may be witnessed among savages, and the Egyptians
in their secluded valley had an opportunity such as
no other nation had, to work out, as their civilisa-
tion grew up from rude beginnings to its unequalled
splendour, a noble view of the Deity whose works they
adored. The god ruling from his heaven of light over
the great empire of a monarch who knew no equal
in the world, possessing for his earthly abode a temple
of unsurpassed magnificence, uniting perhaps under
his sway districts long at war and extending his
influence over remote continents as the armies of
Egypt prospered, such a being drew to himself from
his worshipping retinue of priests and nobles, the
highest praise and adoration, was exalted far above
all other powers in heaven and earth, and extolled
even as the Creator and Ruler of all.
Monotheism is thus approached in thought, but
only in a prophetic and anticipatory way ; the circum-
stances of the country forbade its realisation as a
CHAP. IX ^syP^ H7
general belief or as a working system. Even in the
highest flights of those early thinkers, when they seem
to be speaking of a god quite universal and supreme,
it is a local deity that lies at the basis of their specu-
lations, a being who has his temple in a certain place,
who is symbolised in a certain animal, who has a
local legend and a limited popular worship. These
are the facts that clog the wings of Egyptian mono-
theistic speculation and bring it to the earth again.
Pure monotheism accordingly, the belief in a god
beside whom no other god exists, it might be hard
to find in Egypt at all. The last extract given above
comes nearest to it ; but the last line of that extract
cannot be called monotheistic.
An attempted religious reformation at the end of
the eighteenth dynasty may be mentioned here, as it
appears <-o have aimed at concentrating all the worship
of Egypt on a single object. The object chosen,
however, was a material one, — the sun's disk, Aten,
— and though all Egyptian gods tended to become
sun-gods, some sun-gods, no doubt, were better than
others, and Aten was not the finest of them. King
Chut - en - Aten, or Glory of the Sun-disk, the royal
fanatic who made this attempt at unity, went great
lengths to accomplish his object, but the attempt was
a failure, and was abandoned after his death even by
the members of his own family. What Chut-en-Aten
tried to introduce perhaps came nearer true mono-
theism than anything that ever existed in Egypt.
He made war on other gods and wished to establish
one only god in the land, but this exclusiveness
the Egyptians could not understand. The Egyptian
believed in many gods, and while worshipping one
god with fervour, by no means denied the existence
or the power of others in other places. Even foreign
deities were in his eyes real and potent beings, each
in his own territory. It is henotheism, not mono-
theism, that we see in this most religious land ; the
148 History of Religion part ii
worship of one god at a time while other gods are
also believed to exist and act. The one god who is
before the mind of the worshipper is exalted above
the rest, and spoken of as if no other god required to
be considered ; but the worshipper does not dream as
yet of questioning the existence of other gods, or feel
himself debarred from worshipping them if he should
visit their country
Syncretism, — The hymns contain several other
speculative positions about the gods (p. 55 sqq?)^ and we
may briefly mention these. Syncretism, as we saw, is
very largely represented in Egyptian thought, and
enters, indeed, into its very bone and marrow. In
the ennead of a city the great gods may be arranged
together after the fashion of a court where one or two
rule over the rest ; but in numberless passages we
find the relations of gods adjusted in another way,
by making them one. Ra "comes as" Tum, the god
is known here under one name or aspect and there
under another. The names of two deities being added
together, a new deity is produced ; and in later times
these gods with double, treble, or multiple names are
among the most important. Raharmachis and Amon-
ra are national gods, and have left much evidence of
themselves.
It is a little step from syncretism to pantheism. Let
the gods once lose the individual character that keeps
them separate from each other, and it is possible for one
god, who grows strong and great enough, to swallow up
all the rest, till they appear only as his forms. In the
position which they occupied in Egypt the various gods
could not disappear, their local connections kept them
alive ; but they were so like one another that one of
them could be regarded as a form of another, and a
multitude of them as forms of one. The god who did
most in the way of swallowing up the rest was Ra, the
great sun -god of Thebes. The Litany of Ra^ repre-
^ Records oj the Past, viii. 10$.
CHAP. IX Egypt ]49
sents that god as eternal and self-begotten, and sings
in seventy-five successive verses seventy-five forms
which he assumes ; they are the forms of the gods and
of all the great elements and parts of the world. The
separate gods are reduced from the rank of independent
potentates to shapes of Ra, and thus a kind of unity is
set up in the populous Egyptian Pantheon. But Ra is
not strong enough to get the better of these shapes, and
to rule a sole monarch by his own right, in his own way.
He is the god, but he is not an independent god ; it is
pantheism, not theism, to which he owes his exaltation.
The one in Egypt cannot govern the many ; the pure
exaltation of Ra as a supreme and absolute god does
not prevent the worship of a different being in each
different town. The one sole god is for the priests
alone, not for the people ; and this belief in him does
not even lead to attempts to root out the worship of
animals, or to concentrate the service of the temples
on him alone. And in the absence of such attempts we
read the sentence condemning a religion which pro-
duced most noble fruits of thought, to grow worse and
not better as time went on, and to pass away without
bringing any permanent contribution to the development
of the religion of the world.
Worship. — The Egyptian temple was constructed
rather to afford the god a splendid residence among
his people than to accommodate a large congregation at
an act of worship. The temple was the public place of
the community, its point of meeting (for the Egyptian
town has no market-place), and its fortress when attacked
(for the town is not fortified). But while the courts of
the temple were open to the people, there was a holy
place which only the priests might enter, where the
sacred ark, the symbol of the god, remained, and where
sacrifices were offered. The images about the temple
were not placed there to be worshipped, but were votive
offerings meant to provide the god with a body which
he might enter when he chose. The obelisk is such a
150 History of Religion part ii
symbol or incorporation of the sun. On certain days
the sacred objects and animals were taken in proces-
sion through the temple grounds, or made voyages on
the lake belonging to the temple, or were even taken
through the nome among the fields and dwellings of
their people ; and on these occasions representations
took place symbolising the principal events in the history
of the god. It was thus that the private individual came
to know the god ; it was a great festival and an occasion
of the utmost joy when the divine protectors and bene-
factors of the nome, who generally remained in their
splendid retirement, came forth to mingle for a brief
space with the faithful community. The worship of the
gods was in Egypt, as in every nation of the ancient
world, a matter of state, not of individual concern. It
is the chief branch of the public service ; the state is
under the direct rule of the gods; never was there a
more absolute theocracy. The king is a child of the
god, — a conception often treated in the most material
way, — and being thus of more than human race,
becomes himself the object of worship, and even offers
sacrifice to himself. It is one of the king's chief cares
to provide a stately dwelling for the god ; the king
himself offers sacrifice on the most important occasions.
The god in his sacred ark goes with his people when
they are at war and fights along with them, so that every
war is a holy war. The priests are public officials, and
often exercise immense influence. The king institutes
them into their functions ; they are exempt, as we may
read in Genesis, from public burdens ; every function
involving learning or art is in their hands. Framed in
such institutions religion is not likely to have any free
growth ; the time is far distant here when men will
form voluntary associations of their own for spiritual
ends. Yet, no doubt, the lay Egyptian had a private
religion of his own as well as his share in the great public
acts he witnessed. Though the gods of Egypt are
nearly all good, the evil power Set was much worshipped,
CHAP. IX Egypt 151
and would be approached in private as well as in the
public acts depicted on the monuments, by all who had
anything to fear from him — that is to say, by all. Every
one had to treat with kindness and respect the animal
species sacred in his nome, and other sacred animals.
The belief in magic was strong ; hidden powers had to
be reckoned with on manifold occasions ; sickness was
imputed to the agency of evil spirits, and treated by
exorcism, by persons duly trained and learned in such
arts. Lucky and unlucky days, and days suitable or un-
suitable for particular undertakings, filled the calendar;
the belief in amulets and charms was universal. Such
things we expect to find among the people, even where
religious thought has risen highest.
The Doctrine of the other Life
Most of our knowledge about ancient Egypt is drawn
from the tombs. No other nation ever bestowed so
much care on the dead as the Egyptians did, nor
thought of the other world so much. The living had
to prepare for his further existence after death, and the
dead claimed from his successors on earth elaborate
offices of piety. It is in this part of the religion that
there is most growth, and this part of it in its ultimate
form is best known.
I. Treatment of the Dead. — The doctrine of the
other world takes its rise with the Egyptians in the
belief common to all early races, which was described
above (p. 33, sqq^. The spirit still lives when the body
dies, and it comes back to the body, and is affected by
the treatment the body receives. To care for the dead
is the first duty of the living, and a man must marry in
order to have offspring who will pay him the necessary
attention after his death. Various things are buried
with the corpse for the use of the spirit, and offerings
are made to it from time to time afterwards. This is
on more than the common primitive belief, but the
152 History of Religion part ii
Egyptians carried it out more fully in practice than any
other people. They sought to make the body incor-
ruptible, embalming it and restoring to it all its organs,
so that the spirit should be able to discharge every
function of life. They placed the mummy if possible in
such a situation that it should never be disturbed to the
end of time ; the grave they called an eternal dwelling.
They even instituted endowments to secure due offer-
ings to the dead in all coming time.
Cultivated as this part of religion was in Egypt, it
could not fail to assume a special character. For one
thing, there is a variety of names for what survives of
man after death ; we hear of his heart, his soul, his
shade, his luminosity; and in the later doctrine these
are all combined and made parts of one theory ; all the
different parts of the man have to come together again
after their dispersion at death before his person is
complete. The principal term, however, is the " ka,"
image, or, as we say, genius, of the man, a non-substantial
double of him which has journeys and adventures to
make, and to which the offerings are addressed. The
" ka " needs food, and regular gifts are made to it of all
it can require ; it needs guidance and instruction, and
these can be conveyed to it by pictures and writings
on the walls of the tomb or in the mummy-case ; even
its amusement and its need of society and of ministra-
tion can be to some extent met in this way. It is not
peculiar to Egypt that the advantages of wealth and
rank are continued after death, and that the rich can
do much more, or cause much more to be done for his
eternal welfare, than the poor. The king's mummy
lies in a pyramid, where it will never be moved ; that
of the noble in a rock - tomb or a stately edifice or
" mastaba " ; the poor man has to be content with an
inferior kind of embalming, and a tomb of tiles if he
gets any at all ; and no priest can be retained to pray
for him.
2. The Spirit in the Under-world. — Before history
CHAP. IX
Egypt 153
opens, this common belief and practice in regard to the
dead had come to be combined in Egypt with the
worship of a solar deity ; a step of immense importance,
which added immeasurably to the pathos and the moral
power of this kind of religion.
Milton says in Lycidas —
So sinks the daystar in the ocean bed ;
And yet anon repairs his drooping head,
And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky ;
So Lycidas sank low, but mounted high.
But what to Milton was a poetic imagination was to the
early Egyptian a serious belief If the sun was his god,
he did not say like Wordsworth in his early period —
Our fate how different from thine, blest star, in this,
That no to-morrow shall our beams restore,
but he was convinced that the history of his god, who
sank under the Western horizon, and after a period of
darkness came back again to light and triumph, was
an undoubted indication of what he himself had to look
for after death. The mummy was carried across the
Nile and deposited in the west land, which is also the
under-world, to share in the repose and in the further
progress of the dead. As the jackal pervades that
region, the dead is left to the care of Anubis, the jackal-
headed deity, who opens paths to him for further travel,
and leads him into the presence of the gods. The
under-world is elaborately portioned out into various
parts and scenes, and manifold are the shapes of evil
and mischief with which it is peopled. On the other
hand, it contains abundance of blessings, which the
departed may secure if the proper means have been
taken by himself and by his friends surviving him.
The earthly life is there repeated with all its occupations
and enjoyments, but free from fear and from decay.
The doctrine of the dead accompanying the sun-god
154 History of Religion part ii
to the under-world, and living under his protection, is
very old in Egypt ; we saw it in an early form in con-
nection with the god Ra. It was in connection with
Osiris, however, that it attained its widest diffusion ;
to the whole Egyptian people Osiris was the lord of
the world below, with whom the departed were. The
identification of the departed with Osiris was thorough
and complete ; he becomes Osiris, takes the name of the
deity, and is known in the inscriptions as " Osiris N. N."
Isis is his sister, Horus his defender, Anubis his herald
and guide, and having shared the god's eclipse, he is also
to share his triumph and revival.
3. The Book of the Dead, the most famous relic of
Egyptian literature, is a collection of pieces many of
which are very ancient, bearing on the passage of the
soul through the under-world. The book has also been
called the Funeral Ritual; a better translation of the
title is, " Book of Coming out from the Day." The
earthly life is the day from which the deceased comes
forth into the larger existence of the world beyond.
The book (or such parts of it as may be used in each
case) is the soul's vade inecum for the under-world, and
contains the forms the soul must have at command in
order to ward off all the dangers of that region, and to
secure an easy and happy passage through it. How
the person is to be reconstructed, the different parts
coming back to be built up again in one, how he is
to know the spirits he meets, how he is to get the
gates opened for him, — such are the subjects of various
chapters ; and the soul's success in its passage depends
on its knowledge of these. The words they contain
are not merely information, they have magic power to
smooth away obstacles and to open doors. Hence it is
important for a man to have learned them when alive,
and, to assist his memory, a few chapters are written on
papyrus or linen, and the rolls placed with the mummy
in its case, or they are written on the walls of the tomb.
No other Egyptian work, in consequence, has been
CHAP. IX i^syp^ ^55
preserved in so many copies, but one roll or set of
inscriptions contains one set of chapters and another
another set.
Does the fate of the individual after death depend
then entirely on magic ; is it a question of how many
of these formulse he is able to remember, or how many
his relatives have got written out for him ? Do no
doubts intrude on his mind lest, even if he has all the
requisite knowledge at command, he himself should
be found unworthy to live with the immortals ? For
the most part the Book of ihe Dead stands on the earlier
position at which man never thinks of doubting the favour
of his god, and trusts to overcome what is hostile by
having his magic ready, not by having his heart pure.
But in several chapters a deeper tone is heard. There
is a form for having the stain rubbed away from the
heart of the Osiris, and if there are abundant directions
for outward purification, there are also directions for
having his sins forgiven. In the great 125th chapter the
deceased enters the Hall of the two Truths, and is
separated from his sins after he has seen the faces of
the gods. Here he stands before forty- two judges
(compare the number of the nomes of Egypt) styled
Lords of Truth, each of whom is there to judge of a
particular sin, and to each he has to profess that he did
not when on earth commit that sin. I have not stolen,
he has to say ; I have not played the hypocrite, I have
not stolen the things of the gods, I have not made
conspiracies, I have not blasphemed, I have not clipped
the skins of the sacred beasts, I have not injured the
gods, I have not calumniated the slave to his master ;
and so on. The line is not yet clearly drawn between
moral and ritual or conventional offences ; and moral
duty is expressed in a negative form, and appears as
a shackle, not as an inspiration. Yet the very great
advance has been made here, that divine law watches
not only over specially religious matters but over social
life, and even over the thoughts of the individual heart.
156 History of Religion part ii
The gods enjoin on a man not only to offer sacrifice and
to respect the sacred beasts, but also to do his duty as
a citizen and as a neighbour, and to keep his own lips
unpolluted and his own heart pure. It is to the same
effect when we find that a man's justification depends
on the state of his heart at death. His heart is weighed
against the truth, and if it is found defective, he cannot
live again ; if it turns out well, then he is justified and
goes to the fields of Aalu, the place of the blessed of
Osiris.
Conclusion
This doctrine of the life to come, like the theistic
doctrine the Egyptians at one time attained, might
have seemed destined to lead to a pure spiritual faith,
from which superstition should have disappeared. But
in neither case is that result attained. The later
history of Egyptian religion is that of the increase
of magic, and of the rise of a priestly class absorbing
to itself, as the older priests who were closely con-
nected with the civil life of the nation had never done,
all the functions of religion. Doctrine grows more
pantheistic and more recondite, mysteries and symbols
are multiplied, all to the increase of the influence of
the priesthood, and to the infinite exercise of ingenuity
in coming times. Popular religion, on the other hand,
comes to be more taken up with such matters as
charms and amulets and horoscopes ; and while morals
did not decline from the high level they had gained
from the reign of the gods of light, the spirit of the
nation lost vigour under the growth of religiosity at
the expense of patriotism, and healthy reform grew
more and more impossible. What of the religion of
Egypt lived on in other lands which felt her influence,
it is hard to say. The religious art of Egypt, and with
it no doubt some tincture of the ideas it embodied,
CHAP. IX ^SyP^ ^57
undoubtedly went northwards to Phenicia ; and Greece
owed to Phenicia, as we shall see, many a suggestion
in religious matters. Long before Isis and Serapis
were introduced in Rome in their own persons, the
legend of Osiris had flourished in Greece under new
names, and the Greek doctrine of the life to come,
taught in the mysteries, has suggested to some scholars
an Egyptian origin. To the Greeks and Romans this
religion afforded an infinity of puzzles and mysteries ;
to the modern world it affords the greatest example of
a religion the early promise of which was not fulfilled,
the splendid moral aspirations of which were stifled
amid the superstitions they were too weak to conquer.
Books Recommended
For general information Wilkinson's Egyptians.
E. A. W. Budge, History of Egypt, vols, i.-viii., 1902-03.
,, ,, The Mummy, chapters on Egyptian funeral archeology,
Cambridge, 1893.
„ ,, The Book of the Dead, English Translation of the
Theban Recension, 3 vols., 1910.
Flinders Petrie, A History of Egypt.
,, ,, in Oxford Proceedings, vol. i. p. 184, sqq.
The Histories of Antiquity of Duncker, Maspero, and especially Ed. Meyer.
Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt, 1894.
Maspero, Alanual of Egyptian Archcsology, Second Edition, 1895.
Renouf s Hibbert Lectures.
Tiele, History of the Egyptian Religion, translated by Ballingal.
Wiedemann, Agyptische Geschichte, 1884-88; "Die Religion der alten
Aegyptier," 1890; also "Egyptian Religion," in Hastings' Bible
Dictionary, vol. y.
A. O. Lange, "Die Agypter" in De la Saussaye. Records of the Past,
First Series (1873-81), vols, ii., iv., vi., viii., x., xii. Second
Series, 1888-92, vols, ii.-vi.
Benson and Gourlay, The Temple oj Mut in Asher, 1899.
Naville, The Old Egyptian Faith, translated by Colin Campbell, 1909.
Colin Campbell, Two Theban Queens, 1909. A study of the inscriptions
in two royal tombs.
PART III
THE SEMITIC GROUP
CHAPTER X
THE SEMITIC RELIGION
As used by the modern scholar, the term Semites or
Semitic races includes the Arabs, the Hebrews, the
Canaanites and Phenicians, the Syrians or Arameans,
the Babylonians and the Assyrians. This enumeration
differs from that of the tenth chapter of Genesis, where
the children of Shem include Elam, or the dwellers in
Susiana, and Lud or the Lydians, while the tribes
who dwelt in Canaan before the Hebrews are placed
in another and a lower division of the human family.
The principle of the enumeration in Genesis is prob-
ably that of geographical neighbourhood ; the modern
principle is that of linguistic affinity. The peoples
mentioned above spoke, or still speak, languages which
belong to the same family of human speech. The
inference from affinity of language to affinity of blood
is in this case a strong one, so that the peoples using
the Semitic tongues are considered to be of the same
race. To the question, where the cradle of the Semitic
race is to be sought, most scholars now answer that
we must seek it in Arabia. From this isolated land
the Semitic dispersion spread in every direction, till
Semitic language and customs filled the earth from
the south of Arabia to the north of Syria, and from
the mountains of Iran to the Mediterranean, and far
along the northern shores of Africa ; of Babylonia and
Assyria, where Semitic culture and religion assumed at
the dawn of human history a very special and peculiar
L 161
162 History of Religion part 111
form, we have already spoken. We have now to speak
of Semitic religion as found in the lands bordering
on the eastern Mediterranean in a more original form.
The Semitic peoples outside of Babylonia founded no
lasting empires, and showed no great aptitude for art
or for literary style ; but, in point of religion, they
communicated to the world impulses of immeasurable
force, which will act powerfully on the world as long
as the Prophet is named or Christ preached.
It is possible to define to a certain extent the typical
religion of the Semites. The Burnett lectures of the
late lamented Professor Robertson Smith ^ profess to do
this ; a book in which great learning and bold specula-
tion are remarkably combined, and which forms one of
the most important contributions to the early history,
not of Semitic religion only, but of early religion in
general. The writer was keenly interested in the study
of prehistoric man and of primitive institutions, and
much of his book refers to an earlier period in the
growth of religion than that of the formation of the
Semitic type. On the question of the specific character
of Semitic as distinguished from other religions, it is
one of our principal authorities.
The Semitic races differ from the Indo-European,
with whom alone we need compare them, in their
greater intensity of disposition and a corresponding
poverty of imagination. The Semite has a smaller
range of ideas, but he applies them more practically
and more thoroughly. He has, indeed, an intensely
practical turn, and does not touch philosophy except
under an irresistible pressure of great practical ideas ;
while for plastic art he has no native inclination.
From this it follows that the religious views he
entertains appear to him less as ideas than as facts,
which must be reckoned with to their full extent as
other common facts of life must, and from which there
^ Lectures on the Religion of the Semites. First Series. The Funda-
mental Institutions, 1889.
CHAP. X The Se77iitic Religiojt 163
is no escape. His religious convictions, therefore, are
apt to be carried out to their utmost extent, even at
the cost of great and painful sacrifices. Religion
admits with the Semite of less compromise, and is
less affected by fancy, than with the Aryan ; it is, in
fact, a more practical matter. The result proves to
be that the Semitic mind brings religious ideas to
bear on life and conduct with the greatest possible
force; the substance is more, the form less, than is
the case elsewhere.
When we ask for the common type of working Semitic
religion, where are we to look for it ? Not in Babylonia ;
the characteristic Babylonian religion is Semitic, but
late Semitic ; it has received the impress of high civilisa-
tion and of empire. Nor need we look for it in the
town life of Phenicia. It is in the seclusion of the Arabian
peninsula that we find it, in the district, as we saw, now
regarded as the cradle of the Semitic race, where life
continues to this day little changed from what it was before
the days of Abraham. There the type of society still
exists with which scholars like Wellhausen and Smith
consider the earliest Semitic religion to be connected.
It is a society of nomad clans, which own no allegiance
to any central authority, which have no king and do not
yet form a nation. This is a stage of social growth
which in every ancient people precedes the rise of the
nation and of monarchy. The Hebrews are rising out
of this stage when we first see them. Their neighbours
the Moabites and Canaanites have already passed beyond
it. But all these peoples alike have their root in a
state of society when there was no large and orderly
community, but only a multitude of small and restless
tribes, when there was no written law, but only custom,
and when there was no central authority to execute
justice, but it was left to a man's fellow-clansmen to
avenge his murder.
Now the religion of the clan, the ideas of which
determine the character of later Semitic systems, may
164 History of Religion part iij
be briefly described as follows. Each clan has its own
god, perhaps he was originally an animal, at any rate
he is the father or ancestor of the clan, he is of the
same blood with them, he belongs to them and to no
other clan. So far the assertion that the Semites are
naturally monotheists is true ; but the same is true of
all totemistic or clannish communities. A man is born
into a community with such a divine head, and the
worship of that god is the only one possible to him.
Should he be expelled from his clan he is driven away
from his god, and he cannot obtain access into another
clan except by a formal adoption as a stranger client.
The link, on the other hand between the god and his
clansmen is of the strongest. He joins in all their
enterprises, after being consulted on the subject, and
having a sacrifice offered to him, which renews the
union of the clansmen to him and to each other. Their
wars are his wars ; when any of them is injured or slain
he joins in their necessary acts of retaliation ; it is a
religious duty for each of them to be faithful to the
others, and to keep up the tribal customs, of which the
god approves.
Thus the Semites have as many gods as they have
clans ; and these gods do not greatly differ from each
other. As long, moreover, as the clans are at constant
feud, no single god can grow very great. It is only
when one clan conquers others, that a king-god can
arise to rule over all alike as a monarch rules over
his nobles and their provinces. But in this type of
deity the genius of Semitic religion is already expressed.
The god of the Semite is not a nature-power who bears
the same aspect to all men, but a member of a particular
clan, a person to whom the clansman occupies the same
position of natural subordination as he does to his
father or his chief. The god takes his name not from
a part of nature but from a human relationship. He is
"Baal," master or owner, he is " Adon," lord; in later
circumstances he is " Melech," king. " El," mighty one,
CHAP. X The Semi lie Religion 165
hero, is a more generic term ; like our " God," it is
applied to any divine being. These deities, it will be
noticed, are all masculine ; but it is not to be supposed
that the Semites had no goddesses. Not to speak of
the goddesses of Babylonia, mere doubles of the gods
whose names they bore (p. 98), the earliest Semites are
believed by several great scholars to have had a goddess
but no god. The matriarchal state of society, in which
the mother alone ruled the family, came before the
patriarchal, and so the reign of the goddess came before
that of the god. Each community has its own Al-lat,
"The Lady," as she is called in Arabia, a strict and
exacting lady, not to be confounded with the licentious
goddesses of later times ; and in all Semitic lands traces
of her early prevalence are found. ^ As the male god
came to the front, the female became a less definite
figure, till she was generally a mere counterpart of the
male god, with little character of her own. With gods
of this type there is little scope for mythology. The
history of the god is that of the tribe ; the gods are
too little independent of their human clients to form a
society by themselves, or to give rise to stories about
their doings.
This is one side of the natural history of the Semitic
gods ; but that history has another side. The lands
in which the Semites dwelt were full from the first of
sacred spots ; and we have to notice that the god of a
clan is also the god of a certain piece of earth where he is''
supposed to dwell, which is regarded as his property,"
and the fertility of which is ascribed to his beneficence.
In the Bible we read of sacred trees, of sacred wells,
of sacred stones or mounds, and of stones or pillars
which were connected with sacrifice. In various Semitic
lands there are also sacred streams and sacred caves.
The Semites in fact had their share of the inheritance
the whole world has derived from the earliest times, of
prehistoric religious sites and objects. A spirit spoke
* See Robertson Smith's Kinship and Man ia^e in Early A7abia.
1 66 History of Religion part hi
in the rustling of the branches of the tree, counsel could
be procured at the spring ; wherever there appeared to
be something mysterious in nature, a spirit was believed
to dwell ; and especially in woods and fertile spots,
where wild beasts originally had their lair, a spirit was
thought to reside, which was approached with fear.
Many of these superstitions the various branches of the
Semites long continued to hold ; ^ but the race super-
seded in the main this world of spirits by a set of gods,
and the magic addressed to spirits by religious observ-
ances addressed to gods. The genius or jinn haunting
the thicket, who had no regular worshippers, but was an
object of fear to all, and had to be propitiated or controlled
by mysterious arts, gave way to the god of a clan, who
took up his residence there, and received the regular
worship of his clansmen; the stone became the symbol
of a deity who had been asked and had consented
to become identified with it for the purpose of the stated
rites of the clan. In this way the clan gods became
localised as the clans tended to acquire fixed settle-
ments, and each sacred spot was occupied by the deity
of the clan who dwelt around it. The view was held
that each god was to be found at the spot where, on
some marked occasion, he had given evidence of his
power, and he who wished to enquire of that god had
to go there. It might happen that the god manifested
his power at another spot to one of his dependents on
a journey, as Jehovah did to Jacob at Bethel (Genesis
xxviii,). Then that spot also was recognised as a holy
one where communication could be had with the deity,
and the apparatus of worship was erected there so that
the intercourse might be suitably carried on, as Jacob
is reported to have done. In time also it came to be
thought that each god had his land which belonged to
him, on which alone his worship was possible, and so
* The late Professor Ives Curtius in a paper read to the Basel Congress
(1905, Verkandlungetif p. 154), on " Traces of Early Semitic Religion in
Syria," gives details of local sanctuaries still resorted to in that country.
CHAP. X The Semitic Religion 167
the earth was parcelled out among a number of deities ;
and Naaman, who wishes to worship Jehovah in his
Syrian home, carries off two mules' burden of Jehovah's
soil, to make in the midst of Syria a little piece of the
land of the God of Israel (2 Kings v.).
One circumstance remains to be mentioned which
constitutes a marked difference between the Semitic
and the Aryan religions. Aryan religion has its centre
in the household ; the hearth is its altar, and the gods
of the domestic cult are the departed ancestors of the
family. Semitic religion is without this cult ; the hearth
is not an altar ; the religious community is not the
family but the clan. The worship of ancestors, if, as
there is reason to believe, it had once been practised
by the Semites (the Arabs tied a camel to the grave
of the dead chief), lost at a very early period all
practical importance. While the early Semites believed
in the continued existence of the departed, they thought
of them as beings quite destitute of energy, as " shades
laid in the ground," and did not worship them. The
other world occupied, therefore, a very small space in
Semitic thought. Religion confined itself to this life ;
after death, it was held, even religion came to an end.
A man must enjoy the society of his god in this life ;
after death he could take part in no sacrifice, and
could render to his god no thanks nor service.
From what has been said the character of sacrifice
among the Semites is readily understood. Sacrifice
is not domestic but takes place at the spot where the
god is thought to reside, or where the symbol stands
which represents him. Usually this was an upright
monolith, such as is found in every part of the world,
and the central act of the sacrifice consisted in applying
the blood of the new-slain victim to this stone. The
blood was thus brought near to the god, the clansmen
also may have touched the blood at the same time ;
and the act meant that the god and the tribesmen,
all coming into contact with the blood, which originally
1 68 History of Religion part m
perhaps was that of the animal totem of the clan,
declared that they were of the same blood, and renewed
the bond which connected them with each other. A
further feature of early Semitic sacrifice is also that
the slaughter and the blood ceremony are succeeded
by a banquet, at which the god is thought to sit at
table with his clients, his share being exposed for him
on the stone or altar. When he came to be believed
to dwell aloft, his share was burned with fire so that
the smell or finer essence of it might ascend to him.
Many examples may be collected in the early historical
books of the Old Testament of sacrifices which are
at the same time social and festive occasions ; in fact,
in early Israel every act of slaughter was a sacrifice,
and every sacrifice a banquet. The people dance and
make merry before their god, of whose favour they
have just become assured once more by the act of
communion they have observed. The undertaking they
have on hand is hallowed by his approval, so that they
can boldly advance to it ; the corporate spirit of the
tribe is quickened by renewed contact with its head ;
all thoughts of care are far away ; the religious act
makes the worshippers simply and unaffectedly happy,
if it does not even fill them with an orgiastic ecstasy.
This careless happiness, in connection with religious
acts, is found also in Babylonian sacrifice. It is not,
however, peculiar to the Semites, but is characteristic
of the religion of the early world in general. Nor is
it peculiar to this race that religion does not address
the individual as such, but only as a member of his
tribe, and that it provides small comfort for private
sorrows or longings. The sad face is out of place in
the presence of the god. Religion is essentially a happy
thing ; sin is not yet thought of, and if things go wrong,
the tribe never entertains any doubt but that with
proper sacrifices and promises the god will show them
his favour again and renew their prosperity. All this
is not specially Semitic, but simply early religion.
CHAP. X The Semitic Religion 169
What is specially Semitic is, to repeat that with which
we set out, that gods are worshipped whose relations
to their worshippers are borrowed from existing forms
of society. The god is the father or the master or
the champion, of the circle of worshippers ; he is of
their kindred, he is their greatest and strongest clans-
man, he belongs to them and to none but them. This,
whether it is derived — as Professor Robertson Smith
thinks — from the ideas of totemism or not, leads to a
religion which is exclusive and intense, and cannot be
trifled with. The god who is a man's master, and the
head of his clan, stands in a more imperative position
towards him than the god of the sky, or than a departed
ancestor. He does not change with the seasons or
the weather, nor is there any doubt as to his intentions
and demands. Semitic religion, even at this stage, is
a very real thing, and may easily, in favouring circum-
stances, become a force of overmastering energy.
Books Recommended
Hommel, Die Semitischen Volker und Sprachen.
"Semites," by M 'Curdy, in Hastings' Bible Dictionary, vol. v.
Cumont, Les Religions orieniales dans la fagattisme Koviain, 1907.
CHAPTER XI
CANAANITES AND PHENICIANS
When the Children of Israel crossed the Jordan and
settled in Palestine, they found that country inhabited
by a race of men who spoke the same language as
themselves, and who were much further advanced than
they in civilisation. The letters of El-Amarna which
belong to this period show Syria to have been full of
small theocratic states, all pervaded, though now under
the power of Egypt, by Babylonian culture, each with
a god and a settled worship of its own. The Israelites
of a later time regarded the Canaanites with such
disdain that they reckoned them (Genesis x. 6, 15) as
belonging to an inferior race ; but the two peoples
belonged to the same race, and had many common
ideas and practices. In religion they resembled each
other, or Israel could never have been tempted so
strongly, and for so long a period, to adopt the rites
of the people they conquered.
The Israelites were not the only people who invaded
the land of the Canaanites and stayed in it. Three
such invasions took place : those of the Phenicians,
of the Philistines, and of the Hebrews — the first and
third being Semitic peoples, and perhaps the second
also. The Philistines, settling on the south-eastern
corner of the Mediterranean, had a Semitic religion, of
which the fish-god Dagon, the Fly-Baal of Ekron, and
the Ashtoreth, probably of Ascalon, are known figures.
The Philistines, however, lost ultimately their separate
170
CHAP. XI Canaanites and Pkenicians 171
character, and ceased to exist as an independent people.
It will not be necessary for us to mention them again.
The Phenicians, settling on the northern sea-board of
Syria, where great trade routes to East and West
converged, and where good harbours could be made,
became a nation of merchants, and kept up active
communication with the great kingdoms of the East,
with Egypt, and with the islands and the distant shores
of Western Europe. The carriers of the ancient world,
they transmitted to Europe not only the spices and
the fabrics but also the ideas and the practices of
Asia, and rendered to the world the inestimable service
of awaking the slumbering energies of the Aryan
peoples to new life.
A short chapter may be devoted to the religion of the
Canaanites and to that of the Phenicians, not because
these were important in themselves, for in neither was
there anything original or anything destined to survive,
but because of the light they throw on other religions
which were to have a great career. It was in conflict
with the Canaanite religion that the faith of Israel first
realised its true nature and was led to organise itself
in a manner befitting its character. And from Phenicia
both Israel and Greece accepted many a suggestion,
both in external matters connected with worship and
in matters of a deeper nature.
The religfion of the Canaanites is well known to us
from the Old Testament. It is such a system as we
found that of the Semites to be, with certain peculiar
developments, of which we have already seen some-
thing in our chapter on Babylonia. A local community
recognises an invisible head, with whom it meets at the
sacred spot, whom it regards as overlord or master, of
whose favour it is in no doubt, and whom it serves
with sacrifices and with lively manifestations of joy at
certain fixed periods. The god is called Baal. This,
however, is not a proper name but a title ; it means
lord, master, and the Baal may have a name of his
172 History of Religion part m
own in addition : we hear of Baal Peor, the lord of
Feor, and of many another. Baals are spoken of in
the plural; we read in Judges ii. 11 and in other
passages that the Israelites followed the Baals, that
is the gods of the Canaanites. Each place has its own
Baal, who is worshipped at the local sanctuary. The
sanctuary is at an elevated spot outside the town or
village, either on a natural eminence or on a mound
artificially made for the purpose; these are the "high
places" of the Old Testament; originally Canaanite
places of worship, they drew to themselves also the
worship of Israel. The apparatus of worship at these
shrines is of a very simple nature. An upright stone
represents the god; it is not a statue of him, being
unhewn and having no resemblance to the human
figure. He was supposed to come to the stone when
meeting with his worshippers ; and in the earliest times
of Semitic religion this stone served the purpose of an
altar: the gifts, which were not originally burned, were
laid upon it, or the blood of the victim was applied
to it. But besides the altar and the upright stone or
massebah the Canaanite shrine had another piece of
furniture. A massive tree-trunk, fixed in the ground
and with some of its branches perhaps still remaining,
represented the female deity who is the invariable
companion of the Baal. This is the Ashera of Canaan,
a word which in the Authorised Version is translated
"grove," after an error of the Vulgate, but which
in the Revised Version is rightly left untranslated.
(Judges iii. 7, vi. 25 ; 2 Kings xxiii. 6, there is one in
the Temple at Jerusalem ; etc.) The word Ashera is
in such passages the designation of the tree which
stood to represent the goddess ; whether it is ever the
proper name of the goddess herself is doubtful. At
any rate Ashera, like Baal, is not the name of one
historic deity, but a name applied to the goddess of
each place all over the country.
The character of Canaanite religion is clearly re-
CHAP. XI Canaanites and Pheniciajis 173
vealed in its apparatus of worship. We saw that the
Babylonians added to many of the gods of their
country a female counterpart, turning the name of
the god into a feminine form (p. 98, also p. 165).
In Canaan we find that Semitic worship is addressed
to pairs of deities ; there is a god and a goddess at
each shrine. While it would be wrong to regard this
as the general type of Semitic religion, — our chapter
on that subject points to a different conclusion, and
the great gods of Phenicia, of Moab, and of Israel are
solitary beings, — we must recognise that the worship
of god and goddess was widespread in Semitic peoples.
In Canaan it is not difficult to understand it. We have
here the worship of an agricultural community ; and as
the Baal is the lord of the soil and the author of its
fertility, who is entitled to receive the first-fruits, so
the Ashera is the fertile matron who represents the
principle of increase. The Old Testament leaves us
in no doubt as to the kind of worship which was
carried on at these shrines. The festivals were those
of the farmer's calendar; the Baal is presented with
the first-fruits of corn and wine and oil, in the midst
of general feasting and boisterous merry-making. His
consort, on the other hand, is served with rites apply-
ing in the most direct manner the principle she repre-
sents. The shrine has a staff of female attendants
for this part of the service of religion. The rustic
worship of Palestine thus shows us a side of the religion
of Western Asia which we know from other sources
to have been widely diffused. A female deity like
the Babylonian Ishtar (p. 102), is served with impure
rites in great cities as well as in country districts,
and her worship spread westwards with other Eastern
products. She is found as Baalit, as Mylitta,i as
Astarte ; the Greeks call her Aphrodite, and her horrid
worship found entrance in various Greek cities.
To the Israelites the worship of Canaan proved a
^ Ileiod. i. 199.
174 History of Religion part in
great temptation (Numbers xxv.), but they gradually
rose above it. The Phenicians also came to have
gods of a much higher character, and of these also
we must speak. The Phenicians were not original in
their religion any more than in their art ; their religion
began with the ordinary Semitic notions as these had
been applied by the older population in Syria, and
they improved it by borrowing from various parts of
the world with which they trafficked. So various were
their borrowings that it is impossible to draw up a
consistent system of their gods. One town has one
set of gods, another town another, and the same deity
wears different and even opposite characters in different
places. All that can be done is to single out a few
features which we can see to have been on the whole
characteristic of Phenician religion, and to have enabled
it to influence the worship of other peoples.
The Phenicians were very much in earnest about
the maintenance of state and of religion. In their
successive city-states of Sidon, Tyre, and Carthage,
we see them exhibiting an intense devotion to the
commonwealth, and very much under the influence
of their priesthood. Semitic religion tends to grow
more sombre and intense as it develops ; and the
Phenicians, while still holding the principle of a god
and goddess, concentrate their worship more and more
on a single divine figure, and come to regard that
figure from a greater distance and with greater awe.
The liberal and easy-going Baals and Asheras of
agricultural life are not suited to the temple of a
great commercial city ; a figure of more dignity is
wanted. And thus above the crowd of Baals there
appears the Moloch or king, a much greater being
and requiring a much statelier service. Moloch also
is not originally a proper name ; there are various
Molochs or king-gods who rise above the Baals, and
the individuals have special designations, as Melcarth,
" king of the city." This type of deity occurs not
CHAP. XI Canaanites and Phenicians 175
with the Phenicians only, but with several other
Syrian peoples about the same time. The Moloch of
Sidon and Tyre is a being of the same character as
the chief gods of Moab, Ammon, and Israel, He
has to do not only with the blessings of agricultural
life, but with state and government. He is the founder
of a state ; he is the inventor of navigation and of
purple ; he is the first king ; when a colony is sent
out, it goes with his approval, and he himself leads
the expedition ; he is the dread ruler whom none must
disobey ; the majesty, the power, and the enterprise
of the state are all embodied in him. And as the
king-god is far above the landlord-god in power, he is
infinitely removed from him in character also. The
chief gods of Sidon and Tyre have nothing luxurious
or effeminate about them. They are strict and awful
beings, and must not be incautiously approached.
They retain their primitive character as sources of
life, but they are destroyers of life as well. Pure
and holy themselves, they require purity and holiness
in all who draw near to them. Their priests are celi-
bates, their priestesses virgins. They require sacrifices
of a very different nature from those of the Baals,
more costly and more dreadful. Human sacrifices
appear to have been a regular feature of their worship :
when the Israelites turn to the worship of Phenician
gods, or when they copy Phenician practices, we hear
of their " making their children pass through the fire "
— that is, offering them up as burnt-sacrifices. The
Moloch requires what is most costly as a sacrifice, or
what will cause the strongest thrill of terror in his
worship. Even the first-born child is not to be kept
back from him (2 Kings xxiii. 10, Jerem. vii. 31, cf.
Micah vi. 7).
So far the origin of the Phenician gods is simple.
They are purely Semitic deities, formed on the pattern
of human rulers and deriving their attributes from that
character. When a state becomes highly organised
176 History of Religion part hi
before it is quite civilised in other respects, its religion
is apt to be stern and cruel ; of this various instances
may be found in the history of religion, and the present
is one of them. The Phenician gods were of such a
character as to favour the survival of savage practices ;
the Semite, as we saw, is extremely matter-of-fact and
practical in his religion, and a god who was a king
would receive the same kind of offerings as the king
of Sidon or of Tyre was accustomed to. A strict and
dreadful religion thus survives beyond the savage state ;
pleasure is taken in trampling on natural feelings and in
setting forth shocking spectacles at the bidding of the
deity.
Astral Deities of Phenicia.— It is not possible to
arrange in a system the remaining phenomena of
Phenician religion. In the historical period the gods
have another character besides that of being heads
and rulers of communities. They are connected with
the heavenly bodies. The chief god, whatever name
113 bears. El, Baal, Moloch, Rimmon, or Adonis, is
always the sun. A sun -god may have come from
Egypt or Babylon, but there is no reason why the
Phenicians may not have had a sun -god from the first,
whose character spread to their other deities. And in
accordance with the tendency above spoken of, the sun-
god has a consort. Sometimes his consort is the earth ;
and then we have a sensuous and immoral worship
such as that of the Canaanites. Sometimes it is the
moon ; her name is Astarte or Ashtoreth, and she is
a very different being from the Ashera of Canaan ;
the names are not the same, and the characters are
opposite. Ashtoreth, like the primitive Semitic goddess
(p. 165), is a chaste matron ; she is represented robed
and in stately attitude, and is a fit companion for the
strict Moloch of the cities. Her worship is described
to us by Jeremiah, in whose time the matrons of
Jerusalem made cakes for her and poured out drink-
offerings and burned incense to her as the "queen of
CHAP. XI Canaaiiites and Phenicians 177
heaven " ; all this was done with the knowledge and
co-operation of their husbands, so that the worship
had nothing immoral about it. This strict goddess is
not to be identified with Istar of Babylonia, although
the names are alike. Istar is not a moon-goddess like
Ashtoreth ; in Babylonia, in fact, the moon is masculine,
and the characters of the two goddesses are opposite.
The Sidonian Astarte and the Canaanite Ashera repre-
sent two opposing types of female deity, both of which
may possibly have their reflections in Greece — the
latter in the lower forms of the worship of Aphrodite,
and the former in the figures of such strict maiden
goddesses as Artemis and Athene,
Another worship which prevailed in Phenicia should
not be left unnoticed — that of the Cabiri. There were
temples of the Cabiri in several of the towns ; their
worship, however, was secret, and little was known of
it even in antiquity. We know at all events that the
Cabiri v/ere seven in number, and the number is thought
to be connected, not with the seven planets, but with
the seven heavenly spheres of early astronomy. They
have a head called Eshmun, who is the god of the eighth
or highest sphere. The Cabiri are beings of a moral
character ; they are not only mighty ones and creators,
but they are the children of Sydyk — that is, of Righteous-
ness; and they give counsel. It is here that the tendency
to speculative exaltation of the deity appears in Phenicia;
but there is little of it, and neither in this direction nor
in that of morals was the religion destined to have any
remarkable growth. The service of the gods was so
closely identified with the service of the state, — for either
the priest and the king were one, as in Israel after the
exile, or nothing could be done without the priest-
hood,— that no independent religious development was
possible. In a theocracy religion cannot grow, at least
it cannot be openly acknowledged to do so ; and the
prophet and reformer finds every influence arrayed
against him.
M
178 Histoiy of Religion part hi
How greatly Israel was indebted to Phenician art
is known to all. It was by artificers from Tyre that
Solomon's royal buildings were planned and executed,
when he had married a daughter of Egypt and was com-
pelled to aim at some magnificence. A royal temple
formed part of these buildings, and was necessarily
erected according to the ideas which prevailed in the
more advanced neighbouring kingdoms. It was from
the same source that the Greeks a century or two later
drew suggestions for their sacred architecture ; and thus
we find that the ground-plan of Solomon's temple and
that of the Greek temple are closely similar. Both are
to be traced ultimately to the model derived by the
Phenicians from Egypt. And those who borrowed
from Phenicia the form of their temple, borrowed many
other things too. In the porch of Solomon's temple
stood two great pillars of bronze, which were called
Jachin and Boaz ; they were simply the symbols which
stood at the entrance to every Phenician temple of the
sun-god worshipped there. The priests of Israel were
dressed like those of Tyre and Sidon ; they offered the
same animals as sacrifices, they received the same dues
for their maintenance. When so much apparatus was
borrowed, it is no wonder that the gods of Phenicia were
at times worshipped at Jerusalem. We see from this
whole chapter that the religion of Israel was not so
much apart from that of the other Syrian peoples as
we have been wont to imagine. Even in his religion
Israel owed something to his neighbours ; his religion
came to be better than theirs, but it was the result of
a movement in which they also had taken part.
Books Recommended
The Histories of Antiquity. E. Meyer, Duncker (see p. loi).
Tiele's E^yptische en Mesopotamische Godsdiensten. Book II. : Phenicia
and Israel.
The Histories of Israel, especially Kuenen, The Religion of Israel,
F. Jeremias, in De la Saussaye, vol. i. pp. 348-383.
E). Meyer, " Phenicia," in Encyclopedia Biblica,
CHAPTER XII
ISRAEL
It Is a circumstance of the greatest value for the science
of reh'gion that the Old Testament is so well known.
That book is the most valuable literary storehouse we
possess of the facts and ideas connected with the early-
religion of mankind ; it is the best text-book of the
earlier portion of our subject. In our chapters on
primitive worship, as well as in that on the Semites,
we have drawn largely from this source, and for the
earlier stages of the religion of Israel we may refer to
these chapters. We have now, however, to deal specially
with the religion of the Old Testament, and to endeavour
to show, as has been done in other cases, what was its
specific character, and how its character determined
its history. The story to be told in this chapter is,
even apart from our special interest in it, as fascinating
as any in this volume ; it was through a mental move-
ment of unparalleled grandeur, as well as through an
outward history of tragic and entrancing interest, that
the Jews came to possess the religion which was the
desire of all nations, and the chief preparation for
Christianity.
We have to begin, however, with repeating in this
case what has been and will be the burden of our
opening paragraphs in many chapters of this book,
namely that the traditional ideas about the nature of
this religion require to be corrected, and that its sacred
179
I So History of Religion part m
books as they now stand do not accurately represent
its history. The Old Testament literature has suffered
in a high degree what seems to be the predestined
fate of every set of sacred books. Old materials and
new are mixed up together in it ; many works have
been revised by later editors, and so much changed,
that laborious critical processes are necessary before
they can be used by the historian. In forming his first
impressions as to the relations the books bear to each
other, and as to the purport of the whole, the reader
is naturally guided by the order in which he finds
them ; but the order in which the sacred books of the
Jews stand in the Old Testament was fixed from a
peculiar point of view at a late age in Jewish history,
and is in many respects quite unnatural and misleading.
To come to particulars ; the Old Testament as it stands
suggests that the Law was the earliest product of Jewish
literature, and that all the details of ritual, as well as
of moral and social duty, were fixed for the Jews at
the very outset of their history ; and it suggests that
the books of the prophets were written last. This, till
quite recently, was generally believed to be the case,
but by the labours of a series of illustrious scholars of
the Old Testament the conclusion has been reached,
which is now less and less disputed, that the earlier
prophetic books come first in chronological order, and
that the law, which is not all of one piece, but contains
a number of codes of different periods, together with a
collection of legends and traditions drawn from various
quarters and subjected to editorial treatment, did not
assume the form in which we have it till after the
exile. The historical books, in which no doubt various
ancient pieces are embodied, were written under the
inspiration of prophetic ideas; and the latest books of
all are those which stand in the centre of the Old
Testament in the English Bible ; the Psalter, which
had been growing during a long period before it came
to contain its present number of pieces, the books of
CHAP. XII
Israel 1 8 1
morals and philosophy, and the book of Job. Daniel
belongs to the period of the Maccabees. The historian,
therefore, starts from the age of the prophets of the
eighth century B.C. The writings of these great men
afford a graphic picture of their time, and an entirely
trustworthy account of the mental furniture Israel then
possessed. From this fixed point the student is able
to infer what happened to Israel in earlier times, and
to judge of the spirit in which the early history of
the people was afterwards written and edited. The
history of Israel which the student arrives at after these
critical processes differs, it is true, in very important
respects from that which appears at first sight on the
face of the Bible. But the same thing has occurred
in the case of other nations. The sacred books of Persia
also have to be turned outside in before they furnish
the historian with an account he can accept. Even of
the speeches of Mohammed the same is true. Those
who undertake the task of codifying sacred literatures
have to consider the purpose to which the books are
to be put in the community, and to arrange them so
as best to serve that purpose ; they do not ask. How
must they be arranged so as to exhibit the true sequence
of the history ? — that interest only arises much later —
but. How will they best serve the needs of the com-
munity? The order of books in sacred collections is,
therefore, fixed by practical considerations, now of one
kind and now of another, and not according to the
requirements of the student of history. We now proceed
to give the outline of the history of the religion of Israel
as it appears in the light of recent critical investigation.
Israel consisted originally of a group of tribes, bound
together by the memory of a great deliverance they
had experienced in common, and of battles in which
they had fought side by side. Accustomed to the free
life of shepherds, they had been enslaved in Egypt
and held to intolerable tasks ; but they had made their
escape in a wonderful manner under a leader who
1 82 History of Religion part hi
had known how to kindle them to heroic efforts by
reminding them of their reHgious traditions. Under
his leadership they had visited the Sinaitic peninsula
after leaving Egypt, and had wandered in the regions to
the north of Sinai, till at last they conquered territory to
the east of Jordan, on which some of them settled, while
others crossed the Jordan, and took up their abodes
among the Canaanite tribes whom they found there.
The nation and the religion came into the world at
the same time. Although the tribes retained their
separate gods and religious observances, and families
among them also had their own family cults, the bond
by which they had been formed into a people and made
capable of common action was stronger than these
earlier ties ; the God whom Moses proclaimed as their
head inspired in them an enthusiasm and vigour unknown
before. His name was Yahweh, and is said to have a
metaphysical meaning, and to designate the god as more
really existing than any other. This is doubted ; what
is certain is that Moses declared that Yahweh promised
to be with the tribes, and that they took him for their
God. Jehovah, to use the more familiar form of the
name, was perhaps the God of the most powerful of the
tribes ; he was probably a nature-god, and connected
with storms and thunder, and he had his seat at Mount
Sinai. Thither the tribes repaired to hold a solemn
meeting with him ; from there he was afterwards repre-
sented as coming forth when about to do any mighty
act for his people. He is thought of as a being who
cannot be seen, since he dwells in clouds and darkness.
He utters his voice in thunder and storm ; he is
possessed of irresistible energy which he unfolds in battle,
and in which he causes his people to share when he
goes before them to war. But he is also a god of
counsel, and takes the greatest interest in the moral and
social life of his people. His human representatives,
aided by his spirit, settle disputes which are laid before
them, and oronounce authoritative counsels on difficult
CHAP. XII Israel i8
o
matters. This kind of guidance is constantly going on,
so that Jehovah is felt to be watching over the conduct
of his people, and to be an effective helper and guide in
their domestic concerns, which not every god attends to,
as well as in their meetings with their enemies.
The Early Ritual was Simple. — In all this we have a
very apt example of the advance which, as we saw in
a former chapter, religion makes when it becomes
national instead of merely tribal ; when the great god
of the nation takes his place above the gods of the
tribes. In Israel, however, it is not the case that the
national religion, when it appears, at once develops a
higher style of worship, and draws attention to itself
by greater pomp and deeper solemnity of form. The
priestly legislation of Exodus and Leviticus, indeed,
represents this as having been the case. Here the
tribes have scarcely adopted the service of Jehovah,
when an army of thousands of priests is called into
being, for whose maintenance elaborate provision is
made, and a splendid and highly-organised worship is
arranged. This directory of worship, however, most
scholars are agreed, never was in operation till after the
exile : we see in it the worship which Ezra and his
fellow-scribes aimed at introducing in the second temple
at Jerusalem. The worship of the wilderness and of
the early period of Israel in Canaan was of a very
different nature. The leading features and principles of
it differed little from what we have described in former
parts of this book (pp. 69 sqq., 168). It was conducted
according to custom rather than statute, and its lead-
ing characteristic was that it was a common meal at
which the god was present along with his worshippers,
and assurances were given that the good understand-
ing still continued which bound the tribesmen to their
god and each other. It was by the person of his god
rather than by a more elaborate worship, or a more
numerous priesthood, that Israel was distinguished from
Moab and Ammon.
I $4 History of Religion part hi
Contact with Canaanite Religion. — After being
delivered out of Egypt by the power of Jehovah, and
entering Canaan, Israel was placed in a position in
which it is wonderful, indeed, that the national character
and the national religion were not merged in those of
the surrounding population. Bringing with them the
few ideas and the scanty appliances of the wilderness,
they found themselves dwelling amid a people whose
civilisation was fully formed, and who possessed a
comparatively elaborate worship. The tribes of Canaan
spoke the same language, and were of the same race
with themselves, but had advanced to the higher life
of agriculture and of cities. Their worship was the
same in principle as that of Israel, but it had a higher
organisation. The land was studded with sacred places,
the sanctity of which Israel could not deny, and which
formed centres of pilgrimage and worship. The worship
of the Canaanites was described in last chapter (pp.
1 7 1- 172) ; the reader will remember the upright stone
(masseba) representing the Baal, and the tree-trunk
(ashera), if there was no living tree, representing the
goddess. If all this or most of it was new to the
Israelites, so was the sacred year which fixed the
seasons of worship in Canaan. Minor festivals were
fixed by the appearance of the new moon, or by the
regular return of the seventh day (it is doubtful if
the Sabbath was observed in the wilderness, it is con-
nected with agriculture, and is scarcely compatible with
pastoral life) ; greater ones by the epochs of the year,
such as harvest and vintage. The worship connected
with agriculture in the early world is of a noisy and
frantic order ; and where gods are worshipped who are
connected with fertility, it is apt, as we saw, to be
marked by sexual features.
Dang'ep of Fusion. — The Israelites were naturally
prompted to adopt what they could of the religion of
the Canaanites. The old sacred places of the land,
whether connected with their own ancestral traditions
CHAP, xii Israel 185
or not, they could not help adopting ; it would have
been strange, indeed, if, when they became agriculturists,
they had not adopted the agricultural festivals ; and if,
as was natural, they regarded the Baal of the Canaanite
as the lord of the land and the giver of its fertility, their
thanks for the harvest would be addressed to him
(Hosea ii. 8). Their worship of Jehovah could not be
left poorer than that which their neighbours addressed
to Baal ; for it also they erected asheras and made use
of standing stones, and of Jehovah also they had images.
One of these, which was destroyed by Hezekiah, was
in the form of a serpent : in other places Jehovah was
worshipped under the form of a bull. Where an image
of him was kept, he could be consulted by means of lots
or in other ways. The ark or chest which was kept at
one of the more important shrines, represented him
most fully ; it was carried into battle, and he was
thought to go with it.
Religious Conflict. — But the more developed worship
thus paid to Jehovah after the settlement in Canaan,
as it had not grown out of the religion of Jehovah, did
not truly express its spirit, and was felt by those who
believed most thoroughly in the national god, to be a
wrong way of serving him. If, moreover, the Israelites,
who lived scattered and far apart from each other
among the older inhabitants, went so far in adopting
Canaanite practices, there was a danger that Israel
would forget the faith which had made him a nation,
and thus part entirely with his character and nationality.
A contest thus arose, which continued during the whole
of Israelite history down to the exile, between the few
who cared for Jehovah only, and desired to see the
principles of his religion carried out purely and without
reserve, and the many who, while also professing to
follow Jehovah, saw no harm in worshipping him as
other gods were worshipped, or even in addressing other
gods as well as him. This struggle is represented in
the histories as if Israel had from time to time become
1 86 History of Religio7i part m
entirely apostate from its own faith. But it is clear that
Israel never forgot Jehovah so far as to be incapable
of being called back to him. The call was generally
a call to war. The people, having forgotten the true
source of their strength, and so lost spirit and became
a prey to their enemies, were summoned by one in
whom the spirit of Jehovah was burning freshly, to
follow him to battle against their enemies. The spirit
of Jehovah, thus applied anew to the hearts of his
people, did not fail of its effect. The wave of courage
and of martial ardour spread from place to place, from
tribe to tribe, and soon an army stood in the field which
struck with the old vigour, and soon shook off the yoke
of the oppressor. Jehovah thus proved himself to be
Jehovah Sebaoth, i.e., in the most probable rendering
of the phrase, the God of the armies of his people. A
religion which proved itself in this way could never
cease to be a power in the heart of the nation ; even if
the tribes, dispersing again after a victory, soon seemed
to lose touch of each other, and to be sinking deeper
than ever in the surrounding tide of Canaanite life,
yet the faith, which was associated with all the highest
moments of their past history, and was the secret of all
their victories, could not die.
The Monarchy. — It was a great advance, however, in
the history of the religion of Israel, when the judges or
heroes who appeared, at distant intervals of time and in
different parts of the country, to summon Israel to fight
for freedom in the name of Jehovah, were succeeded by
the monarchy. This was a step which those most
zealous for the national faith warmly approved, and,
indeed, themselves brought about ; the monarchy was
founded, in the case of the first two kings, on religious
enthusiasm. The religion of Jehovah at once became
the state religion, and a more satisfactory worship was
formed at the court. The permanent union of the tribes
under the monarchy soon showed Israel to be possessed
of much greater force than could have been imagined,
CHAP. XII Israel 187
and within a century the people of Jehovah formed a
considerable power, which was heard of in all ends of
the earth. Instead of a set of scattered tribes they
were now a homogeneous people, conscious of a great
past and looking forward to a still greater future. As
they passed rapidly from barbarism to civilisation,
Jehovah shared their rise. His energy had always been
undoubted, but he now put on in addition all the settled
attributes of kingly power — he was a great god, and a
great king, a just judge, a liberal friend — all his doings
were wonderful. He had chosen Israel for his people,
and by a series of mighty acts had guided and preserved
them, and made them great. His people stood in a
peculiar position in the world ; with such a god they
must rise higher still, there could be no limit to what
he could do for them.
Rellgfion not Centralised.— We must not, however,
suppose that the rise of Jehovah to a great position, and
the institution of his worship at the court, made any
great or sudden change in the religious arrangements of
the people at large. While the worship of the monarch
went on at Gibeon or at Jerusalem, the great shrines at
Bethel, at Dan, and at Beersheba were still frequented,
and the sacred places throughout the land remained in
honour. Stories indeed were told to show that they
had been founded by the patriarchs for the worship of
their god, so that there need be no scruple in frequent-
ing them. The worship of Baal and that of Jehovah
went on at these places side by side, and neither could
fail to be influenced by the other. Sacrifice was guided
by more than one principle: on the one hand it was
a common m.eal with the deity ; and as Jehovah was
thought to have his dwelling in Heaven, his part of the
banquet was burned, so that it might ascend to him in
the column of smoke. The sacrifice of agriculturists,
however, naturally turns to the idea of presenting to the
god, with joy and thankfulness, a part of the gifts, or
the first or best part of the gifts, which, as lord of the
1 88 History of Religion part m
soil, he has bestowed. The idea of propitiation or
atonement does not enter into the ordinary sacrifices at
this time. Jehovah in his sterner moods may demand
more awful offerings. As we see from the story of
Abraham offering up Isaac, it was thought that Jehovah
might demand human sacrifice, and instances of such
sacrifice actually occur in the records. Jephthah
dedicates his daughter ; after a war the best of the
booty is offered to Jehovah, and Samuel hews Agag in
pieces before him. But such occurrences lie quite apart
from ordinary worship, which is of a joyful character
and is accompanied by merry-making of various kinds.
No fixed ritual prevailed throughout the country ; the
attempt to introduce uniformity came much later. Every
one knew how to sacrifice, as the stories of Manoah and
of Gideon show ; it was by no means necessary that
a priest should be present. The functions of the priest
indeed were often connected with other matters than
sacrifice, and might be of a humble description. Eli
with a few attendants was the guardian of the ark which
was the symbol of the presence of Jehovah. A young
priest was engaged by Micah for ten pieces of silver
yearly to take charge of his collection of idols. But the
most important duty of the priesthood, and that on
which their influence mainly depended, was that of
consulting Jehovah and ascertaining his will. This was
done by some sacred object in the charge of the priest,
and various objects are named (Ephod and Teraphim
are images of deities ; Urim and Thummim are the lots
used on such occasions) which possessed this virtue.
The priest also acted as a judge in matters brought to
him for decision, and thus was in a position to form the
unwritten law of the people, and to set up principles of
conduct which came in course of time to be regarded as
sacred. The priests' "torah" or law is the beginning
of the Jewish legislation, and we see from the humane
and kindly provisions of the earliest codes that this
important function was discharged in no unworthy way.
CHAP. XII Israel 189
It was thus that Jehovah acted as the living lawgiver
of his people, long before any written law existed.
With his character as a warrior, a mighty lord, and a
giver of rich gifts, he combines from the first that of
one who watches over the conduct of his people, checks
their excesses, and is willing and able to lead them on
to better living. This fact will be of much importance
when the mind of the people expands and seeks to
understand more clearly his being and character.
The Prophets. — Israel, like other nations of antiquity,
had, in addition to the priests who were profession-
ally connected with religion, a class of men who were
organs of the deity not on account of their position but
by a special personal gift. The inspiration of Jehovah
appeared in early times in somewhat crude forms.
Bands of fervid devotees were seen, who produced in
themselves by dance and song an ecstatic enthusiasm,
in which they were thought to become the organs of
the deity. These men lived in societies or guilds, which
were found in Israel for several centuries. There were
such prophets of Baal as well as of Jehovah, so that
the phenomenon is not specifically Israelite. What we
hear of them does not always give us a lofty idea of
their character. They are found practising magical
tricks, and when they prophesy they all say the same
thing ; sometimes they are willing to prophesy what a
king wishes to hear.
The greater prophecy of Israel arose out of such
beginnings as these. Israel was accustomed to expect
to hear the will of Jehovah declared by a speaker of
whom the spirit had laid hold, and among those who
came forward to meet this expectation there appeared
from time to time men of commanding insight and of
great intensity of character. The name "seer" indicates
the nature of this kind of prophecy. The seer is one to
whom Jehovah communicates his intentions personally,
perhaps without any steps having been taken on his
part to place himself in the way of the god. He sees
190 History of Religion part hi
visions while awake and in his ordinary frame of mind,
he also hears what others do not hear ; and the vision
and the message have reference to the future. Things
are intimated which are shortly to come to pass, and
they are things concerning the state or the monarchy :
the fate of Israel is the burden of the prophet's intima-
tion. Samuel's seeing led him to institute the monarchy
under Saul. The prophet Abijah declared for the division
of the kingdom into two; and his prophecy was not vain.
Elijah foretold the downfall of the house of Omri, and
Elisha saw to the accomplishment of that prediction.
The prophets we see were a great power in public
affairs, and were able in important crises to determine
the course of the nation's history. Often the prophet
stands quite alone, and in opposition to the court and
apparently to the nation, and yet his words have a
tendency to get themselves fulfilled ; Jehovah's word
does not return to him void. At other times the
prophet seems to have many sympathisers among the
nation, and to speak as the mouthpiece of the most
earnest section of the community, the section most
devoted to Jehovah ; and in these cases it is less
wonderful that his words come true. When, however,
we speak of the prophets as a whole, the expression
is a loose one ; the prophets are not a party that
always acts together, nor a school in which the leader
is always sure of a following. A great voice sounds,
perhaps once in a century or a half-century ; and these
voices represent the true tradition of Israelite religion,
and develop it further. In the time of Elijah we notice
that there is a puritan movement in Israel ; a number
of men are agreed together in detestation of the foreign
worships which are practised at court, and are heartily
agreed in wishing to bring back the good old ways and
the pure worship of Jehovah only. And when Elijah
speaks, he gives voice to this tendency ; he claims that
everything should be determined by religion ; no con-
siderations of state should for a moment stand in the
CHAP, XII
Israel 191
way of the pure faith of Jehovah, by which everything
should be decided ; and whatever stands in the way of
this policy is dedicated to destruction. This, broadly
speaking, is the keynote of Hebrew prophecy.
When we come to the canonical prophets, however,
we feel that there is a great deal more in their teaching
than the bare demand that everything must give way to
the requirements of religion. A great change has taken
place in their world of thought. It is no less than that
a new god and a new religion have announced them-
selves in the thinking of these men. They do not say
so ; they are not aware of it, and yet it is so.
The Old Religion National. — The religion of Israel
during the monarchy is, in the full sense of the term,
a national one. From a cluster of tribes Israel has
become a nation, and has begun to think of itself as a
unity. It has its national history, its national rulers,
as other nations have. In their nationality it cannot
be denied that the Israelites had much to be proud
of; nor did their rapid growth in wealth and power,
which gave them several centuries of prosperity, tend
to lesson that pride. Now as they have their own
king, they have also their own god. Jehovah is the
god of Israel ; Israel is the people of Jehovah, on this
they were all agreed. That Jehovah was their god
did not prevent them from believing in the existence
of other gods : Chemosh was the god of Moab, a being
not very unlike Jehovah, the Baals were the old gods
of Canaan. Jehovah, of course, was the greatest and
strongest, and an Israelite should worship him, in
Canaan at least ; but there was no great harm if he
worshipped other gods too, when it came in his way
to do so. He might join in the worship of Baal in
country places ; and the king might, without doing
any harm, set up the images of the gods of his wives
beside the images of Jehovah in the capital, and if
many of his subjects joined in these other worships,
it was but natural. In this way a great variety of
192 History of Religion part hi
gods was in some reigns brought together from different
countries.
Jehovah, however, was the special god of Israel, there
could be no doubt of that ; Israel was specially pledged
to him ; and he on his side was pledged to Israel, who
was entitled to look to him for help in every emergency.
Jehovah had no other people; he was entirely bound up
with Israel, he must, if only for his own honour, come
to the aid of his own people when they needed him.
He never could permit Israel to suffer any fatal injury,
such as deportation to a foreign country. Religious
faith forbade the thought that such a thing was possible;
if Israel was destroyed, where would Israel's religion be.?
It was utter impiety, therefore, to doubt that Israel was
safe, that Jehovah watched over his own land and his
own people, or that he would guard them from any fatal
harm. If, on the other hand, as was too often the case,
Israel had to submit to injury and insult from other
peoples, there could be no doubt that Jehovah took
notice of the fact, and that in due time he would
set things right. It might be some time before his
attention was sufficiently directed to the case ; he
might be waiting till more of the same kind of occur-
rences took place before he finally interposed ; but the
time would come, the " Day of the Lord " would arrive
in due season, when the spoilers and insulters of Israel
would be dealt with according to their deserts, ard
Israel set on high in full deliverance and peace.
Criticism of the Old Religion by the Prophets.—
The prophets, impressed more deeply than the people
by the moral character of Jehovah, and under the
pressure of great national dangers and calamities,
attained to views of God and of his ways so different
from those current at the time as to appear, when
first produced, most unpatriotic and even impious.
In their character of seers they foresaw with clear-
ness the terrible catastrophes which were about to
burst upon their people. Amos prophesies that Israel
CHAP. XII Isj'ael 193
will be carried away captive out of his land ; Isaiah
announces the same thing in the southern kingdom,
and declares that only a remnant shall return. These
men are in no doubt as to the impending political
annihilation of Israel, and they set themselves to find
some reason for an occurrence so portentous, so im-
possible to harmonise with ordinary religious faith.
They account for it by a view of the nature of Jehovah
far exalted above that of their people. He is punish-
ing them for their iniquities, they say, he is so righteous
that he must punish sin, and he must punish the sin
of Israel his beloved people not less strictly, but more
strictly than that of other peoples. As a husband
whose wife has gone astray must subject her to
discipline before he can receive her again to his favour,
so Hosea, made a prophet by such a domestic afflic-
tion, contends that Jehovah cannot but deal strictly
with Israel. This theory of the meaning of the im-
pending calamities is supported by the prophets by
those denunciations of the national sins which give
so gloomy a complexion to their works. Among the
national delinquencies the disorganisation and apparent
wilfulness shown in worship have a prominent place.
Worship is not what the service of Jehovah ought to
be. Other beings than he are sought after ; heathenish
festivals are kept, the indecent practices of heathen
worship are introduced into that of Jehovah : there
is no seriousness, no dignity, no worthy order, in the
acts of worship that are done. Any place does for
them, and many of the places used are quite unfit,
from their associations, for the service of Jehovah.
They are celebrated more as wild orgies than as
solemn approaches to the deity.
The interests of the prophets, however, do not centre
in ritual. The worship of other gods than Jehovah, or
the service of Jehovah in unfitting ways, they could
not but denounce, but they have no positive instruc-
tions to give about worship. When the people have
N
194 History of Religion part hi
apparently given up the wrong worships, and are
applying themselves with zeal to that of Jehovah, seek-
ing his favour by austerities, or by costly offerings, the
prophets are no less severe on this line of conduct.
Every one is familiar with the passages in which they
apparently denounce sacrifice altogether as a thing God
has never asked, and by which Israel cannot hope to
win his favour. These passages do not prove that the
prophets desired the entire discontinuance of sacrifice ;
they merely compare sacrifice with another line of
duty which is said to be vastly more important. Not
sacrifice but mercy, not sacrifice but to do justly, and
love mercy, and walk humbly with God, — is the burden
of these utterances. Even more than by the irregu-
larities of worship, the prophets are shocked by the
more directly moral shortcomings of their people.
The people are accused of all the acts that are for-
bidden in the decalogue of Exodus xx., and of many
offences not there named. Especially are the prophets
indignant at the hardheartedness of the rich towards
the poor, and at the frequent disregard of faith and
truth ; oppression and bribery, gluttony and other
luxurious excesses, are frequently their mark. These
most of all are the sins which have called down the
divine judgments ; these are the transgressions which
make it impossible for Jehovah to turn away the
punishment of Israel and of Judah. He is, above all
things, a righteous god, who loves judgment and mercy,
and a people which so manifestly fails to practice
justice and mercy cannot continue to be his people ;
he must destroy them.
The prophets therefore declare that Jehovah has
decided on the rejection of his people. This shows
that they have advanced to a new conception of what
Jehovah is. To them he is something more than the
mere national deity indissolubly linked to the fortunes
of his people, pledged to advance them in the world,
and doomed when they fall to fall himself along with
CHAP. XII Israel
195
them. He is first of all a moral ruler ; the maintenance
and promotion of righteousness is far more to him than
the prosperity of any single people, even of Israel.
He loves Israel it is true ; Israel is his son, whom he
loves, the wife of his youth, the people of his covenant.
But that makes it the more and not the less necessary
that Israel should not be allowed to go on in iniquity.
Jehovah can be no partisan of a people that does
not walk according to his laws. Thus the prophets
have arrived at a new conception of Jehovah's character,
which necessarily unfits him, though they do not yet
see this, for the role of a national god. They have
identified him with the ideal of righteousness and
mercy, and in so doing they have made the great
step, at least in principle, from national to universal
religion, from the religion that is bound up with the
history of one particular people, and cannot pass
beyond them, to the religion which is capable of being
understood by all men, and fit to be preached to all
men of whatever race.
Appearance of Universalism. — To the deeper view
which they have gained of the character of Jehovah
the prophets add a wider and higher view of his
relation to the world, and to the various nations in
it. They frankly state that Jehovah has relations to
other nations than Israel. He might if he had chosen
have taken some other race to be his people ; they
were all at his disposal and he regarded none of them
as hostile. He is not dependent on Israel, and the
inference is clear, that if he could have done without
Israel at first, he could do without Israel still, were
he driven to that. Israel is not indispensable to the
continuance of the true religion. Jehovah indeed has
a position far above that which Israelite national
thought ascribed to him. He is lord not of one nation
only, but of all the nations. He can use any of them
as his instrument when and as he chooses. It is he
who has brought each of them to its present seat, it
196 History of Religion part hi
is he who is directing their movements now. And
for what end does he wield this mighty rule? He is
governing the world not in the interests of one nation
only, but in the interests of righteousness. He is
guiding the destinies of nations so as to bring about
an end which he has fixed, namely the establishment
of a world-wide kingdom of truth. The day is indeed
coming as the Israelites believed when he would hold
a judgment over the world, only let Israel beware
lest that day should be darkness and not light to
them ; it will bring about the punishment of sinners
of whatever race. An end is to be made of sin both
in Israel and in other nations, that a new world may
begin. The position thus given to Jehovah is clearly
one which lifts him high above the rank of a national
deity. The prophets understand with growing clearness
that Jehovah is the creator of the world, and the author
of all the glories, both of the celestial and of the
terrestrial frame. The Maker of the ends of the earth,
and the Governor of all the nations, though he has
chosen to reveal himself to one particular race, cannot
be limited to them. The position of Monotheism has
been attained. The earlier prophets speak of the gods
of other nations as if they really existed, though for
Israel Jehovah is the only god, but by degrees the
advance is made to the position that these beings do
not exist at all, and are simply "vanities" or "nothings."
Instead of saying that Jehovah is the greatest among
the gods, and that there is none like him, these preachers
say that Jehovah alone is god, and that he is the author
of all that exists and of all that takes place in the uni-
verse. A god has been unveiled whom all beings exist
to glorify, and whom all the nations of the earth can
confidently be summoned to praise.
Ethical Monotheism. — These results were reached
gradually : there is a great difference between the
teaching of Amos and that of Jeremiah. And it must
be remembered that they were attained not as other
CHAP. XII Israel 197
monotheisms have been, by philosophical speculation,
but by purely moral ways. It is because Jehovah is
supremely just and holy, that he grows so great. The
justice and holiness which are seen in him are the
strongest of all ; the world exists for nothing else but
to realise them, and everything that stands opposed
to them, whether in Israel or in any other nation,
must go down before them. It is in this way that
the conclusion is reached that Jehovah is the only
God. The moral ideal must be one. The whole of
the religion of the prophets is governed by moral
considerations. God asks from man nothing but
goodness ; the true sacrifices are those of the heart
and conduct. Man's intercourse with God is to be
kept up as that of an affectionate human relationship,
into which no motives either of force or of commerce
enter. Although God is so just and holy, he is perfectly
placable, and ready to greet the approaches which are
made to him. It is absurd to spend so much money
and toil on sacrifice, when the happiest relations with
God can be attained so much more simply. God for-
gives without any sacrifice ; his love and his desire
to meet with love surpass all that human relationships
can show ; his constancy is like that of the returning
seasons, or of the stars. He yearns over Israel as a
father over a wayward son, and will leave nothing
undone that he can do to bring his son back to him.
He will alter all his former plans to bring about that
result. He will change man's nature, and give him a
new heart, if nothing short of that will suffice ; or he
will change his own procedure entirely, and deal with
man not by way of commandments, but by way of
inspiration, placing his law in man's inward part, writing
it in his heart, so that the great union of God and
man may be attained, which he desires.
Individualism of the Prophetic Teaching*.— Here we
must pause to notice another great advance which the
prophets have been led to make in religious knowledge.
igS History of Religion part hi
Their view of Jehovah as a purely moral being, and of
man's relation to him as a moral relation, like that
between two human beings who have to live together,
such as a husband and wife or a father and son, makes
religion less a matter for the people as a body, more a
matter for the individual. When religion is carried on
by public sacrifices and stately festivals and ceremonies,
then it is the people as a whole that transacts with
God, and the individual need feel no great weight of
responsibility in the matter. But if God asks for love,
if he says he does not care for sacrifice, but insists on
love and devotion, and rather than not have it will
work a miracle on man's nature, then the individual
is addressed. Every one who has any love to offer
feels himself appealed to. Only in his own heart can
any one know whether or not God's desire is met ;
every one, therefore, who understands the appeal
becomes personally responsible for the answer, and
religion becomes a matter, not only between God and
the people, but between God and the individual as
well. Personal religion, therefore, makes its appear-
ance among the Jews at this time. Jeremiah carries
on dialogues with God ; prayer is met with, as the
outpouring, not of public needs alone, but of private
feeling ; the soul has learned that it is called to a life
of its own with God, and not merely to a share in the
life of the nation with him.
We have dwelt at some length on the ideas of the
prophets ; not at such length, indeed, as to satisfy any
of those who love their writings, for we have thrown
together in one view what belongs historically to
different centuries, while to the personalities of the
prophets, to their sublime certainty and their stupendous
courage, we have given no attention. We have stated
the outlines also of the great movement of thought in
which advances of such transcendent importance were
made in religion. They are advances which have not
been lost, but which we still enjoy. If it is the gift of
CHAP. XII
Israel 199
the Semitic race to bring the thought of God to bear
on life with such direct practical force as Aryan religion
never by itself exerted, we must look with profound
veneration on those Semitic thinkers who applied this
great force in the service of a God, who has no other
nature and property but that of justice and love.
Religion thus became to them and to all they influenced
an engine for the direct promotion of justice and love
among men ; and we do not think the less of the
prophets that the harvest of which they sowed the seed
could not be reaped in their day.
Prophecy leads to no Immediate Reform. — The
message of the prophets seems at first sight to have
been delivered long before the world was ready for it.
Even the practical measures which can be traced to
their influence are far from being in accordance with
their ideas. The causes of this we have already to
some extent seen. The prophets were not practical
reformers. The amendment they called for was one
to be realised in individual lives rather than in public
policy, and they do not bring forward schemes of re-
form which they urge the people as a whole to adopt ;
they rather fling great ideas upon the mind of their
nation, and leave it to others to find out how practical
effect may be given to their teaching. To the very
end of the Jewish state the prophets and their
sympathisers appear to be in a small minority of their
nation. The people as a whole is unconverted, the
worship of idols goes on, and so does the worship of
other gods, even in the temple at Jerusalem. It has
seemed to some great scholars that Israel, as a whole,
was a heathen people up to the time of the exile, and
still needed to be converted to the religion of Jehovah.
Kuenen shows ^ in a convincing way that this is an
exaggeration, and that people and prophets alike held
the religion of Jehovah to be the true religion of Israel ;
' Hibbert Lectures, li.
200 History of Religix)n part m
but up to the exile that religion was not reformed in
the way the prophets desired.
The Reforms. — Yet the word of Jehovah had not
returned to him void even during this period. A con-
siderable series of reforms are narrated in the histories,
and attested by successive codes of law now embodied
in the Pentateuch. These show that the prophetic ideas
had gained for themselves a strong party among the
people, and that in several reigns the court was under
their influence. These reforms show progress in two
directions. There is a growing desire to make the
worship of Jehovah correspond to the exalted new
conceptions of his character as a being of incomparable
majesty and holiness ; and there is, on the other hand,
a rapid growth of moral sentiment ; justice and kindness
to others are placed more and more in the forefront of
the divine requirements. We can do little more than
name the passages where the details of these matters
may be found. The reforms of Hezekiah ( i Kings xviii.)
did not last long. He destroyed a celebrated image of
Jehovah, a fate which other images may have shared,
and he remodelled the worship of the holy places
throughout Judah, so as to remove its more heathenish
features, and concentrate it on Jehovah alone. Manasseh,
Hezekiah's successor, pursued the opposite policy. In
his reign a large collection of strange cults, some of
them perhaps those of the individual tribes, were
brought back into use ; even the barbarous rite of
human sacrifice was established at Jerusalem, and the
worship of Jehovah became more intense and darker.
The shadow of the Assyrian is upon Israel, and as
generally happens in times of public anxiety, rites long
disused are imagined to have a specially national
character and a peculiar potency, and are fetched back
from oblivion. The reform of Josiah (2 Kings xxii.,
xxiii.) was more thorough-going than that of Hezekiah.
He made an end of all the unseemly worships his pre-
decessor had encouraged at Jerusalem, so that nothing
CHAP. XII
Israel 201
but the direct worship of Jehovah was left. The
strongest step he took, however, was that he attempted
to put an end altogether to the shrines at which local
worship had hitherto been conducted, thus making a
clean sweep of the idolatry of the rural districts. All
this was done, we are told, in accordance with a law-
book which had been found in the temple by certain
high officials, and which, after duly consulting a
prophetess about the matter, Josiah brought into
operation, and solemnly pledged himself and his people
to observe. We are in no doubt as to the nature of
this book. The book of Deuteronomy prescribes just
such reforms as Josiah carried out, and is generally
allowed to have been the written law which was pro-
mulgated on this occasion. Now Deuteronomy, while
incorporating no doubt many old laws, is in spirit and
effect a work of the prophetic school. Its moral teach-
ing and its exhortations to love Jehovah, and to be
true to him alone, are quite in the manner of Jeremiah,
who was living in the reign of Josiah. And the principal
reform of Josiah, namely, the suppression of the local
worships, and the concentration of all worship at the
temple of Jerusalem alone, stands in the forefront 01
the special laws in Deuteronomy. Those who aimed
at the reform of religion, according to the ideas of the
prophets, had thought this out. The worship of the
one supreme God should take place, they had con-
cluded, at one place only, and should be national in
its character ; the whole people should worship the one
God at its capital. Provision was made that this should
not imply the deprivation of the dwellers in country
districts of the use of flesh meat. Formerly, every act
of slaughter was a sacrifice, and it was only in connec-
tion with a sacrifice that this food could be enjoyed.
But in future, animals may be slaughtered at a distance
from Jerusalem for food only, apart from any connection
with sacrifice. The promulgation of Deuteronomy is
an important epoch in the religion of Israel. That
202 History of Religion part hi
work is the first sacred book of Israel ; from this time
forward Israel knows the will of Jehovah, not only from
the prophet's living voice, but from a book which is re-
garded as having divine authority. This principle once
introduced could not fail to develop ; to Deuteronomy
other books were afterwards added as part of the same
law, though in reality they superseded it, and it thus
proved the nucleus of the whole Jewish canon.
Earlier Codes. — Deuteronomy was not the earliest
law drawn up under prophetic influence. Leviticus
xvii. - xxvi. is recognised as being a code by itself,
and is an earlier attempt in the same direction as
Deuteronomy. The decalogue contained in Deutero-
nomy v., identical in the main with that of Exodus xx.,
is of earlier origin than Deuteronomy itself, but is
also a prophetical work. It deals with ritual only to
the extent of removing certain obstacles to a right
worship of God, and places the chief weight of his
requirements in the fulfilment of the natural duties.
An earlier decalogue which deals principally with ritual,
and which contains an early prophetic attempt to free
the worship of Jehov^ah from heathen abuses, is found
in Exodus xxxiv. 10-26. The oldest legislation of all
is the code found in Exodus xx, 22 to xxiii. 33, which
goes by the name of the Book of the Covenant. It
is true that in form and in many of its precepts it is
identical with the Code of Hammurabi (2250 B.C.),
and so bears strong testimony to Babylonian influence.
It is, however, much more humane than that old code,
and in many particulars is independent of it. As it
appears in Exodus it belongs to the times of the early
canonical prophets, and as it scarcely deals with ritual
at all, it shows the just and humane spirit cultivated
by the religion of Jehovah in an agricultural community.
The Exile. — The reformation of Josiah was quickly
undone by his successor on the throne, and there was
no further opportunity for a reform while the people
remained in Palestine. But the exile did not cause
CHAP. XII
Israel 203
the friends of reform to abandon their ideas. The
prophets had foretold the exile, and had maintained
that the religion of Israel would not be destroyed but
rather would be saved by it, and the event proved
that they were right in this point also. The exile
cured the people definitely of idolatry, and gave them
a strong grasp of the idea that they were a peculiar
people, called to a work which no other people could
accomplish or indeed understand, namely to hold aloft
in the world, and for the benefit of the world, the
true religion. This conviction forms the burden of
the prophecy of the Unknown prophet of the exile
(Isaiah xl.-lxvi.). He exalts still more highly than his
predecessors the name and power of Jehovah. He is
the Creator of the ends of the earth, to whom the
nations, including even that great Babylon, are as a
drop of the bucket, to be flung whither one will ; it is
he who has chosen Israel for his people and who now
comforts Israel for the sorrows of the exile. In the
great drama he is unfolding in the earth Israel has a
principal part to play. Israel is called to make known
to the nations who do not know him, the true God. It
had been prophesied before that the heathen nations
would come to Mount Zion to ask counsel of the God
of Judah, and that Jehovah should become law - giver
and judge over them. The Unknown enlarges on this
theme with splendid imagery, and strives to persuade
the people to make this cause their own, and to rise
to the responsibility it involves. Israel is to be a prince,
a leader and commander, of the peoples. The Gentiles
are to come from far bringing their treasures and doing
homage to the people of the true faith. If Israel as
a whole is not fit as yet to discharge this duty for the
world, yet there is an inner Israel, a faithful elect of
the people who sympathise entirely with Jehovah's
purposes and are entirely devoted to his will. This
" Servant of Jehovah," at least, has risen to the height
of his calling ; Jehovah's spirit is in him. He will not
204 History of Religion part hi
fail nor be discouraged till the true religion is established
in the earth. At another part of the prophecy the fate
of the Servant is seen in darker colours. He is subject
to ill-treatment and misrepresentation of all sorts;
even when he is suffering for the sake of others he is
derided and despised ; nay, more, — he is called to suffer
martyrdom, and die for sins not his own. But even
so, the Servant will conquer in the end. He will know
that his sufferings have not been in vain ; he will be
the means of leading many to righteousness and will
be the instrument of Jehovah to bring in the true
religion.
The Return. The Reform of Ezra.— Such utter-
ances could not fail of effect on the nation to whom
they were addressed, and when the Jews came back
to Palestine they were undoubtedly inspired with a
new sense of their peculiar national mission. They at
once proceeded to show that they were to be a people
apart from others, by separating themselves rigorously
and even cruelly from entanglements with the surround-
ing population. They also at once set up the worship
of Jehovah as the sole God who had his one shrine
at Jerusalem. Their early experiences in Palestine
were not encouraging. For a century they remained
a struggling and poor community, and it might seem
doubtful if they would prove strong enough to maintain
their separate position, and to hold up their special
testimony to the world. But at that time the Jews
who had remained in Babylon came to their aid.
These men had never ceased to labour along with
their brethren in Palestine for the advancement of their
nation ; and in particular they had laboured earnestly
at the problem of worship, and the result of their
labours was a religious constitution so rigid in its ideas,
so logically worked out in detail, and so skilfully incor-
porating and appropriating to itself all the past traditions
and usages of the race, that it might almost be said
to be strong enough to stand by itself, and would
CHAP. XII
Israel 205
certainly afford to the people, if they adopted it, the
support and the discipline they needed. This con-
stitution was introduced by Ezra, the priest and scribe,
in the year 444 B.c.,^ when he read in the ears of the
people at Jerusalem (Nehemiah, viii., ix.) the new law
he had brought with him from Babylon fourteen years
before, and had waited all that time to promulgate.
The new law of this period was what is called the
Priestly Code ; it occupies the latter part of Exodus
and a large part of Leviticus and Numbers ; and the
older writings are skilfully interwoven with it, but in
general it may easily be distinguished by its tone from
the work of earlier periods. Deuteronomy, the earliest
law-book, is simply tacked on to it as if it were a
part of the same code, though in reality it is often
inconsistent with the latter law. The result is the
Torah or law, or, as we call it, the Pentateuch, or
the five books of Moses (Moses being regarded by a
convenient fiction as the source of all Jewish laws).
This was thenceforward the law of the Jews.
The Jewish religrion, of which this is the code, is
generally distinguished from the religion of Israel which
prevailed down to the exile ; and several important new
principles undoubtedly make their appearance at this
point. This chapter may fittingly conclude with an
enumeration first of the features of Jewish religious life
connected with the law or the priestly system, and then
of those features of it which lie outside that system.
I. The priestly religion is founded on a sentiment
which forms but little part of the faith of early peoples,
namely the sense of sin. The prophetic denunciations
of Israel's backslidings have at last found entrance, and
the people is found submitting to a system which
implies that the whole of its past history was sinful
and mistaken, and that there is a constant need for
* This date and many features of the story of Ezra and the return have
of late been much questioned. See " Ezra " in Encyclopcedia Biblica. The
account given above follows Wellhausen.
2o6 History of Religion part m
supplicating forgiveness. Every prayer begins with a
long confession of national sin, in which the present
generation also shares. " We have sinned with our
fathers," they say. This view is spread over the
historical books in the sweeping judgments passed on
individual monarchs, on periods of the national life,
and especially on the whole of the Northern Kingdom
(cf Nehemiah ix.). The old confidence in the presence
of Jehovah with his people has now departed. The
earlier Israelites never doubted that Jehovah was in
the midst of them ; that could be taken for granted
except when events proved the contrary. But now
Jehovah has grown greater and more awful, while the
people have become painfully aware of their deficiencies
and cannot assume that he is with them, but must take
steps to secure his presence. This is no doubt con-
nected with the growing sense of an individual position
and responsibility in religion. To the nation or the
tribe it is natural to feel that its cause is just and that
its God is with it ; but the individual, thrown upon his
own inner world for his alliances, is less apt to feel that
confidence. Now the religion preached by the prophets
is essentially one for the individual. Ezekiel especially
felt himself responsible for the fate of individuals, and
laboured to awaken his fellow-countrymen one by one
to a sense of their danger and responsibility ; he taught
that each man had to see to his own salvation, that each
man would receive the fruit of his own acts. All this
tends to a deeper feeling and a more anxious mood in
religion, and helps to explain how the sense of sin, on
which religious progress at its higher stages depends
so much, was fixed so strongly in the Jewish mind.
That the Jews underwent a radical change in their dis-
position is proved by the fact that they submitted to
the yoke of the law : for it may be questioned if any
people ever sacrificed their natural liberty for the sake
of their religion to such an extent as this people did.
2. The divine will is now received by the people in
CHAP. XII Israel 207
the shape of a sacred book. They cease to look for
the living voice of prophecy, and come to think that
God has given them in the Torah a perfect and com-
plete revelation. The book takes the place of the
prophet, and in time also to some extent of conscience.
A man ceases to think for himself what is right and
good, and only asks, What does the law say? It is true
that a great part of the book is taken up with ritual,
with which the ordinary individual has not much to do,
but he also believes that the whole of his own duty is
to be found there in it, as is no doubt the case. We
see from the 119th Psalm how beautiful a form religion
may assume even under these terms, when the book in
question is felt to be a spiritual treasure, and to speak
the words of a living God ; but the system of a book-
religion has in it the germs of very different fruits.
The sacred book is believed to be an exhaustive
directory of conduct ; but to make it apply to the
various cases that arise in practical life it has to be
interpreted, and deductions have to be drawn from it.
It thus comes to give many a direction which does not
appear on the surface. The secondary law, or " tradi-
tion," is thus founded, a system which calls for the
services of a special class of students. The scribes,
who interpret the law and apply it to life, obtain great
influence and become the virtual rulers of the nation.
While no doubt guided in the main by the noble spirit
of their religion, they are led by their system into many
absurdities, and their casuistry even becomes at times
immoral. They afford the classical example of the
results which flow from the doctrine of verbal inspira-
tion, thoroughly worked out ; and the life of the Jews
under them becomes highly unnatural and artificial,
and tends to occupy itself with the husk instead of the
kernel of religion.
3. The principal part of the divine will, as expressed
in the law, is that connected with sacrifice. Sacrifice
occupies the central place in the book, and in the
2o8 History of Religion part hi
history it records. In this book the temple service,
thinly disguised as the service of the tabernacle in the
wilderness, is set forth as the great end and aim for
which God created the world, settled the nations in it,
and called Israel to be a people. The ritual which was
observed from the exile to the destruction of Jerusalem
may be studied in Exodus and Leviticus. We read of
orders and companies of priests who offer daily and other
sacrifices according to a rule in which the smallest details
are carefully arranged, sacrifices in which little of the
old cheerful common meal now lingers, but which are
mostly of a purificatory or piacular character. The
ritual of sacrifice would not appear to an outward
observer to differ very much from that in use among
the Greeks or Romans ; the Jews certainly conducted
it on a larger scale. What end precisely was aimed at
in it, the Jew would have found it perhaps hard to say.
It was done, he would say, because the law so ordered
it, and the law must be obeyed even if one did not quite
understand what was enjoined. The daily sacrifice
removed the impurity of the temple staff, and enabled
the people to be sure that the favour of the deity
continued with them. Many sacrifices aimed at the
removal of particular sins ; thankfulness also was ex-
pressed in them, and other feelings may also have
ascended with the smoke from the altar. To Jews
living at a distance the sacrifice, which could be offered
nowhere but at Jerusalem, was the chief symbol, the
great mystery, of their faith.
4. The notion of holiness is closely connected with
worship. Things and persons are holy which belong
to Jehovah, and are withdrawn from common use.
These it is dangerous to touch unwarily. Jehovah is an
unapproachable being ; the high priest may come into
the innermost part of the temple, but only once a year,
and no one else may come there ; the priests may enter
the Holy Place, but not the people. To speak lightly
of the temple was a crime the Jews could not forgive.
CHAP. XII Israel 209
The Sabbath was the Lord's day ; man must not attend
on it to his own worldly concerns. The deity is sur-
rounded with dread to an unparalleled extent ; all that
belongs to him is to be regarded with awe. Connected
with the notion of holiness is that of purity. In the
later Persian religion the distinction has always to be
anxiously remembered by the believer between what
belongs to the good spirit and what has fallen under
the power of the evil spirit. The Jew, also, who is
called to be holy and separate from other men, lives
in constant dread lest he should touch something
unclean, and so forfeit his own purity. There are
clean animals, and unclean ones which he must not
eat ; various washings of the hands and of domestic
utensils are needed in order to keep up the state of
purity ; many trades involve contact with substances
which make purity almost impossible. Above all, it is
defiling to eat what a heathen has cooked, or to sit
at the same table with heathens. Thus the Jew was
confirmed in the belief of his own superiority to men
of other races ; and was prevented by many barriers
from mingling with them, or even regarding them as
brethren. His circumcision, his Sabbath, his laws of
purity, his peculiarities of diet, the absolute impossi-
bility of his eating along with Gentiles, kept him
separate, and helped to nourish in him the spirit of
haughtiness and exclusiveness. The accepted wor-
shipper of Jehovah is, with the early prophets, the
man who is morally sound, who has curbed his passions
and his selfish impulses ; with the later Jew that may
still be the case, but there are also a number of indis-
pensable preliminaries of which the prophets certainly
did not dream. The man who would go up to the hill
of Jehovah must be one who has not eaten shell-fish or
pork, nor opened his shop on the Sabbath, nor touched
a dead body, nor used a spoon handed to him by a
Gentile without washing it. How all this unfitted the
Jewish people to be a missionary of the pure religion,
O
2IO History of Religion ^art hi
and how adverse the whole Levitical system was to
the earnest apprehension of that reh'gion no less than
to its diffusion, the New Testament amply shows. But
it kept the people separate from the world and constant
to their faith amid even the greatest temptations and
the severest .persecutions, and so enabled them to pre-
serve the precious treasure committed to them till the
time should come when the world was to receive it from
their hands.
Heathenish Elements of Judaism. — In the system
we have sketched, in which the prophetic teaching was
hardened into a ritual and a law, there are various
elements which do not belong to an advanced stage
of religious progress. While the sacrificial ritual, not
outwardly exalted above heathenism, is to some extent
redeemed by the motives which enter into it, the great
system of clean and unclean rests on no rational basis,
and resembles the set of taboos, which no one can
explain, of a savage tribe ; and the reduction of daily
life under a set of minute and troublesome rules, shows
the devotion more than the enlightenment of those
who submitted to it. There was a necessity that the
vessel should be so narrow and so hard which was to
keep the wine of Jewish religion from being mixed
with other liquids, but the vessel itself belongs to the
rude and early world. In the Jewish religion of this
time there are far different elements, which point
forward and not backward, and in which the future
course of religious progress is clearly anticipated. If
his temple ritual was crude, and if his law pursued
him into every one of his actions, the thoughts of the
Jew were free; the truths which were unfolding their
riches in his mind were sufficient compensation for
much outward restraint, and the fair world of imagina-
tion was open to him in which the past clothed itself
with legend and the future with splendid hopes.
Spiritual Elements. — The period after the exile is
that of the composition of the Psalms. Many of these
CHAP, xn Israel 2 1 1
poems may have been written earlier ; many were
undoubtedly written at this time, and the belief gains
ground that the Psalmist came after the prophet, and
adopted for popular use the prophet's ideas. In the
Psalter we hear the thrill of joy and triumph as the
great truths of theism come to be grasped as certainties.
The congregation now utters in song what, when the
prophet first announced it, so i^-^ had courage to
believe, that Jehovah is king, that he rules over the
nations, that he is far above all the gods, nay, that
there is no other God than he. The joy of having
embraced this thought, of having escaped from all
confusion with regard to the powers that rule the
world, and of seeing all things in this splendid light,
finds manifold expression. The believers delight them-
selves anew in the worship of Jehovah, and see fresh
beauties in his courts, and in the service of him there ;
they delight in his word in connection with every part
of their experience. They understand the world as
they never did before, since it is his work, and praise
the Creator as they follow the whole process of creation.
New lights open to them on the history of their race,
new solutions occur to them of the moral difficulties
they have felt, as they saw the wicked prosper and
the good cast down. There is very little about ritual
in the Psalms; it is regarded chiefly as an oiTering of
thanks and praise to Jehovah for his wonderful works,
and for his mercies ; and it is viewed ideally as an
act of homage in which not only the immediate
worshippers, but all nations on the earth may be con-
ceived as taking part. On the other hand, the observ-
ance of Jehovah's moral requirements, and implicit
trust in him while one seeks to do his will, is insisted
on again and again, as the true method to please him,
and to obtain his protection against all dangers. There
are few moods of the religious life that are not repre-
sented in the Psalms : penitence, intellectual perplexity,
domestic sorrow, feebleness, loneliness, the approach of
212 History of Religion part in
death, the excitement of great events, the agony of
persecution, quiet contemplation of nature, each has
its word. The imprecations of some of the Psalms
show a trait of the national character without which
the picture would be incomplete. It may be in part
extenuated by the consideration that in these Psalms
it is the community that speaks, and that the enemy
of the good cause deserves less forbearance than the
private adversary. Whether the Psalms in general
are to be conceived as uttered by the commuuity
rather than as private outpourings, is a question not
yet decided. In either sense the Psalms have been used
and are still used as the hymn-book of Christendom,
as well as of the Jews ; and it will always be a
wonderful feature in the religion of Israel, that so
soon after the truth of the one God was discovered by
the prophets, it received a form of expression which
has proved fitted for the use of every nation in the
world.
The Jews after the exile are in possession of a new
form of religious association which belongs to a
high stage of growth. The temple worship is one in
which the ordinary layman has no part, or only an
occasional part to play. The priest does everything
in it ; even the singing of Psalms is done by choirs
of priests. And the dweller in the country might
rarely be a witness of these great solemnities. But we
know that in the Maccabean period the country was
covered with synagogues : with buildings, that is to
say, where the surrounding population met on the
Sabbath, and perhaps on other days as well, to join
in common prayer, and to hear lessons of Scripture
and exhortations. Some local religious meeting was
necessary ; an earnest people could not do without
it, and the local sacrifices were now of the past. But
the synagogue service marks a great advance in the
religious position of the Jews. They can now meet
without any act or sacrament which they have to do
CHAP. XII
Israel 213
in common, to engage in purely intellectual religious
exercises. The same advance, as we shall see, took
place in Greece about the same time ; what moral or
religious furtherance they wanted, the earnest there
began to seek from the lectures of philosophers. The
synagogue, however, was a territorial institution ; all
the Jews in the neighbourhood came to its services.
It kept them acquainted with the law which otherwise
they might have forgotten, and also with the writings
of the prophets, which were regularly read, and thus
strengthened the bonds which held all Jews together,
in the past history and in the growing hopes of their
race.
The National Hopes. — Judaism becomes more and
more, as befits a faith of which prophets are the
principal exponents, a religion of hope. Debarred by
their subjection under successive heathen powers from
political activity, and keenly aware of their outward
humiliation, the Jews turn to an ideal world in which
they are free. The prophets had spoken of a judgment
in which Jehovah would judge the whole world, of a
happy time when Israel would be at peace from all his
enemies, and God and people would dwell together in
full communion ; and when the land of Israel would
become the religious capital of the world. They had
added to their picture features even more ideal, and
had declared that the conflicts of external nature
would cease, the wild animals would grow tame and
friendly, all physical as well as all moral evil would
disappear. It was in this world, not in a remote
region or in the land beyond death, that all this was
to be realised. Jerusalem is the centre ot the picture
and the Jewish nation stands in the foreground of it
as the chosen people of the God of all the world.
Now these predictions, which with the prophets are
vague and idealised, were taken by the Jews always
more seriously and worked out in detail. After the
prophet comes the apocalyptic writer, such as Daniel
214 History of Religion part m
(the Apocalypse of the New Testament belongs to
the same class of literature), who is able to give
the exact course of the history which is to lead up
to the final judgment, to fix its precise date, and to
give many details of the ultimate state of affairs.
These "revelations," which were written generally to
comfort the Jews in their trials and to encourage them
to steadfastness in persecution, were very popular. It
is true that they nourished the national pride, and
enabled the Jew to feel himself superior to a world
in which he occupied outwardly no great position ;
but on the other hand the hopes they fed were not
necessarily unspiritual ; at the Christian era we find
it to be a mark of the most genuine piety that one
should be "waiting for the redemption of Israel." At
this period the national hope was occupied with the
figure of a Messiah, a God-sent Deliverer, whose coming
was to be the prelude to the establishment of the
divine kingdom. We learn from the Gospels what
various ideas were entertained by the Jews of the
first century about this "coming one," and how little
Jesus Christ was felt to answer to the common
expectation.
A few words must be said of Jewish beliefs concern-
ing the other world. While there are traces of an
old ancestor - worship in the earlier parts of Jewish
history, no belief of the kind had much importance in
Israel, The Jews shared the general belief of the
early world that the dead continued in a shadowy
existence without any power for action. They have
an under-world, Sheol, where the dead are ; Isaiah has
a magnificent description of the dead kings sitting on
thrones together in Sheol and rising up to greet a
newcomer who was a great potentate on earth, with
the words " Art thou also become weak as we ? Art
thou become like unto us ? " The dead are conceived
as continuing in a weak and unsubstantial reflection
of their former selves. They can be fetched up to the
CHAP. XII Israel
215
earth by magic arts to tell the future, but this was
strictly forbidden at a very early time. The Psalms
and other later books contain many plain denials that
man has any continuance to look for after death. The
religion of the Old Testament, as has often been said,
is for this life. God's rewards are to be looked for
before death ; once gone to the grave one can no
more enjoy God's bounty or give him thanks. God's
kingdom of the future is also a kingdom of this
world ; Jerusalem is its capital, and nature is to be
transformed for it. In the later period of Jewish
history, however, the hope of the future which has
been so entirely abandoned, which Job, for example,
in an early chapter puts so peremptorily away from
him, creates itself afresh in a new form. In the time
of Christ the Jews believe, as a matter of course, that
men will rise again. It has been contended that the
Jews derived their later doctrine of a future life from
their contact with Persia, but it is not necessary to
account for it in this way. It arose naturally among
the Jews in more ways than one. The individual
believer like Job, entirely sure of his own innocence,
and feeling that he was doomed to die of his disease
without any vindication in this life, claimed that an
opportunity should be found beyond the grave to
pronounce the sentence which a just God could not
omit to give. In Daniel xii. it is foretold that men
of conspicuous virtue and men of conspicuous wicked-
ness will have a resurrection — the former to share the
glories of the kingdom from which as teachers and
martyrs they could not be wanting, the latter to
receive their punishment. And as prophets who have
been long dead are expected to return to the earth,
the gate of death is not so firmly closed as formerly
and the belief in a future life easily became current.
Thus Judaism comes to be a religion full of con-
tradictions, and could not as a whole pass to other
nations. The temple and the synagogue represent
2i6 History of Religion part iii
opposite principles of worship. The Jew feels him-
self to be entrusted with a world-religion, and yet
shuts himself up in such exclusiveness as to draw
upon himself the hatred of all peoples, and to be
charged in turn with hatred of the human race. A
religion of faith and love consorts with a religion of
rules and limitations. If the faith of Israel was to
fulfil its mission to the world it was necessary that
some one should come who could purge this threshing-
floor, burning the chaff and gathering up the wheat
to be the seed of the progress of mankind.
Books Recommended
The Books of the Old Testament, including the Apocrypha, in the
Revised Version.
The Histories of Israel ; Ewald, Kuenen, Wellhausen, Stade.
Robertson Smith's The Old Testament in the Jewish Church, and
articles in the Encyclopcedia Britannica.
Smend's Alttestamentliche Religionsgeschichte.
Stade, Biblische Theologie des Alten Testaments, 1905.
For a criticism of the critical historians the reader may consult The
Early Religion of Israel, by Prof. James Robertson.
Prof. Valeton, Die Israeliten, in De la Saussaye.
Schiirer, History oj the /ewish People in the Time of Christ, 1885-90.
Kantzsch, " Religion of Israel," in Dictionary of the Bible, vol. v.
E.J. Foakes-Jackson, The Biblical History »f the Hebrews, Second Edition.
CHAPTER XIII
ISLAM
In chronological order Islam stands last of all the great
religions ; it appeared six centuries after Christianity, and
Christian ideas enter into it. It is, however, so essenti-
ally Semitic that it can only be understood aright if
studied in connection with the group now occupying
our attention. In Islam Semitic religion opens its arms
to embrace mankind, and accomplishes, in a fashion,
the destiny to which Judaism was invited, but which
Judaism failed to realise till it was transformed in
Christianity. In Islam Semitic religion is not trans-
formed, but enters in its own stern and uncompromising
character into the position of a universal faith.
This religion sprang up and entered on its career
of conquest with startling suddenness, and even, some
scholars hold, without any natural preparation for its
coming in the country of its birth. The Arabs called
the period before Islam the " time of ignorance " ; in
that period they considered their race had no history ;
the new religion, when it arose, had made a clean sweep
of all that had gone before, and had caused a new world
to begin. The labours of Arabic scholars have, how-
ever, done something to dispel the mists which hung
over early Arabia, and it is possible both to give a
much more satisfactory sketch than formerly of the
earlier religion of the Arabs, and to discern to some
extent the processes which had unconsciously been pre-
paring for the advent of a higher and stronger faith.
217
2i8 History of Religion part m
Arabia before Mahomet. — The Arabs of the central
peninsula in the times before Mahomet were not a
nation but a set of tribes — mostly nomadic, but some
of them settled in cities, who, while united by language,
custom, and traditions, had no central government or
organisation. The desert which they inhabited, as it
admitted no cultivation, kept human life uniform and
unprogressive ; external influences penetrated slowly
into this corner of the world, and society was still
arranged as it had been for thousands of years. The
strongest tie was that of blood. A man's fellow-tribes-
men were bound to avenge his murder ; and so one
slaughter led to another, and from generation to genera-
tion the land was filled with a perpetual series of blood-
feuds. Twice a year, however, a cessation of these
feuds took place ; a month came round in which there
was a universal truce. Men who were enemies then
made the same pilgrimage to a distant shrine ; at such
a time trade caravans could set out and travel in safety ;
and the great markets or festivals then took place,
which, while based at first on religious ideas, had in
most part ceased to have any religious character. Some
of these markets were, at the time of Mahomet, national
occasions : men of every tribe met and came to know
each other there ; the poetry which had been composed
during the preceding months was publicly recited, so
that the rise of a new poet was known to all Arabia ;
the news of all the tribes circulated, and foreign ideas
and doctrines were also to be heard. In proportion as
the face of nature was hard and forbidding, social life
was bright and gay ; wine, women, wit, and war pro-
vided the themes of poets and the ordinary aims of life.
The Old Religion. — It has generally been said that
the Arabs before Islam were irreligious. They them-
selves contrasted the sternness of the new period with
the gaiety of the old one. The truth is, as Wellhausen
has admirably shown,^ that the working religion of the
* Restt Arabischen Heidenthums, p. l88.
CHAP. XIII Islam 219
country had become before the period of Islam entirely
effete, Arab religion was based on the ideas and usages
which have been described in chap, x, of this book ; it
is mainly from Arabia, indeed, that the original character
of Semitic religion is known to us. Each tribe had
its god, whom it regarded as a magnified master or
ruler, and with whom it held communion by sacrifice,
the blood being brought in contact with the god and
the victim devoured by the tribesmen. The god is
represented sometimes by a tree, generally by a stone ;
a piece of fertile land belongs to him, within which the
plants and animals are sacred ; the religious meeting
can be held in no other spot. Hence the Arabs are
said to be stone worshippers ; but the phrase is an
awkward one : what they worshipped was not the stone
but a god connected with it. And the early gods of
Arabia are a motley company ; it is only in their
relations to their worshippers and in the order of the
worship paid them that they have some uniformity.
The greatest and oldest deity of the Arabs is Allat
or Alilat, "the Lady," Like the female deity found
in all primitive Semitic religions, she is a stately and
commanding lady. She is not the wife of a god, nor
are unseemly ideas connected with her. She belongs to
the early world in which motherhood was synonymous
with rule, since the family had no male head ; she has
a character but no history : mythology has not gathered
round her. Arabia has also certain nature-gods. The
stellar deities are mostly female ; there is a male sun-god
Dusares, Heaven is worshipped by some, not the blue but
the rainy heaven, which is a source of blessings. There
are no gods belonging to the region under the earth.
The serpent is the only animal that receives worship.
But the gcods of Arabia belong mostly to another
class than that of nature-gods ; or at least if they ever
were connected with nature, they have parted with such
associations. They are uncouth figures, with vague
legends and miscellaneous attributes. One set of them
2 20 History of Religion part hi
is said to have been worshipped by the contemporaries
of Noah ; they are big men, and it is their property
to drink milk. Hubal was the chief god of Mecca.
It was his property to bring rain. Vadd was a great
man, with two garments, and a sword and spear, bow
and quiver. Jaghuth, "the Helper," was a portable
god, not a stone probably, since he was carried into
battle by his tribe, as the ark was by the Israelites.
Another god is called "the Burner," no doubt from
the sacrifices offered to him. Each tribe has its god
or set of gods, and certain sacred objects connected
with its gods. One god is found by those who kiss
or rub a certain black stone, another in connection with
a white stone, another with a tree. And of many of
them there are images ; the stone has some work done
on it, or there is a wooden block roughly hewn. The
" Caaba " is originally a black stone which is kissed or
rubbed at Mecca. The name was given, however, to
the cube-shaped building, in one of the walls of which
the black stone had been fixed. In this building there
stood in old days images of Abraham and Ishmael,
each with divining arrows in his hand. Of such idols
a large number existed in Mahomet's time, and were
destroyed by him. In some cases the image had a
house, and a person was needed to guard it ; this
functionary also kept some simple apparatus for casting
lots or otherwise obtaining counsel from the deity, and
oaths and vows were made before him, to which the
deity became a witness.
To these beliefs of early Arabia must be added a
lively belief in jinns, spirits who are not gods, since
the gods are above the earth, but the jinn is compelled
to haunt some part of the earth's surface. The jinns
can assume any form they choose, and are often met
with in the shape of serpents. Wellhausen surmises
that the seraphs of the Jews are to be traced to some
such origin. They infest desert places, and are nocturnal
in their habits. What they do is often not observed
CHAP. XIII Islam
221
till afterwards. They spy upon the gods, and may
bring information from above to men whom they haunt
or with whom they are in league. Of the magic of
Arabia, the signs and omens drawn from birds, from
dreams, and other occurrences, it is not necessary to
speak ; and we need only say, in concluding this rough
sketch of the ideas of the early Arabs, that the belief
in a life beyond was very faint ; they set out food for
the dead, whom they professed to think of as still
existing, but the belief, if they entertained it, was
perfunctory and had no influence.
Confusion of Worship. — At the period of Islam the
worship of Arabia had fallen into great confusion. The
gods were stationary, but the tribes wandered ; and
the consequence was that the wandering tribe left its
shrine behind it to be cared for by its successors in
that piece of country, and itself also, when it gained a
new seat, succeeded to the guardianship of a new god.
Thus, on the one hand, the worship of each shrine was
constantly gathering new associations, as each tribe
which had been there left behind it some new legend
or practice ; and on the other hand, pilgrimage became
universal, since each tribe had to pay periodical visits
to its gods whom it had left behind. At Mecca we
read of hundreds of idols ; a hundred tribes have left
there something of their own. Thus Mecca became
a sacred place for tribes far and near, and rose into
national importance ; and the same was the case to a
less degree in other places also. But as this process
went on, it inevitably led to the weakening of religion.
The tie of blood, which was felt always, was a far
stronger thing than the tie of a common worship for
which the tribe had to go to another part of the
country, and to come in contact with a multitude of
other cults. Worship therefore became more and more
a superstition : a thing, that is to say, whose real sacred-
ness was in the past, and which was only kept up
from pious habit; it did not supply the inspiration
2 22 History of Religion part m
of ordinary life nor guide the more active minds among
the people.
We have not yet spoken of Allah, who is understood
to be the god par excellence of Arabia. But for this there
is a good reason. Allah is not, like the other beings
we have spoken of, a historical god, with a legend, a
shrine, a tribe all to himself. He is not a historical
personage, but an idea consolidated, no doubt at an
early period, into a god. Wellhausen traces the rise
of Allah for us in a most interesting way. The name,
he shows, is not a proper name that belonged to one
particular figure in the pantheon of Arabia ; it is the
title which the Arab conferred on his god, whatever
the proper name of that being might be. Whatever
god he worshipped, he called him Allah, Lord ; and
thus every Arabic god was Allah, as every head of a
household has the name of " father " and every monarch
that of " king." And as every tribal god was Allah,
the thought arose, no doubt in very early times, of
one god who was common to the tribes. Language
paved the way for thought ; while the tribal gods were
still believed in and adored, this figure rose above
them — a being who has no special worship of his
own, who does not ask for it nor need it, but who
yet fills, as none of the lesser beings does, the char-
acter of deity. Allah was the god of all the tribes ;
and as his figure grew in the mind of the country, it
was inevitable that the worship of the historical gods
should still further lose its importance, till only the
women and children really cared for it. A mono-
theism of a grave and earnest kind thus made its
way beside the old belief in many gods. Mahomet
found that his fellow-countrymen did not really believe
in the minor gods ; when they were in danger or in
urgent need of any blessing, it was to Allah that they
called. The fall of the idols, when it came about, took
place very easily; they were no longer needed. The
Arabs had come to believe in a grod who dwelt in
CHAP. XIII Tslam 223
heaven and was the creator of the world, who ordained
man's life with an irreversible decree, by whom the
bitter and the sweet, both the hitting of the mark
and the missing it, were alike fixed. The moral char-
acter of Allah was not markedly in advance of that
of his people. What a man gains by robbery he calls
the gift of Allah, while what is gained by industry is
called by another name. Yet Allah is also felt by
some to keep them back from robbery ; he powerfully
upholds the moral standards which have been reached.
He is the defender of strangers, the avenger of treason.
His moral influence is negative, however, rather than
positive. He does not inspire with ideals of good-
ness ; but he holds back from evil. He is not a being
who is ever likely to enter, like the God of the Jews,
into intimate and affectionate relations with men; he
is too abstract and has too little history to be capable
of such unbending ; his religion, when it comes to be
fully formed, will be one of puritans and fanatics rather
than of the meek and lowly. He is the one great
instance of a god without any natural basis who has
come to exercise rule. He is a god of whom reason
can thoroughly approve — no absurd legends cling to
him ; he is from the first great, mighty, and moral ;
and he rules the world in righteousness by inflexible
standards. This religion is coming to the surface even
in the " time of ignorance."
Judaism and Chpistianity in Arabia.— The question
has been much discussed whether the new religion of
Arabia was due to contact with Judaism or with Christi-
anity. Both of these faiths were known in Arabia
before the time of the Prophet. There was a large
Jewish population at Medina, and synagogues existed
in many other places ; and there were Christians in
Arabia, though their Christianity was that only of
small sects and of lonely ascetics, and had failed to
convert the country as a whole. To the Arabs the
Jews were " the people of the Book," the book in the
224 History of Religion part m
traditions of which they also had some share. Ignorant
themselves for the most part of the arts of reading
and writing, and divided among a multitude of petty
worships which they were ceasing to respect, they
looked up with envy to those whose faith had been fixed
for so many ages in a literary standard. But while
the Jews were respected in Arabia, they were far from
popular. The qualities which have drawn down on
them the bitter hatred of modern peoples among whom
they dwell, acted there in the same way ; their pride
and exclusiveness, their keenness in business, their
profession as money - lenders, made them detested in
Arabia as in modern Germany. On the other hand, the
ascetic view of life which the Christians represented
had attractions even for some of the higher minds
among the Arabs. A set of men called " Hanyfs " were
well known in Mahomet's time, who were seeking for
a better religion than the Arab worships afforded, and
a better life than that of eternal feud. The meaning
of the name is controverted ; those to whom it was
applied had not attached themselves to Judaism nor
to Christianity ; they were people in earnest about
religion who had not reached any definite position.
Even where, as with Mahomet himself, the facts of
Judaism and of Christianity were most inaccurately
known, the view of God held in these religions and the
moral standard they set up could not fail to exercise
much influence. If in Arab thought itself a god like
Allah was rising to definite personal character and to
a position of great superiority over the old gods, then
the inner movement was in the same direction as the
influence of older religions from without, and the time
was ripe for a new faith. It was not to be expected
that a people like the Arabs should accept a religion
which had its origin in another country, or which
threatened like Christianity to bring to an end the old
tribal system ; a new growth from within was needed,
and this was ready to appear.
CHAP. XIII Islam 225
The beginnings of most religions are wrapt in
obscurity; but the rise of Islam is known to us with
perfect certainty and in considerable detail. The
only difficulties in the way of understanding it are of
a psychological nature ; we have to account for the
foundation of a religion which spread with lightning
speed over many lands, and which still continues to
spread, by one whose character was in some respects
far from noble, and who was capable of stooping to
compromise and to the darkest treachery in order
to gain his ends. How a religion fitted for many
races and many generations of men could be founded
by a barbarian and by the aid of barbarous means —
that is the problem of this religion. The materials
for solving it lie open before us. The Koran is un-
doubtedly the authentic work of Mahomet himself:
the suras or chapters are arranged in a wrong order,
and if they are read as they stand do not tell any
intelligible story ; but when placed, as has now been
done by scholars,^ in the true historical order, they
show the history of Mahomet's mind with great clear-
ness. After the Koran came the traditions. From
the immense volume of these the industry of the
scholars of Islam as well as others has succeeded in
sifting out what is most to be relied on. In no other
case is the separation of the mythical from the histori-
cal element in the early traditions so easily made, and
the religion comes into view in the full light of day.
Mahomet. Early Life. — Mahomet was bom about
570 A.D., of a family belonging to the Mecca branch
of the Coreish, a powerful tribe, who carried on a
large caravan trade with Syria, and who were the
guardians of the sanctuary which was the central
point of Arabian religion. He entered therefore from
his birth into the centre of the faith of his country.
^ S. Lane - Poole, The Speeches of Mohammad, 1882 ; the most
important parts of the Koran chronologically arranged with a very useful
introduction.
2 26 History of Religion part hi
He was early left an orphan, and was brought up by
relatives, who were kind to him but who were very
poor. He had to make his living at an early age by
herding sheep, an occupation which conduced in his
case, as it has done in others, to contemplation and
thought. In early manhood he entered the service of
Khadija, a rich widow ; and he made journeys in her
affairs to Syria and Palestine, where he may have
seen places famous in Jewish history and may also
have come in contact with Christianity. At the age
of twenty- five he married Khadija, who was fifteen
years older than himself; the marriage was a happy
one, and there were several children. He is described
as a man of middle height, with a fair skin, a pleasant
countenance, and pleasing manners ; and he had proved
his ability in business. Some years after his marriage
he began to think deeply about religious subjects. He
came into connection apparently with some of those
Hanyfs or penitents, mentioned above, who, without
being formed into a sect, were at one in seeking for
a more satisfactory religious position. The religion to
which they were feeling their way was a monotheism,
a service of the one God of Abraham, but not that
of Judaism with its exaltation of the Jewish race, nor
that of Christianity, in which God had a Son for his
companion. Submission to the one God was to them
the essence of religion. "Islam" means submission,
and the "Moslem" is the person who thus submits
himself to the one sole God, whether he be Jew or
Christian or neither. The Hanyfs also held the belief
of the Christians in a coming judgment ; and the
effect of their beliefs on their lives was that they
practised austerities and often retired from the world.
His Religfious Impressions. — Mahomet at this part
of his life began also to withdraw himself, and to go
apart to lonely spots for meditation. What he medi-
tated we see from his sayings and doings afterwards.
The contrast between the pure religion of Allah, as
CHAP. XIII Islam 227
held by the Hanyfs, and the popular reh'gion of Mecca
with which his birth connected him, with its trade
associations, its idols, its unintelligible rites, was
certainly a tremendous one ; and if a judgment was
impending over all but the believers in Allah, it was a
terrible prospect. For many years^ however, Mahomet
was simply a Hanyf. He was one who had sur-
rendered himself, with a tender and impressionable
soul, to the divine will and guidance, and was filled
with the sense of Allah's presence and power, and of
his own accountability to him in the great and
tremendous realities of life. In addition to this, how-
ever, we have to mention a circumstance which is
generally thought to have had a determining influence
in Mahomet's production of Islam. He had a peculiar
temperament ; mental excitement led in him to inner
catastrophes which, whether they are classed under
epilepsy or hysteria, caused him to see visions and
to believe that certain words had been addressed to
him by heavenly visitants. The new religious move-
ment in Arabia had secured an adherent in whom its
teachings would be felt with tremendous intensity, and
would possibly break forth with irresistible force.
The Revelations. — Mahomet was forty years of age
when the thoughts which had long been working
within him burst into open expression. This took
place by means of a vision. An angel appeared to
him as he slept on Mount Hira on one of his nightly
wanderings, and held a scroll before him which he
bade him read. He had not learned to read, but the
angel insisted, and so he read ; and what he read was
the earliest revealed piece of the Koran (sura 96) : —
Read,' in the name of thy Lord who created, created man from
a drop. Read, for thy Lord is the Most High, who hath taught by
the pen, hath taught to man what he knew not. Nay, truly man
walketh in delusion when he deemeth that he sufficeth for himself;
to thy Lord they must all return.
^ Or, Preach ! — loud reading or repetition being the mode of claiming
attention for the divine word.
2 28 History of Religion part m
All men, z>., however they may think, as the Arabs
were given to think, that they need no help but that
of their own right arm, must come before Allah's
judgment and render an account to him : this is the
doctrine by which Mahomet first appealed to his fellow-
countrymen. It is a revelation. Allah teaches it by
sending down a copy of what is written in the Book
in heaven, the " mother of the Book " from which all
revelations, Jewish, Christian, or Mahomet's own, are
alike derived. Mahomet has thus begun to prophesy.
The first outburst of revelation threw him into great
agitation ; he thought he was possessed by a jinn ;
and it tended to his further distress that an interval
of two or three years elapsed before another vision
took place. Then the vision came again. " Rise up
and warn ! " it said to him ; " and thy Lord magnify,
and thy garments purify, and abomination shun, and
grant not favours to gain increase; and wait for thy
Lord." The revelations now began to come in rapid
succession, and Mahomet now believed in his own
inspiration. In this conviction he never wavered after-
wards ; and there can be no doubt that the earlier
revelations were felt by him as if they came from
without and were dictated by a power he could not
resist. His fellow-countrymen naturally took another
view ; like other prophets, Mahomet was said to be
mad and to be possessed by a spirit ; and these
accusations stung him, because he himself had at first
apprehended something of the kind. The later pieces
were of a different character ; he had the power after-
wards of producing a revelation to suit any situation
which arose ; but the contents of the earlier ones were
not unworthy of being revelations, and such he felt
them to be.
His Preaching-.— He preached the new truth at first to
those with whom he was intimate. It was not new but
old ; it was the religion of Abraham that he preached,
that of the Book of which both Jews and Christians
CHAP. XIII
Islam 229
had counterparts ; he did not think of founding a new
religion. He called his own household and his relatives
to submit themselves to Allah, the supreme Lord and
the righteous Judge, before whose judgment they must
soon stand. They were to put away heathen vices and
to practise the duty of regular prayer, of giving alms
without hoping for any advantage from it, and of
temperance. After a time he is encouraged by new
suras to preach publicly, and does so. The Meccans,
however, do not listen to him. The prophet's preaching
acquires by this opposition a sternness it did not possess
at first, and he proceeds to attack the popular worship
in a way fitted to stir up against him the bitterest
hostility. The Meccans hear from him that the religion
to which all Arabia flocks together, and without which
they would do little trade, is not only a vanity but a
thing abhorrent to Allah, and undoubtedly drawing
down damnation on all who partake in it ; and that
their forefathers are unquestionably in hell. Such
preaching could not be tolerated ; Mahomet's friends
are appealed to to stop his mouth, but in vain, and
his fellow-tribesmen, though they do not believe in
him, yet protect him, as the laws of kindred require.
Persecution. — Mahomet suffers as other prophets
have done; he is ridiculed, misjudged, threatened. On
the other hand he has his consolations ; when depressed
he receives encouraging messages from above. His
enemies will perish ; his cause will succeed ; the day
will come when men will flock to his doctrine in crowds.
Persecution, however, is not without effect on him : on
one occasion he attempted to compromise matters with
idolatry ; in a sura recited at the Caaba he allowed
himself to use certain complimentary expressions about
the three daughters of Allah, in whom the Meccans put
their trust. The Meccans were much pleased with this,
but Mahomet had to suffer the reproaches of the
angel Gabriel after he went home, and the concession
was erelong withdrawn. If, as appears likely, the
230 History of Religion part m
compromise had been deliberatelyplanned, a strange light
is thrown on the nature of the revelations at a time
not long after they had begun to flow. But there is
no approach to compromise after this. The position of
the prophet naturally grew worse after this display of
weakness, and the persecution of the townsmen more
embittered ; for two years Mahomet and his followers
were rigorously cut off from intercourse with their
fellow-citizens. On the other hand the prophet's tone
became harder and more sombre as he saw that no
turning back was possible. Never were the terrors of
hell preached with more intensity ; it makes one's blood
run cold to read the denunciations of the Mecca un-
believers, men personally known to the prophet, and
to hear him forecast the words with which they will
be bidden to take their place for ever in the fire.
Personal irritation gives edge to the denunciations of
fanaticism. Examples are sought in Jewish history of
those who rejected prophets, Moses or Noah, and
suffered a prompt and terrible judgment for so doing.
The Meccans were little moved by such threats ; they
had no real belief in a future life, and scoffed at the
idea of a resurrection of the body ; and for this scepticism
also parallels are found by the prophet in history, which
show what fate the doubters may expect.
From reading the Koran we should judge Mahomet
to have been a disagreeable fanatic ; but he also
possessed very different qualities. Those who knew
him best were most devoted to him. His followers
adhered to him with a faith which was proof against
all persecutions ; we find him even ordaining that
slaves who are converts may dissemble their connec-
tion with him in order to avoid the cruel treatment it
drew down on them. Such attachment could only
have been inspired by a noble nature ; his followers
felt him to be indeed a teacher sent by Allah, and
were enthusiastically convinced of the truth of his
doctrine.
CHAP, xiii Islam 231
Trials. He decides to leave Mecca— In spite of this
his position was a precarious and trying one. His wife
Khadija, to whom he had been most faithful, died ; so
did his most powerful protector. The cause, moreover,
was not advancing at Mecca, and was not likely to do
so ; and Mahomet began to consider the propriety of
transferring it to new ground. The first attempt to
do so was not successful; at Taif, where he asked to
be received and to be allowed to preach, he was rudely
repulsed, so that he came back to Mecca in deep dejec-
tion. The new opening which he sought was, however,
about to present itself in another quarter. Among the
visitors to one of the feasts he met a company of
pilgrims from Medina, who both addressed him with
respect and showed that they understood his doctrines.
Medina was well acquainted with Jewish ideas, and
presented a more favourable soil for the prophet to
work on ; it is even suggested that the Arabs of Medina,
having heard of the Jewish expectation of a Messiah,
considered that it would be an advantage for them if
the Messiah should be of their own race, and that
Mahomet might possibly be He. The transference of
the cause to Medina was, however, brought about with
great deliberation. Those who wished Mahomet to
come preached his doctrine at Medina for a year, and
with encouraging success. Pledges were given and
repeated by his friends there, that they would have no
god but Allah, that they would withhold their hands
from what was not their own, that they would flee
fornication, that they would not kill new-born infants,
that they would shun slander, and that they would
obey God's messenger as far as was reasonable : — these
are the practical reforms which Islam at this time
demanded. The result of these proceedings was that
Mahomet advised his followers to go to Medina. He
himself waited till nearly all had gone, and did not
set out till a plot had been laid by his enemies the
Coreish to assassinate him. The Hegira or flight took
232 History of Religion part in
place on i6th June 622 A.D. The flight, not the birth
of the prophet, forms the era of Mohammedan chron-
ology, since it was from the moment of the flight that
Islam entered on its victorious career.
Mahomet at Medina. — From this point onwards the
prophet is seen in a different position and a different
character. At Mecca he is a persecuted, struggling,
and unsuccessful preacher, but at Medina he rapidly
becomes the most powerful person in the common-
wealth. He organises the service of religion, but he
also gives new life to the community in other ways,
terminating its feuds, uniting all its forces in the service
of Allah, and by his decisions in the cases which are
brought to him laying the foundation of a new juris-
prudence. A pure theocracy was set up at Medina,
and he as the prophet was its sole organ and adminis-
trator. In this capacity he displayed consummate
ability. Alike in religious and in civil matters he
showed the most perfect comprehension of his country-
men. He resorted freely to compromise in order to
make his religion and policy suitable to the masses
of his people and to secure their adhesion. In this
way he soon secured for himself an absolute authority.
The new religion thus became the cement by which
a strong commonwealth was formed out of elements
formerly at variance. Mahomet's first care on reaching
Medina was to organise the service of the faith. A
place was built where the congregation could meet for
prayer and exhortation ; the prophet's house beside it,
or rather the apartments of his wives, for he now had
two, and was soon to have more. The mosque, which all
over the world is the local habitation of Islam, may have
been derived from the synagogue or the Christian church.
The service which takes place in it is not a sacrifice, but
consists of intellectual exercises which nourish in the
hearers the spirit of the religion. In the Mosque of
Medina Mahomet taught his converts the practices and
duties which were required of them. He taught this
CHAP. XIII Islam 233
with great precision, and himself set an example how
each exercise was to be done; so that, as Wellhausen
says, the mosque became the exercise ground where
the people were drilled in the requirements of the
new faith. " There the Moslems acquired the esprit de
corps and the rigid discipline which distinguish their
armies."
New Religious Union. — A new bond of union thus took
the place of the old tie of blood, which had been by far
the strongest in Arabia. Every Moslem regarded every
other Moslem as his brother, even though belonging to a
different tribe. The claims of religion came to supersede
all others ; all natural tastes, all family affections, were
taught to yield to them. Within a few years of his
coming to Medina Mahomet had forbidden the use of
wine and the pursuit of art, and had imposed on all
women who adhered to him the use of the veil. In every
way the community was taught to regard itself as
separated from the former life of the country and from
all who did not share the new faith. It was represented
as the duty of believers to fight against all unbelievers :
in this way the universal prevalence of the religion was
to be brought about. The courage of the faithful was
stimulated by the promise of rich booty and by the
assurance that those who fell in battle would go straight
to the joys of Paradise ; and the wars they waged
acquired in consequence a relentless character which
was new in Arabia. They were allowed to fight in the
sacred month, in which ancient custom ordained a uni-
versal truce. They fought with a gloomy determination,
and used their victories with a relentless cruelty, which
excited the consternation and horror of all witnesses.
They did not scruple, as other Arabs did, to fight
against their kinsmen. " Islam has rent all bonds
asunder, Islam has blotted out all treaties," they said,
when reproached with their disregard of old understand-
ings. The prophet himself was foremost in this unrelent-
ing policy. Captives taken in battle were slaughtered ;
2 34 History of Religion part hi
a whole tribe was massacred which had joined the
enemy, and had surrendered after a siege in the hope
of merciful treatment.
Breach with Judaism and Christianity. — As
Mahomet thus freed himself, in spreading the faith of
"the most merciful God," from all considerations of
mercy and of honour, he also shook off, as his position
grew strong, relations which might have proved embar-
rassing with other religions. In his earlier teaching he
speaks of his own religion as being substantially the
same as Judaism and Christianity. All three have "the
Book " ; the Koran is a continuation and supplement of
the Jewish and Christian revelations, and he is only the
last figure in the great line of prophets who had appeared
in these religions. Like other founders, he did not at
first intend to found a new religion, but only to bring to
light again and restore to authority the original truths of
these faiths, which had become obscured. His attitude at
first, therefore, was friendly to both Jews and Christians,
and his friendly feelings for the former were likely to
be strengthened by the circumstances of his coming to
Medina. Not long after his arrival, however, his atti-
tude towards the Jews was changed. His followers had
at first prayed with their faces turned in the direction of
Jerusalem ; but the prophet ordained that this should be
altered, and that they should pray with their faces turned
not towards Jerusalem but towards Mecca. This setting
of a new " kiblah," as it is called, declared that Islam was
a different religion from Judaism, and had an Arab not
a Jewish centre. The hostility to the Jews, of which this
was a symptom, grew more intense ; quarrels were
sought with them which ended in the utter annihilation
of the Jewish power at Medina. From Christianity also
Mahomet was careful to distinguish his religion. The
Christians of Arabia were less tenacious of their faith
than were the Jews, and easily accepted Islam, so that
the hostility was not in this case so intense. The
doctrines of the Trinity and of the Incarnation were of
CHAP. XIII Islam 235
course denounced as intolerable blasphemies against the
sole deity of Allah.
Domestic. — Thehistory of Mahomet during the Medina
period is taken up to some extent with the various
marriages into which he entered, and with the scandals
of his household. On several occasions he produced
revelations to warrant a step in this connection which he
felt to require justification, and the modern reader is
forced to wonder how his credit survived some of those
proceedings. While it is undoubtedly the case that he
did much to improve the position of women in Arabia,
the absence of any high ideal in this matter is very
apparent.
Conquest of Mecca. — In giving his followers a new
kiblah and bidding them turn their faces towards Mecca
at their prayers, Mahomet declared that city to be the
religious capital of Arabia. Though he had left Mecca
in anger, he could not forget or ignore the city which
held this place in his eyes. At first his thoughts of
Mecca were those of vengeance ; he had a score to
settle with the Coreish, who had scorned and persecuted
him, and had driven him forth. For several years there
was war between Medina and the Coreish ; the Moslems
plundered the rich caravans of Mecca ; in the great battle
of Bedr (A.D. 623) Mahomet defeated his enemies and
compelled them to respect and fear him ; and they after-
wards attacked and besieged him at Medina, with no
decisive result. The next step was that Mahomet made
use of the sacred month to attempt a pilgrimage to
Mecca, from which he had been absent for six years
(628) ; and though he was prevented from performing
his devotions at the Caaba on this occasion, the Coreish
found it good to make a treaty with him, thus recog-
nising him as a potentate, and to promise that he
should be allowed to make the pilgrimage on a future
occasion. That pilgrimage took place ; and so quickly
was Mahomet's power increasing in the rest of Arabia
that the Meccans began to feel that they could not long
236 History of Religion part m
resist him. In the year 630 he moved against Mecca
with a large army, and met with but faint opposition.
Mecca fell into his hands. He used his victory nobly :
only four persons were put to death. It was at once
shown that no injury was to be done to the city. The
old worship and its various ceremonies were preserved.
All idols, of course, were destroyed, both those about
the Caaba, of which there are said to have been one
for each day in the year, and those in private houses.
Mecca made the Capital of Islam. — In fact Mecca
gained new importance from this conquest. It was
constituted by the irresistible power of Mahomet the
central sanctuary of the true religion. A year after the
victory Mahomet again visited Mecca, and performed
the pilgrimage with all its rites in his own person,
setting the correct pattern in every detail, which all
pilgrims were to observe in all time coming. Those
who wish to know what the rites of Mecca are, will
find them graphically and minutely described in Captain
Burton's Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Mecca ; that
gallant officer was one of the three Europeans who,
during the nineteenth century, assumed the disguise of
pilgrims and took part in the observances. The kissing
of the sacred black stone in the wall of the Caaba, the
sevenfold circuit of the building, the drinking of the
water of the well Zem-zem, the race from one hill-top to
another in the neighbourhood of Mecca, the throwing of
seven stones at a certain spot, and the sacrifice of an
animal in a certain valley — these form a collection of
rites each of which had probably a separate origin, and
of some of which the original meaning can scarcely be
made out.^ This " block of heathenism " Mahomet made
part of his religion. He could not have abolished it,
and by adopting it in an improved form as a part of his
own system he served himself heir to the national
religious traditions, and acquired for his own religion
the authority of a national faith. "This day have I
* See for this Wellhausen's Rtste aiahischen Heidenthums, pp. 64-98.
CHAP. XIII
Islam 2^,^
appointed your religion unto you," are ^s words after
fixing the forms of the pilgrimage, "and applied Islam
for you to be your religion." Islam adopts the Mecca
rites, and thereby becomes the national religion of
Arabia. Hubal, the chief god of the Caaba, disappears ;
Allah becomes the sole god of the shrine. The legend
that Abraham founded it is put in circulation, and it
is thus connected with the supposed earliest Arabian
religion, the religion before idolatry, the Islam before
Islam. As Paul appeals to the faith of Abraham as
being a Christianity before Christ, so Mahomet claims
the Caaba for the pure worship of Allah in primeval
times. It is sacred henceforth to him alone. The rule
was set up that no idolater should be admitted to the
pilgrimage, and it thus lost its character as a heathen,
and became instead a Moslem, institution.
Spread of Islam. — Mecca once converted, the rest of
Arabia could not long remain outside. There was
reluctance in various places to make the change which
Mahomet now required of all his countrymen. But the
penalty of refusing it was the prophet's wrath, with
its terrible attendants, war and rapine, and none of
the Arabs cared enough for their old gods to brave
such terrors for their sake. The inhabitants of Taif
endeavoured to make terms, so that the change might
be less abrupt. Their ambassadors urged that fornica-
tion, usury, and the use of wine might be allowed them,
but this could not be granted ; the Taifites must accept
the deprivations to which all the Moslems had agreed.
Then they asked that their Rabba, their goddess, might
be spared to them for three years, and as this was refused,
for two years, a year, a month. But the only concession
they could obtain was that they should not be obliged to
destroy their goddess with their own hands. The ancient
paganism, it will be seen, fell easily and without any
tragedy.
Mahomet did not long survive the national acceptance
of his religion ; he died on 8th June 632. But he did
238 History of Religion part iii
not die without having opened up to his followers very
wide views for the future of his cause, and started them
on a career of religious war and conquest which was not
soon to be arrested. From a comparatively early period
of his career he had considered that Islam was destined
to prevail not only in Arabia but in other lands. Start-
ing with the idea that his revelation was only a later
stage of that which had taken place in Judaism and
Christianity, he had advanced to the position that these
were false religions, and his own the only true one.
Wherever he looked in the world he could see no true
religion but his own ; it must therefore take the place of
all others. Accordingly he sent embassies from Medina
to Heraclius the emperor of the East, to the king of
Persia, to the governor of Egypt, and to other potentates,
announcing himself to be the "Prophet of God," and
calling upon them to give up their idolatrous worships
and return to the religion of the one true God. These
embassies had small effect ; but Mahomet was prepared
to take much more forcible measures in order to spread
the faith. War against infidels being one of the stand-
ing duties of the faithful, various regulations were laid
down for the treatment of captives and the disposal of
booty in such wars. God, who is said in every verse to
be forgiving and merciful, encourages the faithful in
such passages to slay and rob, and to make concu-
bines of women taken in sacred wars. At the moment
of his death an expedition, not the first, was ready to
start against the Greek power. It is in this guise that
Islam assumes the role of a universal religion.
The Duties of the Moslem. — The missionary of Islam
requires of his converts nothing very difficult either in
the way of belief or in the way of action. His demands
are brief and precise. They consist of the following five
points : — i. The profession of belief in the unity of God
and the mission of Mahomet. The formula runs: "There
is no God but Allah, and Mahomet is the prophet of
Allah," 2. Prayer. This consists of the repetition of a
CHAP. XIII Islam 239
certain form of words at five separate times each day,
the worshipper standing up with his face towards Mecca.
The mosques are always open for prayer, and there is a
special service on Friday, the day of the week chosen by
Mahomet in contradistinction to the Jewish Sabbath and
the Christian Sunday. 3. Almsgiving. This is done on
a fixed scale, and the contributions were, in Mahomet's
time, devoted to the support of war against infidels.
4. Fasting. This takes place during the month of
Ramadan, and the fast is very strictly observed. 5.
The Hagg or pilgrimage to Mecca.
The Koran is the sacred book of Islam. The name
means "reading"; see p. 227. Like other sacred books,
the Koran is arranged in such an order that he who
reads it as it stands finds it very confused, and fails
to grasp its historical meaning. The claim to divine
inspiration is made in every chapter and every line of
it ; God himself is the speaker. But the divine oracles
refer to very various matters. All sorts of legal
decisions, military orders, injunctions about religious
affairs, legends and speculations, have a place in it.
Of prediction of the future, indeed, there is but one
instance ; the prophet disclaimed the power to work
miracles, and held that no wonders beyond those of
the splendid order of the universe are necessary to
faith ; and similarly he does not pose as a foreteller,
but as an organ of the divine will for the present. As
the ruler of a theocracy, the leader of armies, the judge
in many a civil case, the guardian of the manners of the
people, the officiating minister in public worship, and,
let it also be mentioned, the head of a very peculiar
domestic establishment, he has a hundred matters of
immediate concern to attend to; and when he has
formed his decision on any of these matters, it takes
its place in the Koran. The book thus produced is
far from being an attractive one ; even in the transla-
tion of Professor Palmer^ it can afford pleasure to no
' Sacred Books of the East, vols. vj. and xi.
240 History of Religion part hi
reader. The translation, it is true, loses the poetry
and music of the original, which are highly spoken of;
but the main obstacle to reading the Koran is its want
of arrangement. The earliest suras (chapters ; literally
courses of bricks) stand mostly towards the end of the
collection ; the long ones in the beginning and middle
are later, and many of them are composite : two or
several chapters have been joined into one. When
read in their historical order, the suras can be read
with pleasure by the student as showing the growth
of the prophet's ideas and of his cause. The earliest
ones are short, poetical, and intense. These are the
suras which threw the prophet into such excitement
and distress that his hair turned white. They are full
of the wonders of God in nature and in history, of fiery
denunciation of idolatry, and of fearful threatenings. In
later pieces we come to long legends taken chiefly from
the Jewish Haggadah and the Christian Apocrypha, in
which the prophet displays much ignorance of the
commonest facts of the Bible history ; and as his power
increases and his functions multiply, we come to the
miscellaneous matters spoken of above. The style,
at first poetic and exalted, becomes afterwards prosaic
and diffuse ; it is not the inspired seer who speaks,
but the statesman or the judge; and the placing of
these later utterances in the mouth of God could not
deceive the original hearers. The Koran, like the
Vedas and the Gathas and the Jewish Scriptures, was
exalted in later stages of the religion to the highest con-
ceivable honours ; and one of the greatest controversies
of Islam raged round the question whether it had
existed from eternity and was uncreated.
Islam a Universal Religion. — What is most remark-
able about Islam is the rapidity of its growth. Mahomet
begins life a poor and lowly herdsman, and at his death
bequeaths to his successors a kingdom which he has
formed, and which is shortly to prevail over all its
neighbours. In the same way his doctrine, confined at
CHAP, xiii Islam 241
first to a small circle and bitterly opposed, becomes
within half a century the faith of his nation, and not
only of his nation, but of many other lands. Within
that brief space it has entered on the career of a
national religion, and has also passed beyond the
national into the universal stage, at which only two
other religions have arrived at all. The progress which
Christianity took centuries to accomplish, Islam accom-
plished in so many decades. The title of a universal
religion cannot be denied to it. The truth which it
declared — the doctrine of the unity and the omnipotence
of God, and of the responsibility of every human being
to his Creator and Judge — is one which does not belong
to any particular race of men, but to all men. The
attitude of soul which is called Islam — that of implicit
surrender to the great God, of entire acquiescence in
his decrees and entire obedience to his will — is good
for all. All should be called to take an earnest view
of their life and to realise their deep responsibilities ;
and the idea expressed by the title given to God on
every page of the Koran, " The Merciful and Com-
passionate," that God sympathises with the aspirations
and efforts of his servants, and that they may look up
to him with love as well as fear, is one which all can
understand and feel helpful. Especially at the stage
when the world is given up to idolatry, Islam may well
rank as a universal religion ; when each place has its
idol, each nation its greater idols, religion divides
instead of uniting, and the frivolous and senseless
service of such petty deities prevents men from realising
their solemn obligations to the great God before whom
they are all alike, since he is the Governor and Judge
of all. Islam is an admirable corrective of heathenism ;
it brings the scattered and bewildered worshippers of
idols together in one lofty faith and one simple rule.
The weakness of Islam is that it is not progressive.
Its ideas are bald and poor ; it grew too fast ; its
doctrines and forms were stereotyped at the very out-
Q
242 History of Religion part 111
set of its career, and do not admit of change. Its
morality is that of the stage at which men emerge
from idolatry, and does not advance beyond that stage,
so that it perpetuates institutions and customs which
are a drag on civilisation. Mahomet's Paradise, in
which the warrior is to be ministered to by beauteous
houris (the number of whom is not mentioned), may
not have been an immoral conception in his day; but
it is so now, and apparently cannot be left behind. An
admirable instrument for the discipline of populations
at a low stage of culture, and well fitted to teach them
a certain measure of self- restraint and piety, Islam
cannot carry them on to the higher development of
human life and thought. It is repressive of freedom,
and the reason is that its doctrine is after all no more
than negative. Allah is but a negation of other gods ;
there is no store of positive riches in his character,
he does not sympathise with the manifold growth of
human activity ; the inspiration he affords is a negative
inspiration, an impulse of hostility to what is over
against him, not an impulse to strive after high and
fair ideals. He remains eternally apart upon a frosty
throne ; his voice is heard, but he cannot condescend.
He does not enter into humanity, and therefore cannot
render to humanity the highest services.
Books Recommended
The Life of Mahomet, by Sir W. Muir, 1858.
Mohammed, by Wellhausen, and "The Koran," by Noldeke, in
Encyclopcedia Britannica, vol. xvi.
The Preliminary Discourse prefixed to Sale's Koran ; and Professor
Palmer's Introduction in S. B. E., vol. vi.
Islam, by J, W. H. Stobart, in the "Non-Christian Religious Systems"
Series of the S. P. C.K.
Der Islam, by Houtsma, in De la Saussaye.
Hughes, A Dictionary of Islam (1885, 1896).
Gell, The Faith of Islam, Second Edition, 1896.
Stanley Lane-Poole, The Speeches and Table-talk of Mohammad, 1882; the
most important parts of the Koran, chronologically arranged, with a
very useful introduction.
Margoliouth, Mohammed and the Rise of Islam, 1905.
PART IV
THE ARYAN GROUP
CHAPTER XIV
THE ARYAN RELIGION
The science of language has placed it beyond dispute
that the languages of the leading European peoples
are genealogically related to each other, and that the
languages of India and of Persia also belong to the
same family of speech. The Indo-European languages,
those, namely, of the higher race in India, and of the
Persians, and those of the Greeks, Italians, Celts,
Germans, Slavs, Letts, and Albanians, approach each
other always more nearly as they are traced upwards.
Sanscrit is not the source of these tongues but an older
sister of the group ; the mother language, which the
facts prove to have at one time existed, was a highly-
inflected speech, and is perhaps more nearly represented
by Lettic than by Sanscrit ; but it can now be known
only by a study of the common features of its surviving
children.
The fact that the peoples named above are related
to each other in point of language led at once, when it
was discovered, to the conclusion that they were also of
the same race, and must have come originally from the
same quarter of the world. Where, then, was the early
home of the undivided Aryan ^ race, from which the
swarms first issued which were to conquer and rule the
^ "Aryan" was the name of the conquering race of India. The title
" Indo-European " tells us that the race now dwells in India and in Europe.
" Indo-Germanic " describes the group by its Eastern, and w hat is supposed
to be its principal Western, member.
245
246 History of ReLigion part iv
various lands ? At first it was found in the East ; the
fact that Indian civilisation was much earlier in time
than that of any other Aryan people, naturally suggested
this. Professor Max Miiller described in a very poetical
way how the European as well as the Indian must find
in the East the cradle of his race. From the high
tableland of Asia, it was held, the superior races came
who were to rule nearly the whole of Europe, while
another migration descended towards Persia and the
plains of India.
The theory, however, which placed the home of the
Aryans on the inhospitable steppes, the " high Pamere,"
of Asia, did not long command assent ; and attempts
were made to place that home elsewhere, in the valley
of the Danube, on the south shores of the Baltic, or
even in the Scandinavian peninsula. The conquest, it
is argued, cannot have come from the East ; it is much
more probable that Aryan speech and custom originated
in the West, where it has the larger number of repre-
sentatives, and that it spread eastward. The more
extreme step has also been taken of denying that the
Aryans are related to each other at all in point of race.
Unity of language, it is argued, is no proof of unity of
race — a glance over the British Empire or even the
British Islands is enough to show this. It is main-
tained, therefore, that the relationship of the Aryan
peoples is not one of race but only of language and
of culture ; the word Aryan denotes no more than a
certain type of speech, and of accompanying civilisa-
tion, which spread over all the peoples in question at
a very early time. Aryan language and civilisation
laid hold of a number of races not otherwise related
to each other.
The view, however, still prevails that the various lands
where Aryan speech and culture prevail were settled
from one centre. When society was in the nomadic
stage, it may naturally be presumed that a superior
civilisation which had established itself in any one
CHAP. XIV The Aryan Religion 247
quarter of the world would be carried by wandering
hordes in various directions, and that the bearers of
the new civilisation would become the conquerors and
masters of the countries to which their wanderings led
them. And there is now some agreement on the part
of leading authorities as to the quarter of the world
from which the migrations of the Aryans proceeded.
In the Southern Steppes of Russia, in the great plains
north of the Black Sea, the Caspian, and the Sea of
Aral, there dwelt, we are told, in times far before the
dawn of history, hordes rather than tribes of men, who,
though they had originally spoken the same language,
were coming to differ from each other in speech and
culture. These hordes were peoples in the process of
formation. It was natural to them to wander, and as
each wandered farther from the centre, it came to differ
more markedly from the common type. Some of these
went southwards and eastwards to Persia and India;
others went westward, to conquer and possess the
countries of Europe.^
The Aryan question lies at the threshold of the
history of each of the Aryan peoples, and has to be
met in the study of each of the religions. It must be
confessed that the world now knows less on this point
than it thought it did a generation ago. The difference
between the Semitic and the Aryan spirit is real and
substantial, as will appear from the study of the Aryan
religions, but it is more important as well as more
possible to know these well in their individual char-
acter than to have a correct theory of their historical
relation to each other. The student ought, however, to
be informed as to the course of a deeply interesting
enquiry.
^ Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples ; Schrader and Jevons
(Griffin, 1890). This is the English of Schrader's Sprachvergleichung und
Urgeschichte. Compare Dr. E. Meyer's History of Antiquity, vol. i. book
vi. Dr. Isaac Taylor's Origin of the Aryans gives a compendious account
of the question, concluding against the unity of the Aryans in point of
race.
248 History of Religion part iv
The civilisation of the Aryans was primitive enough.
The following is from Dr. Taylor : —
The undivided Aryans were a pastoral people, who wandered
with their herds as the Hebrew patriarchs wandered in Canaan.
Dogs, cattle, and sheep had been domesticated, but not the pig,
the horse, the goat, or the ass ; and domestic poultry were un-
known. The fibres of certain plants were plaited into mats, but
wool was not woven, and the skins of beasts were scraped with
stone knives, and sewed together into garments with sinews by
the aid of needles of bone, wood, or stone.
Their food consisted of flesh and milk, which was not yet made
into cheese or butter. Mead, prepared from the honey of wild
bees, was the only into.xicating drink, both beer and wine being
unknown. Salt was unknown to the Asiatic branch of the Aryans,
but its use had spread rapidly among the European branches of
the race. In winter they lived in pits dug in the earth and roofed
over with poles covered with turf, or plastered with cow dung.
In summer they lived in rude waggons or in huts made of the
branches of trees. Of metals, native copper may have been beaten
into ornaments, but tools and weapons were mostly of stone.
Bows were made of the wood of the yew, . . . trees were hollowed
out for canoes by stone axes, aided by the use of fire.
According to Hehn, the old or sick were killed, wives were
obtained by purchase or capture, infants were exposed or killed.
After a time, with tillage, came the possession of property, and
established custom grew slowly into law. Their religious ideas
were based on magic and superstitious terrors, the powers of
nature had as yet assumed no anthropomorphic forms, the great
name of Dyaus, which afterwards came to mean God, signified
only the bright sky. They counted on their fingers, but they had
not attained to the idea of any number higher than one hundred.^
These sketches of the early Aryan certainly attest
more vigour than refinement ; and it takes some effort
to realise that those who lived in this way had already
made much progress, and that these early arts and
institutions were full of promise. Savage as the early
Aryan is, he is better than his neighbours, and has
made a good start in the way of civilisation. His
family arrangements, especially, are fitted to survive
and to develop. The early domestic architecture of
the Aryan countries, while it belongs to a much later
^ Origin of ihe Aryans, p. 188.
CHAP XIV The Aryan Religion 249
period, yet gives good evidence that the patriarchal
ideal of the family was part of the common inheritance.
In every country they conquered the Aryans lived in
large patriarchal households. The sons, with their
wives and children, remained under their father's roof,
the father being judge and priest of this domestic
community. We can specify other features of the
society connected with this type of household. As
the family increases and becomes too large to dwell
under one roof, another house is built, in which son
or grandson, with his wife, founds a new family. Thus
a group of families arises, all related to each other by
blood, and in a position of equality, but looking to the
original house as their centre. This type of society
must have been carried to India by the Aryan invaders,
who there set up patriarchal establishments in houses
which are similar in arrangement to those of North
Holland, of Iceland, or of early England. The men
who lived in this way were not agriculturists, they
were shepherds and huntsmen, and when they settled
in a district they were wont to force the former dwellers
in it to till the land for them as their inferiors.^
It is this type of civilisation which overspread the
lands in early times, and by its coming created in
most instances a nev/ world. Some of the Aryan
peoples made more rapid progress than others. They
passed early into the age of metals, and appear before
us at the dawn of history with fully-formed institutions,
which bear the impress of patriarchal ideas. Others
remained longer in the stone age, and only in historic
times received the impulse which caused them to
advance to the rank of nations. The arts and inven-
tions which are found in many or in all of them are
not necessarily a common inheritance from the un-
divided Aryan age. Many of them may have come
into being in each of the lands independently, or one
^ See two recent works by Mr. G. L. Gomme, The Village Community
and Ethnology in Folklore ; also Ilearn's Aryan Household.
250 History of Religion part iv
Aryan people may have borrowed them from another
at a later time. Starting from the common stock of
civilisation, the various races worked it out each in a
way of its own, and often, as we shall see, with wonder-
ful similarities.
Is it possible to give any description of the religion
the Aryans had in common before they developed it
in different ways in their various lands? We can no
longer, following Mr. Max Miiller, look to India to
tell us what was the common Aryan religion. Indian
religion, when we first become acquainted with it, has
already grown into an elaborate priestly system, and
is evidently at a much later stage of Aryan develop-
ment than the rustic cults, with which we have a good
deal of acquaintance, in various European lands. If,
however, we cannot follow the great German scholar
in this, we gladly use his words on another aspect of
the subject, when he is showing the etymological
identity of the chief god of the Aryan peoples.
In his Lectures on the Science of Language, vol. ii. p.
468, he tells us that "Zeus, the most sacred name in
Greek mythology, is the same word as Dyaus in
Sanscrit, Jovis or'ju in Jupiter in Latin, Tiw in Anglo-
Saxon, preserved in Tiwsdeeg, Tuesday, the day of the
Eddie god Tyr ; Zio in old High-German.
"This word was framed," he says, "once and once
only ; it was not borrowed by the Greeks from the
Hindus, nor by the Romans and Germans from the
Greeks. It must have existed before the ancestors of
those primeval races became separate in language and
religion ; before they left their common pastures to
migrate to the right hand and to the left. . . . Here,
then, in this venerable word, we may look for some of
the earliest religious thoughts of our race."^
In this instance etymology admittedly points out
one of the principal features of the common Aryan
religions. But if we hope that etymology will reveal
1 See also Mr. MuUer's Hibbtrt Lectures, and his Biop-afhies of Words.
CHAP. XIV The Aryan Religion 251
to us many further instances of the same kind, and
introduce us to the whole Pantheon of the Aryans,
we shall be disappointed. There are one or two more
cases of etymological agreement between the gods of
India and those of Europe,^ but the agreement is in
some of these cases no more than etymological. The
Tiw or Tyr of the Teutonic mythology does not
correspond in office or character with Zeus or Jupiter,
though the names are etymologically akin. The agree-
ment does not extend to all the religions in question,
nor does it extend in any two religions to all their
gods ; most of the gods of Europe have no parallels
in India. The evidence of etymology, therefore, tells
us but little of that early religion of which we are in
search. But if we consider the views and habits of
the barbarous shepherd-huntsman, who is now seen to
be the typical figure of common Aryanism, we need
not seek long before we find something that was
common to all the Aryan faiths. The patriarchal
household has a religion which belongs to itself, and
which is the working bond of union of its members.
The hearth is its altar, because the forefathers of the
house lie buried under it, or for another reason. These
forefathers certainly are its gods. This hearth-cult has
for its priest the father of the family ; he in his turn will
be gathered to his fathers if he has a legitimate son
to do the last rites for him. No one but members of
the family can partake in the domestic worship, all
unconnected with the family by blood must be kept at
a distance from these rites. This is not a religion in
* The principal are the following : —
1. Dyaus, god of the sky, see above.
2. Sans. Ushas, goddess of dawn ; Gr. tvws ; Lat. aurora; Lith. auszra ;
A.-S. eostra.
3. Sans. Agni, fire, god of fire; Lat. ignis; Lith. ugnis ; O.-S. ogni.
4. Sans. Surya, sun ; Lat. sol ; Gr. r]^\ios, also 2e//>tos ; Cymr. seul.
5. Sans. Mas, moon ; Gr. /ATfivrj ; Lat. mena ; Lith. menu.
Mars = Maruts, Manu = Minos = Mannus, Varuna = Ouranos, and other
equations formerly brought forward, are not now relied on by etymo-
logists.
252 History of Religion part iv
which the individual counts anything for his own sake,
any more than totemistic religion is ; in both it is the
community alone that serves the deity, in the one case,
those acknowledging the same totem, in the second,
those united by blood in the same family. In totemism
the individual sacrifices himself to the tribe ; here he is
nothing apart from his family. Aryan piety is family
religion pure and simple. It fosters sentiments which
have been the strength of Aryan society in all lands.
It makes family life a sacred thing, lends to all domestic
ties the highest sanction, and causes the mere mention
of " hearth and home " to be the strongest incentive to
valour and self-denial. Even in the wild-beast ferocity
with which early men defend their homes against the
intrusion of strangers, the germs of lofty domestic and
patriotic virtues may be seen. Thus ancestor-worship,
which is a part of the very beginnings of human religion,
is a more effective force among the Aryans than any-
where else. In Egypt and China that worship is a
highly artificial thing, and has lost much of its original
force. In Egypt it is the fortunes of the dead that are
most thought of; in China the cult has been smoothed
down and deprived, according to the character of the
people, of its intenser motives. Among the Aryans it
combines actively with strong family feeling, causing
them to cling with an extreme tenacity to their own
gods and their own worship.^
But those of whom we are speaking worshipped other
gods besides those of the household. The second great
characteristic of Aryan religion is its adoration of gods
who are neither local nor tribal, but universal. Dyaus,
the sky, the heaven-god, can be worshipped anywhere ;
so can the earth, so can the heavenly twins, who were
objects of early Aryan religion, so can the sun and
moon. Not that the Aryans always remembered that
^ The comparative absence of ancestor-worship among the Greeks leads
Dr. Schrader to doubt whether their religion is Aryan. The Semites and
the Greeks occupy the same position in this respect (see pp. 166, 290).
CHAP. XIV The Aryan Religion 253
these beings were not local or tribal. The god of
heaven could be the god of a particular place too,
having a special name there ; or he could be appro-
priated by a tribe who gave him a title as their own
particular patron. Each family could have its own
heaven-god as well as its own hearth-god. Nor are
we to think that when they worshipped beings who
could be found in every place, the Aryans overlooked
the sacred places, and the sacred objects worshipped
formerly. They had themselves risen out of savagery,
and still held many of the ideas of savages. Though
they had a few great gods they could still believe in a
large number of smaller ones. The tree, the stream, still
had its spirit for them, the cave or the dark fissure its
bad demon. And many a piece of magic did they
practise, such as the rain-charm which would cause
even the highest god to send what was needed. The
world was well peopled with gods, and to keep on
good terms with them all was, no doubt, a matter that
required much attention and skill.
Other features which have been stated to be character-
istic of Aryan religion are its non-priestly character,
and the fact that its gods are generally arranged in a
monarchical pantheon. But neither of these constitutes
a specific difference of the kind we are in search of.
All primitive religions are non - priestly ; a religion
becomes priestly at a certain stage of its growth,
when it is organised separately from the state. The
monarchical pantheon, too, such as that of Homer and
of the Eddas, is an indication, not of the genius of a
religion, but of its having reached the systematising
stage, and of the political ideas according to which the
system is drawn up. The Aryan religions, it is true,
arrange their gods when the time comes to do so, after
the pattern of an Aryan patriarchal establishment, the
father at the head, his sons and daughters near him, the
servants in attendance, the unorganised host of spirits,
nymphs and elves, outside. But to know the original
254 History of Religion part iv
character of the religion it is less important to ask how
the pantheon is arranged, than what gods are worshipped,
and how they are related to man. And the point which
stands out clearly is that while Semitic religion is purely
tribal and local, there is an element in Aryan religion
which naturally transcends these limits. On Semitic
ground the body with whom the god transacts is the
tribe, the link is that of blood which connects all the
members of the tribe with their divine head or ancestor.
In Aryan religion also blood counts for much. The
family altar is the seat of worship, and he who has been
cast out of his own family cannot worship anywhere.
The family gods are most thought of, no doubt, and
exercise immense power in the ways we have mentioned.
But the worship of which blood is the tie is not to the
Aryan, as to the Semite, the whole of religion. There
are beings aloft as well as beings on the earth and
under the earth, and the worship of these beings is
wider than the family. The family may address Heaven
by a special private name, or at a particular spot, but
Heaven itself was above all these titles and places.
The spirits of the household made, as all the Semitic
gods do, for separation, but the gods above made for
union, and as any community grew, the upper gods, who
were worshipped by all its members alike, became more
lofty and more important. Thus we may agree with
Mr. Gomme when he speaks {Ethnology of Folklore,
p. 68) of the emancipation of the Aryans from the
principle of local worship, and says that the rise of the
conception of gods who could and did accompany the
tribes wheresoever they travelled, was "the greatest
triumph or the Aryan race."
Farther than this it may be dangerous to go in a field
so full of uncertainty. In all Aryan worships there are
sacrifices of various kinds and degrees of importance.
The horse sacrifice appears in several of the nations
as one of distinction, but human sacrifice was most
important of all, though in each of the Aryan lands
CHAP. XIV The Aryan Religion 255
commutations are made for it at a very early stage. The
strife of Aryan with non-Aryan religions gave rise to
many superstitions ; after the conquest the gods of the
latter often became the bad gods or demons of the
former, the ministers of the defeated cult were regarded
as sorcerers or witches, the dethroned gods made many
an attempt to come back to their seats, and to revive
disused practices. But a religion based, as we have
seen the Aryan to be, in the family affections is destined
to rise as civilisation advances. It will be found that
the Aryan draws a less absolute distinction than the
Semite between the human and the divine. To the
Semite God is, broadly speaking, a master, or Lord,
whose word is a command, in regard to whom man is a
subject, a slave. To the Aryan the relation is a freer
one. His god is more human, and art and imagination
can do more in his service.
E. Siecke, Die religion d. Ittdogermanen, 1897.
C. F. Keary, Outlines of Primitivt Belief among the Indo-European
Races, 1882.
CHAPTER XV
THE TEUTONS
The Aryans in Europe. — There is more than one
European people which before it was touched by Roman
civilisation had remained for an indefinite period — a
period to be measured probably rather by millenniums
than by centuries — in the state of society described in
last chapter (p. 249, sqq) as occurring when the Aryans
dwelt among those whom they had conquered. In
various lands alike we meet with the combination of the
patriarchal household with the village, the combination
of agricultural with pastoral life, to which the Aryans
early settled down among non - Aryan populations.
This type of society, which is the basis of feudalism, is
recognised alike in India and in Germany. It stretches
far back into the past, and may even be recognised in
some quarters at the present day.
As with civilisation so with religion. The early faith
of the Slavs, the Celts, and the Teutons is now generally
regarded as best representing that of the Aryans. It
was a religion in which rite and belief were indefinite
and variable compared with those of the later Aryan
faiths of India and of Southern Europe, there being
neither a regular priesthood nor the use of writing to
impart fixity to religious forms. The river, the fountain,
and the aged oak, each had its legend and its observ-
ance of unknown antiquity. The pre- Aryan and the
Aryan elements of religion acted and reacted on each
256
CHAP. XV The Teutons 257
other, the Aryan, no doubt, be'ng the element of pro-
gress, but blending with the other in indistinguishable
mixture. The spirits of ancestors lived in the belief and
the practice of posterity ; a thousand unseen agents in
the sky, and in the earth, and under the earth were
believed in and treated according to tradition, fed or
flouted, bribed or exorcised, as occasion suggested.
New gods appeared, or old ones were combined into
new, or a god migrated from one province to another.
Here also myths and rituals were formed by various
processes. But a more constant growth of belief took
place in connection with some gods as larger social
organisms came into existence, village communities
combining into tribes, tribes into nations. The great
gods of heaven, whatever the history of their early
growth, proved specially fitted to unite together clans
and peoples. These beings received different names in
different countries. Their early history, no doubt, was
not the same in all, yet in each mythology there were
figures and stories which occurred also in others, whether
in consequence of parallel growth out of similar circum-
stances in each land, or from a process of borrowing at
a later time, or from both, we need not try to decide.
We give a short account of the religion of the
Germans. That of the Celts, which may be studied
in the Hibbert Lectures of Professor Rhys,^ or that
of the Slavs (of which there is an excellent short
summary by Mr. W. R. MorfiU in Religious Systems of
the World), would have equally well served the purpose
of exhibiting an Aryan religion at a low stage of
development, and held by a people not thoroughly
compacted into a nation. The religion of the Teutons
has the advantage for our study over these others,
that it remained longer unsuppressed by Christianity,
and in its Scandinavian branch put forth a vigorous
original growth in comparatively recent times. The
^ Lectures on the Oiigin and Growth of Religion as illustrated by Celtic
Heathendom. 1 886.
258 History of Religion part iv
latest paganism which flourished in Europe, it is also
the religion of our ancestors, on which the Christianity
of the Northern lands was grafted, and many a survival
of which may still be recognised in our own land.
It therefore possesses for us even in itself considerable
interest.
Of the ancient Germans, of the dwellers in the basins
of the Rhine and the Danube, we have accounts by
Caesar and by Tacitus.^ After this there is a dearth
of information ; the Christian missionaries to the
Germans thought it their duty to cover the former
beliefs and riles of their converts in oblivion, and
abstained from giving information about them. What
we know is drawn from Church writers. The Eddas
belong to a much more developed stage of Teutonic
life; they tell their own tale, which will be noticed
in its turn.
The early Germans dwelt in scattered settlements
surrounded by the great forests and marshes which
then covered Central Europe. Every one has read the
description of the brave and warlike people of whom
the Romans justly stood so much in awe, and knows
about their fierce blue eyes and their fair hair, their
tall stature, their battle-cries and charges, their hardy
habits and strict morals. As the Roman writers describe
them, they are by no means savages. They do not
live in towns, but migrate from one spot to another,
the community cultivating the land it takes possession
of, on a system of common ownership with rotation of
occupants. The women did the hard work, Tacitus
says ; the men spent their time in the chase and in
fighting. They had an organisation beyond that of the
village, being arranged in what we may call hundreds
and shires, each district having to furnish so many
men for war, electing its own heads and holding meet-
ings for various purposes. Amidst these local and
* Csesar, B. Gall, vi. 21. Tacitus, Ger mania.
CHAP. XV The Tetitons 259
tribal divisions they did not forget that they were a
nation different from other nations, and invasion found
them a united people. The religious expression of
this is to be found in the legend which represents the
three great divisions of the nation as descended alike
from the god Mannus, son of the earth-born Tuisco ;
hymns were sung to the latter as the father of the
German race. It was by hymns that this people
remembered things which were important.
The Early German Gods. — There is a national god,
then ; and other gods of whom Tacitus tells us are
national too, not local or tribal. The tribes to the
south of the Baltic worship Herthus, which, Tacitus
says, is their name for Terra Mater, Mother Earth.
The other gods he mentions are called by Roman
names. They worship Mercury, he says, as their
principal god ; on certain days they worship him with
human sacrifices. They also worship Mars and Hercules
with animal victims ; and a particular tribe, the Suevi,
worship Isis. Caesar says the Germans worship the
sun, and Vulcan, and the moon. Tacitus mentions
other German gods ; the two statements are both true.
Tacitus gives the German gods Roman names accord-
ing to a common practice of antiquity, which has been
the source of much confusion ; we shall see afterwards
how the Romans identified the gods of Greece also
with those of Rome.
The equation which Tacitus gives of the German
gods with Latin ones is still in daily use in the names
of the days of the week. The Romans applied the
names of the planets, which were the names of their
own gods, to the days of the week as early as the first
Christian century ; and in Germany the days were
called after the German gods supposed to answer to
the Roman gods in question. Half Europe to this
day calls the days of the week after the Roman, and
the other half after the German gods. We give the
Latin names with the modern French and over against
26o History of Religion part iv
them the English, in which the names of the German
gods appear more clearly than in modern German : —
Dies Solis, the Sun's day = Sunday. (The French Ditnanche is
from Dominicus, the Lord's Day.)
Dies Lunas (Lundi) = Monday or Moon's day.
Dies Martis (Mardi) = Tuesday, the day of Tiw or Ziu.
Dies Mercurii (Mercredi) = Wednesday, the day of Wodan.
Dies Jovis (Jeudi) = Thursday, the day of Thor. In German this is
Donnersfag-, the day of Donar = Thor.
Dies Veneris (Vendredi) = Friday, the day of Freya.
Dies Saturni retains the Latin god's name in our Saturday. (The
French Samedi is derived from Sabbath.)
These Teutonic names for the days of the week are
common to all the branches of Teutonic speech, and
must have a high antiquity. They tell us what gods
the Germans had in early times, and to what Roman
gods these were believed to correspond ; but it would
be a vain endeavour to attempt to deduce from this,
or indeed from any early information we possess on
the subject, the origin and nature of these gods. From
Grimm's laborious study of the question {Gerjuati
Mythology, vol. i.) we gather that it is a matter mainly
of speculation what it was in Wodan that led the
Romans to identify him with their Mercury. Thor,
who is identified with Jupiter, was probably a sky-god,
while Tiw or Ziu (whom etymology identifies with
Zeus, not Mars) was a god of war, and Freya, like
Venus, had to do with female beauty. We come to
know more of these gods when we find them in the
Eddas, but it is scarcely legitimate to fill in the
South German gods of the first century from the North
German gods of the same names of the eleventh or
twelfth. We reserve, therefore, our description of the
German gods till we come to the Northern mythology.
The Roman writers do not furnish any accurate idea
of the working" religrion of the Germans of their day.
Csesar says they were not so much under the guidance
of priests as the Gauls were, and that they were not
greatly addicted to sacrifice ; neither statement can
CHAP. XV The Teutons 261
be received without scrutiny. Tacitus idealises the
untutored savage as Rousseau does, in order to rebuke
the vices of a luxurious civilisation ; but his statements
of actual facts may be trusted. Knowledge recently
acquired of early forest-cults disposes us to trust him
when he speaks, as he does more than once, of the
peculiar sacredness the Germans attached to woods and
groves. He is idealising when he says, "They did not
confine their gods in walls nor represent them under the
likeness of men, being led thereto by considering the
greatness of the heavenly beings." A few centuries
later at least we find Christian bishops busy destroying
temples of German heathenism and burning images
found in them. Undoubtedly, however, the great
sanctuary of a district was frequently, as he represents,
in the recesses of a wood. Under a mighty tree a tribe
would hold its meetings and sit in judgment and in
council ; and there were sacred groves in which no
human foot might stray, where the god was supposed
to dwell, where great sacrifices both of animal and of
human victims took place, where the boughs were hung
with the bones of former sacrifices which in war were
carried forth at the head of the tribe as its sacred
standards. This was done by the priests, who accom-
panied the host to battle, and were charged at such
a time with the infliction of all necessary punishments,
since they represented the god who was supposed to be
personally present as commander. The priests had to
work the auguries when consulted on matters of state ;
on private matters the paterfamilias might do this
himself The priests also had charge of the sacred
white horses, by whose neighing the will of the deity
became known. Several women are also mentioned as
having enjoyed the reputation of sacred personages ;
and " even in their wives they considered that there
was a certain holiness and inspiration."
To judge from Tacitus and from other writers of the
first Christian centuries, there was little system in the
262 History of Religion part iv
religion of Germany in those days ; the gods were not
organised in a divine family, the priests were not a caste
like the Druids of France and Britain, and religious
practice was loose and variable. It must also be
remembered that what foreign writers reported on the
subject was connected rather with national and official
cults than with popular local observances. Of the
latter there was an abundant growth ; a distinguished
foreign writer might not know about it, but the evidence
of it survives in various forms which are only now being
seriously studied. To know the practical religion of
early Germany we have to consult the village festival
and legend (as has been done by Mannhardt m his
Wald- und Feld-kulte and Mr. Frazer in The Golden
Boughy and many a student of folklore), which, though
now apparently meaningless, were once the serious
religious observance and doctrine of the peasantry.
The peasant carried his wishes and prayers to the
familiar wishing-well, and presented offerings to the
spirit of the well by throwing them into the water
or hanging them on the surrounding trees. The fairy
rather than far - off Wodan was looked to for good
fortune ; the rite of the fabulous village hero, with its
quaint immemorial usages, roused more enthusiasm
than the stately public ceremonial. Another side of the
mind of early Germany is to be gathered from the heroic
legends and the fairy tales, many of the elements of which,
we are assured, were even then in existence. Were
these legends formed by a process of degradation ; did
they begin with telling about the gods, and were they
afterwards applied to heroes and princes and common
men? Or was the process in the opposite direction
from this ; were the stories, first of all, those of human
warriors, their wars and loves, and did they then become
mixed up with solar and celestial ideas ? Were the
fairy tales originally stories of the gods, and did they
by popular and familiar treatment fall below the dignity
of their oiginal themes till they came to be a debased and
CHAP. XV The Teutons 263
broken-down mythology? or were they at first stories
about beasts and about clever tricks, such as savages
love to tell, and did they rise to something more
dignified, till in some of them we may trace the stories
of the gods ? It is not necessary that we should answer
these questions, which carry us back to an earlier time
than that with which we are concerned ; but any one
who knows the tales, and will try to realise the state of
mind of those who received them not as fancy but as
serious fact, will know something of the religion of
early Germany ; of the strange beings, fairies, dwarfs,
magicians, talking animals, animated sun and moon
and winds, by which the German believed himself to
be surrounded.
Later German Relig-ion. — In Southern Germany the
introduction of Christianity early put an end to any
development of Teutonic religion which might have
taken place there. The old faith, however, still main-
tained itself in more Northern latitudes. It was brought
to Britain by the German invaders, continued there
till the seventh century, and was brought in again in a
more Northern form by the Norsemen, who in their
turn " gradually deserted Thor and Odin for the white
Christ.'" 1 Bede tells hardly anything of the paganism
which had been the religion of England a century
before he wrote ; in this he is like other Christian
teachers who might have told but did not. But though
it came to an end in England, Teutonic religion con-
tinued to prevail in the countries from which the
invaders had come. In Frisia in the eighth century
we hear of a goddess Hulda, a kind goddess, as her
name implies, who sends increase to plants and is a
patroness of fishing. A god called Fosete, or Forsete
(Forseti in modern Icelandic = chairman), identified both
with Odin and with Balder, was worshipped in Heligo-
land ; he had a sacred well there, from which water had
to be drawn in silence. There are temples, often in the
^ Kingsley's Hereward the Wake.
264 History of Religion part iv
middle of a wood, with priestly incumbents, and rich
endowments, both of lands and treasure ; and human
sacrifice in various forms is said to have been in use.
Idols are mentioned, even (at Upsala in Sweden) a
trinity of idols ; but this is what Church writers would
naturally impute to heathens, and the statement is
discredited. No Teutonic idol has survived ; the loss
to art may not be great, but such a relic would have
settled the controversy.
Iceland. — Teutonic paganism reached its highest
development in Iceland. Of this branch of it alone is
there a literature, for many of the sagas are the fruit of
a literary movement in Iceland anterior to the establish-
ment of Christianity ; and the historian Ari, who wrote
within a century after that event, gives careful informa-
tion of the earlier state of affairs. The reader of Burnt
Nj'al sees that among the Icelanders life was short
and precarious. With the spirit of adventure, which
led them to be constantly setting out on warlike and
piratical expeditions, they combined a strong tendency
to local quarrels, which filled up their life at home with
a constant series of blood-feuds. These latter are gone
about in a methodical and business-like way ; custom
sanctions them, the meetings of the popular assembly
do not seek to suppress or punish them if only they
are conducted according to the rules. No public
authority had as yet arisen to carry out the law between
one household and another ; the avenger has his
recognised place and duty. Society is patriarchal as
in other Aryan communities ; each family is a com-
munity of blood-kindred for mutual defence and also
for worship. The leading cult of Icelandic religion
was the domestic worship of ancestors, conducted by
the head of the household. The dead were buried in
knolls or burrows near the dwelling, and their spirits
were thought to inhabit these places ; they are said to
"die into the hill." Altars are erected and sacrifices
offered there ; the blood of the victim poured out upon
CHAP. XV The Teutons 265
the ground is supposed to be enjoyed by them. These
knolls became the sacred places of their district, and
many a belief existed about these quiet neighbours and
the help they afforded to the living. " Elves " they were
called, and they were thought of as a cleanly and kindly
race. The spirits of bad men, on the contrary, lived an
uneasy life, as demons, and were the workers of mischief
Along with this belief in the spirits of the dead as
inhabiting the burial hill of the household, there is
another conception, namely, that the dead go to a
distant region of the unseen world. In Homer also
these two conceptions are combined. The Icelandic
burial rites are founded on the latter view. The
" departed " is going on a long journey, and his friends
escort him as far as they can ; shoes are bound on
his feet, the Hel-shoes, for Hel is the name of the
region of the dead. Gifts are given to him ; horses,
male and female attendants, hawks and hounds, are
burned with him on the pyre, and his wife voluntarily
accompanies him ; all these he is to have with him
in the country beyond.
In addition to the domestic cult we have that of
local objects; holy wells, waterfalls, groves, stones are
worshipped. Mother Earth is called on, so is Thunder,
so is Heaven. But besides these minor worships there
is the public one, connected with a large tribe or with
a king's court. A temple on the same plan as a large
dwelling-house forms a place of meeting and of sacrifice,
an asylum, and a place of oaths and covenants. On
a table in front of the high seat stands the bowl which,
filled with blood and along with certain sticks, forms
a means of divination. A gold ring also lies there,
which a man puts on when he is about to swear an
oath, and which the priest puts on at meetings.
The priest has the duty of keeping up the building
and property of the temple and of maintaining the
sacrifices. At the latter various rites are done with
the blood of victims, and those present feast on the
266 History of Religion part iv
flesh and drink toasts. The first cup is for Wodan,
various other gods are celebrated, and there is a cup
of remembrance for the departed. Sacrifices are offered
for the crops, for victory, for any great object on which
the community is bent. In this ritual there is no
evidence of any idols. Though the Icelanders are not
without art, the great gods have not yet perhaps
assumed to their minds such definite figures as to be
thus set forth : no Homer has placed them clear before
the inward eye. The rites are bloody, the altar has
ever anew to be made to shine with the blood of
victims. Human sacrifices are only resorted to in
times of great common danger, as a terrible last resort ;
the god to whom the human victim is devoted is moved
by the bloodshed to avert his anger, or to make greater
exertions for his people. Bloodshed forms the strongest
of all bonds. To link themselves together in an indis-
soluble brotherhood, two friends mingle their blood on
the ground and then each of them treads on it. The
shedding of human blood at the launching of a ship
or at the laying of the foundation of a building is
also known. Savage and cruel as this religion is,
there are signs that it is softening, and that some of
its darker rites are beginning to admit of commutation.
When Christianity approaches, the Icelanders feel that
it must make a great change, and that some of the
cruelties which they regard as the good old customs, will
have to be laid aside. We hear of the stipulation
being made that if they receive baptism they shall
not be required to give up the removal of unpromising
children nor the eating of horseflesh.
The Eddas, in which Scandinavian mythology reaches
its ultimate form, seem to belong to a higher plane of
human life than the religion we have described, and
it has appeared to many scholars of late years that
they cannot be regarded as a pure product of paganism,
but are in great part influenced by Christianity both
in matter and in sentiment. The older Edda, written
CHAP. XV The Teutons 267
in verse, is said to have been collected by Ssemund
Sigfusson the learned, one of the early Christian priests
of Iceland, who lived about the eleventh century. The
other Edda is in prose ; it is a collection made about
two centuries later. The form given to the myths in
these collections is due to the Skalds, who flourished
in Iceland in the early Middle Ages ; but the legends
themselves are older. Nothing is known precisely
about their origin or early diffusion.
The Eddas may be compared in many respects
with the Homeric poems. As in the latter, the gods
form a family, the members of which come together
to a certain place for meetings, while individually they
have their own adventures, their loves, their jealousies,
their jokes, their tricks. In the Eddas too we find
that the gods are not, strictly speaking, eternal ; they
succeeded an older race of gods, and their turn too
may come to pass away. They are called .^sir, which
is the plural of As. The etymology of this is un-
certain ; compare the Sanscrit Asura, said to mean
the living or breathing one. The ^Esir are spoken of
in later times, not in the Eddas, as if they had been
a race of warriors ; they are said to have come in to
Scandinavia and got the better of those who lived
there before, because they worshipped a superior set
of gods.^ An historic reminiscence may lurk here.
Before the ^Esir there were giants, and the earth with
all its parts is made of the body of one of these
giants,2 whom the new race superseded as governors
of the world. But the giants are still there and their
spirit is unchanged ; there is a danger of their interfer-
ing to subvert the rule of their successors.
There are other cosmogonic myths besides that of
the division of the giant Ymir. One is on this wise.
Ere this world began, there was on one side Niflheim,
the land of mist and cold, on the other side Muspelheim,
^ See a similar statement about the Incas, p. 87.
^ Compare ' ' Purusha " in the Rigveda.
2 68 History of Religion part iv
the region of fire ; between these two lay Ginnunga-
gap, the north side of it frozen, the south side glowing
hot, and life originated by the meeting, in one way
or another, of the heat and cold. There are very
primitive myths of the shaping of man out of two
pieces of wood, of Night and Day as drivers of chariots
and horses, of the sun and moon fleeing from wolves,
and so on. A more poetic conception is the division
of the world into Asgard, the garden of the iEsir;
Midgard, the world of man ; and Utgard, the world
outside. In the first Odin has his seat Hlidskjalf;
when he sits m it he can see and understand what-
ever is happening in any part of the broad world (is
he the sun, then ?). The third region is generally
called Jotunheim, the home of the giants, an icy region
at the extreme part of the habitable world. A bridge
exists from the dwelling of men to that of the gods ;
it is called Bifrost, and is the rainbow.
The gods have various places of meeting ; but their
principal seat is under a great tree, the ash. Yggdrasil ^
is a tree worthy of the gods ; it is a world-tree ; its
roots extend to all the worlds ; its branches spread
even over heaven. Under it is the fountain Mimir,
spring of wisdon?,, from which Odin drinks daily.
Near it is the dwelling of the Norns, fates or weird
sisters, who establish laws and uphold them by their
judgments, and allot to every man his span of life.
They are named Urd the past, Verdandi the present,
and Skuld the future. Daily do they water the ash
from the spring to keep its leaves fresh, and help it
to contend with its numerous foes, for a great serpent
is continually gnawing at its root, and it has also other
troubles. This myth of Yggdrasil is the apotheosis of
Teutonic tree-worship, and is richly suggestive.^
The Gods of the Eddas. — We now come to the gods
' Yggdrasill = Odin's horse = the gallows. Is it the cross ?
' Carlyle in his Heroes, p. i8, draws out the spiritual significance of
it and of Norse mythology generally.
CHAP. XV The Teutons 269
of the system. Odin is in the Eddas the founder of the
world as now constituted. He has displaced the old
formless race of gods, and is the leader of a new and
vigorous race now ruling in their stead. The old
scholars rationalised Odin into a chief who had led a
migration from Asia to Norway in early times. He is
the inventor of the art of writing by runes and the
founder of poetry ; thus he has the aspect of a culture-
hero ; that is to say, of a man of advanced views who,
for the benefits he conferred on his people, was exalted
first to a hero and then to a god. But the worship of
Odin or Wodan is one of the earliest things we know
about the German race. He is the god of the South-
Germans from the very first. His earliest character is
that of a storm-god. Whether his name is connected
with the German wiithen, rage (Scot, wud) or with the
Vedic Vata, who is a god of storm, he is from the first
an impetuous being. The early myth of him is scarcely
dead at this day ; the peasant hears him rushing through
the woods at night. That is the " wild hunt of Wodan,"
he says ; the god is out with his followers, and woe to
him who gets in his way ! The early Germans thought
of him as a kind being who fulfilled the wishes of men,
and it was probably this side of his character that
caused him to be identified with Mercury. In the
Eddie theology he is a patron of war, as becomes the
chief god of a warlike people. He arranges battle and
dispenses victory ; the heroes who fall in battle he
receives into his heavenly army ; they live with him in
Valhalla or Valholl, the hall of choice. Odin chooses
those who are to go there ; he is assisted in this by the
Valkyries or choice - maidens. Life in Valhalla is a
constant round of fighting, the wounds of which are
healed at once, and feasting, the materials for which
are ever renewed. Odin, like other great gods, bears
traces of low surroundings, as if he had once lived
among savages. He can turn himself into an eagle or
other animal to gain his object, and he has engaged in
270 History of Religion part iv
disreputable adventures. But he tends to improve, and
the Eddas show him at his best. Here he is called the
All-father, the Ruler of all, who gave man a soul that
shall never perish ; and we hear that he needs no food
and takes no share himself in the feasts of the heroes.
All the righteous shall be with him in Vingolf (the
same as Valhalla), but the wicked shall go to Hel, the
kingdom of Hel or Hela, the goddess of the under-
world.
Thor or Donar, Thunder, is said to be the mightiest
of the gods; he is identified, as we saw, with Jove, but
he is a rougher and more primitive deity. He drives in
a chariot drawn by two goats, and is possessed of three
things which have wonderful properties. The first is
the hammer Mjolnir, which the Frost- and Mountain-
giants cannot resist when he throws it ; the second is
the belt of strength, which makes him twice as strong
when he puts it on ; and the third a pair of gauntlets
with which he grasps his mallet. Many stories are told
of his prowess, of his conflicts with the giants, who,
however, give him a good deal of trouble with their
cunning ; and of his catching the Midgard serpent
which surrounds the world at the bottom of the sea.
Being a god of storm, he forms a connection with
agriculture, and thus gains a more sedate aspect ; he
has also to do with marriage, and a hammer is used
symbolically at Icelandic weddings. Thor is only half-
brother to the other sons of Odin ; his mother was
Fiorgyn, the earth ; the worships of Odin and Thor,
originally distinct, seem to have been united at an early
period.
The god Typ, son of Odin by a giantess, is the
Eddie figure of the German Tiw or Ziu, etymologically
equivalent to Zeus or Jupiter, but identified by the
Romans with Mars. His greatness belongs to early
times ; he was then a sword-god, and had an extensive
worship in various parts of Europe. In the Eddas he
has scarcely any character, and seldom takes a prominent
CHAP. XV The Teutons 271
part in the legend. Loki, by etymology a fire-god
(Germ. Lohe, Scot. Lowe)} is in one account the brother
of Odin, in another his son by a giantess. His character
is fitful ; sometimes he acts a brotherly part by the gods
and helps them out of their difficulties by clever devices,
and sometimes he provides entertainment for them ; but
for the most part he is an embodiment of cunning and
mischief; his course is downwards, he tends to become
a being purely evil, setting himself heartlessly against
the wishes of the other gods, and acting so as to imperil
them and their world till they are obliged to cast him
out of heaven. He is thus a kind of Lucifer or Satan,
and like the Christian devil, his ultimate fate is to be
bound till the end of the world shall arrive. Baldup,
the son of Odin and Frigga, is the best and brightest
of the gods. Like Apollo, he has to do with light, and
no pollution can come near him ; he has also to do with
the administration of justice, and pronounces sentences
which can never be reversed, Heimdall also is a light
and gracious god ; he is the warder of the .^sir, and
stays near the bridge Bifrost. Of him it is told that he
wants less sleep than a bird, sees a hundred miles off by
night or day, and hears the grass grow on the ground
and the wool on the sheep's back. Brag"! is the god of
poetry and eloquence, the best of all skalds.
Of the goddesses, Frig'g'a, wife of Odin, stands first,
an august matron of mysterious knowledge, whom even
gods consult, and by whom men swear ; she has also
to do with marriage, and the childless appeal to her.
Etymologically she is scarcely to be distinguished from
Freya, wife of Odur, who, however, is lighter in character,
and is rather a goddess of love. The goddesses in the
Eddas are more shadowy figures than the gods ; there
are others, and an attempt is made to reckon up twelve
of them to answer to the twelve chief gods, but their
^ The etymology is not perhaps coriect, but it suggested itself and
influenced the view taken of this god, in very early times.
272 History of Religion part iv
names are taken from the qualities they represent, and
they have Httle reality.
The story of the death of Baldur, brought about by
the evil mind of Loki in defiance of the whole divine
family, sounds the note of tragedy in the divine family
of the Eddas. The gods themselves suffer, and are
unable to retrieve the misfortune which has come upon
them. With one accord they try to get Baldur brought
back from the under-world, but they are foiled by the
same agency of evil which carried him off. With the
death of Baldur the gods feel that their rule, which, we
saw, had a beginning, and with it the world they govern,
for the two are inseparably bound up with each other,
is coming to an end. The gods perish in the ruin of
the world ; and this is well, for sin cleaves to them
and to their house, and they are not fit to endure.
Ragnarok, the twilight of the gods, comes on ; the
universe is burnt up in a mighty conflagration, and
while there are abodes of bliss and abodes of misery
where some survive, the universe as a whole is entirely
changed, and a milder race of gods will rule over a
better world.
If this mythology were found to be of native Scandi-
navian growth, it would prove that Teutonic religion
was capable of lofty development, and would throw
back an interesting light upon its previous history.
Here, it has been maintained, we see the Teutonic faith
rising to monotheism. Odin has among his other titles
that of All-father ; he is rising above the other gods
to a position of supremacy, which will fit him, if the
process were allowed, as it was not, to advance some-
what further, to represent pure deity and to attract to
himself an undivided reverence. Here also we find a
religion which was formerly a rude intercourse between
barbarous men and savage gods, clothing itself with an
ideal element. As the Greeks found religion in beauty
and the Romans in utility, so did the Germans find it
at last in pathos. They attain to the conception of
CHAP. XV The Teutons 273
suffering deity ; in Baldur a god falls victim to malice
and wickedness, and the sorrow of his fall takes pos-
session of the whole of heaven. Thus pain and sacrifice
are hallowed, for man by the history of the gods, and
his intercourse with them leads him into heights and
depths unknown before.
But the conviction is now establishing itself that this
phase of Teutonic religion is borrowed from Christianity,
which was then seriously menacing the existence of the
old faith, and that it is the shadow of their approaching
extinction by the new religion, which occasions among
the Northern gods this feeling of sadness. They feel
themselves falling from their position ; they are to be
gods no longer, but are to yield to the world-order,
based on a deeper law than theirs, which called them
into being and now is preparing their dismissal. Dis-
tinctly Christian ideas enter the old world of gods ;
the ideas of sin, of sacrifice, of a final judgment, of a
good god who dies, of an evil spirit who, after prevailing
for a time, is chained up to await his doom. That a
sense of guilt rests on the gods shows that they are
abandoning their rule, and they acknowledge that their
successors will be better than they have been.
Books Recommended
Giimm's German Mythology, translated by Stallybrass, 4 vols.
,, Fairy Tales. Mr. Lang writes an Introduction to the English
translation in Bell's edition.
Mannhardt, Germanische Mythen, 1858, and Wald- nnd Feld-kulte,
1S75, 77.
For the later Northern section, Vigfusson and Powell's Corpus Poeticunt
Boreale, especially the Excursus on Religion, i. 401.
Dasent, Burnt Njal ; or Life in Iceland at the end of the tenth century.
Mallet's Northern Antiquities.
Thorpe, Northern Mythology.
De la Saussaye, The Religion of the Teutons, 1902, the most compre-
hensive statement of the whole subject.
Ralston, Songs of Russian People, and Russian Folk Tales.
Simrock, Handb. der deutschen Mythologie.
R. M. Meyer, Altgermattische Religionsgeschichie, 1910.
Sir John Rhys, Oxford Proceedings, p. 201, sqq.
CHAPTER XVI
GREECE
The history of Europe begins in Greece. It is there
that the Aryans in Europe first feel the touch of the
arts and civilisation of the East, and are stirred up to
new activities ; and the life thus quickened in Greece
transmitted its spark to Italy, and so to the whole of
Europe.
People and Land. — There is no direct evidence that
the Greeks came to their country from elsewhere ; and
the theory of a Graeco-Italic period, in which the future
inhabitants of Greece and Italy lived together some-
where to the north of both these countries and made
common advances in civilisation, is now abandoned.
There are, however, faint indications that the Greeks
spread over their country from the north southwards.
What people dwelt in it before them it is impossible
to say ; the Pelasgi and Leleges, whom they themselves
conceived to have preceded them, left behind them no
other trace than that belief. When first we descry
this land in the faint dawn of history, it is tenanted by
the people whose name it bears, touched only by the
Thracians to the north, and the Illyrians to the west,
these also being Aryan races. Though the Greeks are
on both sides of the Egean, which seems from the
earliest times to have connected rather than divided
them, their centre of gravity is in the mainland of
Hellas, including the Peloponnesus. In this country
many a migration no doubt took place before the people
274
CHAP. XVI Greece 275
was finally arranged in it ; and some of these migrations
are faintly known to history. When once the settle-
ment had been accomplished, the nature of the country
did much to fix the institutions of the people and the
mutual relations of their various communities. Large
tribes coming into the narrow valleys and sequestered
coasts of Greece necessarily broke up into small cantons,
each of which, though not cut off from intercourse with
its neighbours, was free to develop by itself. The
country is said by travellers to be the most beautiful in
the world. The branch of the Aryans which settled in
it may have brought scanty acquirements with them,
but they brought great capacities. The Greeks had an
unrivalled talent for doing what they saw others do, in
a much better way, and so making it their own. They
had an inborn disposition to what is reasonable. That
they had a deep-seated inclination to what is harmonious
and beautiful is proved by their first great work of art,
their language. Of that language there were several
dialects in the earliest times ; the principal ones being
the broad Doric of the peninsula and the colonies, and
the softer Ionic of which the classical language is a
branch. But the Greeks of all dialects could under-
stand each other, and regarded as barbarians those
without who spoke other tongues. Thus from the first
this people was much divided, but was also held together
by strong bonds.
Earliest Religrion— Functional Deities.— The religion
the Greeks brought with them to their country was
undoubtedly that which we have discussed in our
chapter on the Aryans, The primitive elements of
Aryan religion all reappear in Greece ; the combination
of many small household worships with the supra-family
worship of a great god or gods, the few great gods who
are surrounded by a multitude of spirits, some of these
also growing into gods, the recognition of spiritual
presences in many a natural object, living or dead.
All this we find in early Greece. The whole nation
276 History of Religion part iv
believes in Zeus ; to all he is the Lord of heaven, the
giver of rain, the fertiliser of mother earth, the supreme
ruler in earth as well as in heaven, the father of the
gods as well as of men. This is the first bond of unity
in Greek religion. But every family, every village,
every town has its own peculiar worship which is to be
found nowhere else. That worship may be addressed
to Zeus with a local title ; each circle of men has its
own particular Zeus, who is their protector and ruler ;
and thus Zeus has many forms and names. In each
community there is also the worship of the goddess of
the hearth (Hestia) ; each household has its own Hestia,
and carries on the worship which in other Aryan peoples
is connected with the memory of departed ancestors.
But the family or the township has also other objects
of worship. There are other gods besides Zeus who are
connected with heaven, such as Apollo and Heracles.
There are gods connected with each activity of the
people. Artemis is goddess of hunting, Aphrodite of
the peaceful life of nature and of gardens, and also of
love. Poseidon, the sea-god, was also worshipped in-
land, and was perhaps originally a god of horses and
oxen ; Hephaestus was the god of workers in metal,
Ares the god of battle. These are in their origin what
are called functional deities, that is to say, gods who are
present in the function with which they are associated,
and of which they constitute the ideal or sacred side,
and who have no existence apart from it.
The gods of Greece in fact had their origin in that
view of nature as animated in every part, which the
Greeks shared with other branches of the Aryans, and
with early man generally. Like the Latins, the Greeks
at first saw a mystery, a spirit, in every part of life ;
each fountain had its nymph, each forest glade its
dryad; and they felt the gods to be returning to fresh
life when spring came with its flowers. Each of their
own activities also had its unseen genius. Each en-
closure for flocks had its Apollo, "him of the sheepfold,"
CHAP. XVI Greece 277
who protected the flock and the shepherd ; and each
boundary stone its Hermes, " him of the boundary," who
also watched over flocks and took charge of marches
and of paths.
Growth of Greek Gods. — Such beings, however, are
something less than gods ; and the Greeks, long before
we know them, had made the step which the Romans
scarcely made at all, from the spirit to the god, from
the vague unseen power behind an object or an act, to
the free being conceived with human attributes and feel-
ings, who can be the patron of a community, and afford
help in all its concerns. Not all the spirits rise into
gods ; it depends on circumstances which of them are
selected for that advance ; but the choice once made,
their rise was rapid. As the gods grew into personality
and definite character, though the function out of whicii
they first sprang was not forgotten, other functions were
added to them ; and as a god grew in power and con-
sideration, his worship was set up in new places, where
other titles and attributes awaited him. The local god
might be identified with the great god from a distance.
The god of a powerful community, as Athene ("she of
Athens "), might be adopted wherever the influence of
that community extended ; thus new gods arose and
old ones took local form. When a change took place
in the habits of the people, it was followed by a corre-
sponding change in the character of their gods. When
agriculture comes in, the gods have to take notice of
it, the pastoral god turns agricultural, and even the
huntress Artemis becomes an encourager of fertility.
When navigation rises in importance, a number of the
gods, Poseidon at their head, become sea-gods.
Stones, Animals, Trees. — In Greece the worship of
the gods soon superseded that of objects not possessing
any human character. Traces of such lower worships
sui vive, it is true, in the later religion in great abundance,
but they have no influence in its development; they only
tell their story of the otherwise forgotten past. Stones
278 History of Religion part iv
were worshipped in early Greece. Not to speak of the
cromlechs and dolmens, which are found there as in all
parts of Asia and Europe, and the meaning of which is
so little understood, stones were preserved as sacred
objects in various places, even to late times, and had no
doubt originally been worshipped. The god Hermes
was represented in every period by a slab of stone set
upright, a human head and other human features being
indicated on it. Even in later Greece, boards or blocks
of wood were in some places exhibited on rare occasions,
which were the oldest images of the Artemis or the
Aphrodite there adored. Though for the public eye
splendid statues had taken the place of the goddess,
the original image was still thought to have a sanctity
all its own. We also notice that the gods of Greece
are associated with animals. Zeus is a bull in Crete ;
he has also other transformations : Pan is a goat ;
Artemis is a bear in some provinces, elsewhere a doe.
The Athene of the Acropolis is a serpent. Apollo is
sometimes connected with the mouse. Along with
these identifications of the gods with animals we may
mention the animal emblems with which they are
generally represented. The eagle is the bird of Zeus,
the owl of Athene, the peacock of Hera, the dove of
Aphrodite. In this connection we cannot help think-
ing of the sacred animals of the Egyptian nomes ; and
the question may be asked whether such animals must
be taken to be in Greece also the signs of a primitive
totemism ?
Of the tree-worship of Greece much has been written
of late. The oak was the sacred tree of Zeus ; he must
have been conceived as living in it ; he gave oracles at
Dodona by the rustling of the branches of the tree.
Athene has the olive, Apollo the palm, and also the
laurel. After the introduction of agriculture rustic
cults arose, in which the inhabitants of a village followed
in sympathetic rites the fortunes of the gods who live
in the life of the plants in summer and die with them
CHAP. XVI
Greece 279
in autumn. The god of the Semites is generally a
changeless being, who himself conducts and orders the
changes of the seasons, but in Greece we find gods
whom man can accompany in the tragedy of their fall
and the triumph of their rise. We shall see afterwards
that the rustic worships of Demeter and Proserpine were
brought forward at a critical period in Greek religion,
to supply an element which was much required in it.
These worships, similar, as Mr. Frazer suggests,^ to those
still kept up by our own peasantry, were doubtless of
immemorial antiquity in Greece, though in the earlier
period they are little heard of.
Thus the Greek gods grew up in the period before
Greece was awakened to new thoughts by contact with
foreign peoples. Many harsh and cruel rites were no
doubt practised ; human sacrifice, heard of even in later
times in remote parts of the country, was not unknown,
and practices were connected with the service of stern
gods and goddesses which, though literature is silent
about them, left their mark on custom. Zeus and one
or two other gods are essentially moral, and some duties
were strongly encouraged by religion, such as those of
hospitality and strict regard for boundaries, of faithful-
ness to pledge, of respect for strangers. But many of
the gods are too closely interwoven with external nature
to be very decidedly moral powers ; they are like the
plants and animals, neither good nor bad but natural.
Greek Religion is Local. — What strikes us most
strongly about this early Greek religion is its entire
want of system and its local and disintegrated character.
Every town, every family, has its own religion. There
is no central authority. New gods are constantly
springing up ; the old ones are constantly receiving
new titles and forming new unions with each other or
with newer gods. The god of one place is in another
only a hero ; the same god is represented in different
places in entirely different ways, and entirely different
* Golden Bough, vol. i. p. 356.
28o History of Religion part iv
legends are attached to his name. Thus the Greeks
have from the first a mythology singularly extensive
and inconsistent, and their worship also varies in each
place. There is no general religion, but only a multitude
of local ones. In story and in rite old and new are
mixed up together, — what is local and what is imported,
what is savage in its nature and origin, and what is on
the side of progress. This is a state of matters which
lies in every land before the beginning of organised
religion. Rites and legends are everywhere of local
growth, and the attempt to frame the various rites and
legends into a consistent ritual and a systematic account
of the gods, comes later. In Greece, as Mr. Robertson
Smith observes, the earlier state of matters continued
longer and influenced the national faith more deeply
than elsewhere. As the Greeks never succeeded in
forming a central political system, so they never attained
to unity in worship. No national temple arose, the
priesthood of which had power to frame the national
religion, to lay down rules for sacrifice, or to edit sacred
texts. The Greeks were less than any other people
under the sway of religious authority. While local
practice was fixed, and custom and tradition declared
plainly enough what was to be regarded as religious
duty, belief was quite free to grow as circumstances
or the growth of culture dictated. A religion in such
a position, and among a people of lively imagination
and specially gifted in the direction of art, must
necessarily receive its forms rather from the artist than
the priest.
Artistic Tendency. — Thus we can discern from the
first the direction which Greek religion must take. The
Greeks shaped their gods earlier and more freely than
other peoples, and went on shaping them till no further
advance could be made in that way. Long before
Homer they had been making their gods such as free
men, and men endowed with a sense of beauty, could
worship. They were not content to worship lifeless
CHAP. XVI Greece 281
objects, but must have living beings. They were not
content to worship beings without reason, they must
worship reasonable beings. They were not inclined to
regard the natural objects they worshipped with terror
or self-prostration, but rather in a spirit of genial
friendliness and sympathy as being something like
themselves. And so they turned their gods into men.
The anthropomorphising tendency, present as we have
seen in other lands and at much earlier periods, present
indeed wherever religion is a growing power, had freer
play with them than with any other people. Thus the
spirits of the fountain and the tree, and of every part
of nature that was worshipped, took human form. At
first, no doubt, the nymph was in the fountain, the
dryad in the oak, but as time went on the human maiden
cast off her mosses and her bark and leaves, and stood
forth to imagination a being wholly human, dwelling
beside the fountain or the tree. In the same way
heaven becomes a great human father, the sea an earth-
shaking potentate drawn by dolphins over the waves,
the sun a mighty archer, fire a lame craftsman (from the
flickering of flame ?) whose smithy is underground where
the volcanoes are. And the figures once arrived at, it
was no hard task to spin out their stories and their
relations with each other, and to connect with them older
tales, as taste or fancy suggested.
The thorough humanisation of the gods, the clothing
of the gods in the highest types connected with free
human society, is the first great contribution made by
this gifted race to the progress of religion. Receiving
from the earlier world the same kind of gods as other
nations did, Greece proceeded to treat them in a way
of her own, idealised and refined the parts of nature
held divine, and ascribed to them not only, as all early
races do, human motives and human passions, but also
human beauty and wisdom and goodness. Whatever
rude materials she received to work on, either from
the earlier dwellers on Greek soil or from foreign lands,
282 History of Religion part tv
she made them her own by transfiguring them into ideal
men and women. Thus the Greeks reached the position,
which they taught the world first in immortal poetry
and then in immortal plastic art, that man should not
bow down to anything that is beneath him, and that
nature can only become fit to be worshipped by being
idealised and made human. An end was made to the
dark imagination which was so apt to creep over all
early religion, that deity and humanity may be different
and opposite ; that an object devoid of reason, an object
or an animal admired not for its goodness but for some-
thing about it which man cannot understand, may be
his god and have a claim to his allegiance. God and
man are of the same nature, the Greeks found ; to arrive
at a true idea of a god we have to form, on the basis of
the natural object where he is supposed to dwell, the
image of an ideal man or woman. This was a great
step, but in this conception of deity the Greeks also
laid up for themselves, as we shall sec, many difficulties.
Early Eastern Influences. — Our positive knowledge
of Greek history begins about the middle of the second
millennium B.C. ; we have information of this period in
the ruins of Mycense and Tiryns and other places.
These remains attest a political condition widely
different from that of the patriarchal settlements of the
period when the Greeks were emerging from Aryan
barbarism ; very different also from the free city life
which came afterwards. The recent excavations have
brought to light the palaces of kings, built, it is evident,
according to an Eastern type, and with arrangements
for the burial and worship of dead potentates, not
unlike those of the pyramids. The art is rude, but
shows large forces to have been at the command of
those who directed it. We have here, therefore, a state
of matters such as that described in the Homeric poems,
in which petty kings rule in many of the Greek towns,
some of them being personages of great rank and
power. The movement in civilisation attested by these
CHAP. XVI Greece 283
remains is admitted to be due to an impulse from
the East; but whether this impulse was imparted by
the voyages of Phenician discoverers and merchants,
or whether it came by land along the trade routes of
Asia Minor and across the Egean, is uncertain. It is in
any case traceable to North Syria, where in the early
part of the second millennium B.C. Babylonian and
Egyptian influences met and gave rise to some rude
civilisation. Greece was not conquered from the East,
but stirred to new life by the communication of Eastern
ideas.
Greek religion was not much assisted, or indeed
much modified in any way, by this movement. The
worship of ancestors which went on in the palaces was
not contrary to Greek sentiment, perhaps not even
much more elaborate than that sentiment required.
But this part of religion was not a growing thing in
Greece ; and the royal practices did not prevent it from
dying gradually away in later times. That any god
was imported into Greece at this time, is not proved.
Where Greeks and Phenicians met, as in some of the
islands, a Greek and an Eastern god might be identified ;
the worship of Aphrodite and that of Astarte were
fused in this way in Cyprus, and Aphrodite may thus
have acquired some new characteristics even in Greece.
This is not certain. Perhaps the most important thing
to notice in this connection is that the new type of
society at the royal courts may have furnished a model
for the arrangement of the heavenly family when that
arrangement came to be made. The Eastern influence
came to an end in time, and the pressure being
removed, the monarchies crumbled away, the court
worships were discontinued, and Greece was left free,
after this awaking to fuller life, to pursue her own
thoughts in her own fashion.
Homer was regarded by the Greeks who lived after
him as the founder of their religion. Herodotus con-
siders (ii. 53) that Homer and Hesiod lived four hundred
284 History of Religion part iv
years before his time, and that it was they who framed
a theogony for the Greeks, gave names to the gods,
assigned to them honours and arts, and declared their
several forms. These writers accordingly formed a
staiidard of religious belief; we know that their works
were the basis of the education of the Greek, and they
thus provided an early bond of national unity.
The Homeric poems are the outcome, whether we
regard them as the work of one singer or of two, or of
a whole school, of long processes of growth. The poetic
art which makes them the delight of all mankind is not
a first experiment, but the ripe result of an elaborate
method. The stories and the wisdom they contain are
brought together from many quarters by long accumula-
tion. And in the same way the accounts they give of
the gods individually and of their relations to each
other are not thrown together at haphazard, but are
the result of a work of unconscious art which must
have been carried on for centuries before it issued in
this form. Homer does not by any means repeat all
the stories he knows about the gods. He passes over
many local myths, especially those of the more repulsive
order, which were known for centuries after, and un-
doubtedly existed in his day; only what is "worthy
of a pious bard" does he reproduce. A pious bard,
however, had considerable latitude ; and the phrase
does not represent all that Homer was. He was an
entertainer of the public at royal courts, where a feast
was incomplete without him {Odyssey viii.) ; he had to
produce his songs at banquets or in the open air at
festivals ; what he gave had to be entertaining. This
could not but influence his choice of materials even
when the gods were his theme. He could not deal in
what was most terrible about the gods, nor could he
enter into speculations or mysteries, nor could he make
use of a legend which, though it had point for the
locality it belonged to, was not generally interesting.
What was powerful and dramatic, what all men could
CHAP. XVI • Greece 285
understand, what was curious and piquant, what met
the general sentiment, that he would be led to adopt
and to work up into a telling form ; he naturally sought
after broad pictures, amusing conversations, simple and
true emotions, curious incidents connected with well-
known characters. Religion, it is plain, could not gain
in depth and intensity from the treatment of such
poets ; many of the thoughts men had about the gods
could not find expression in their lines. But, on the
other hand, we have the fact that the Greeks accepted
the Homeric representation of their religion as the
standard one ; not till it had existed for centuries were
voices raised against it. And this is not strange.
Homer took away nothing from the religion of any
Greek ; no local worship was in any way infringed
upon by him ; and on the other side he gave to the
Greek world, whose belief consisted formerly in a
multitude of disconnected or even inconsistent legends,
a united system of gods, in which there was at that
stage rest for the mind, and for the imagination an
inexhaustible spring of ideal beauty.
The Homeric Gods. — What, then, is the religion of
Homer? The gods are a set of beings not very unlike
men ; they present a curious combination of human
frailty with superhuman powers and virtues. To speak
first of the physical side of their nature, the gods are
far stronger than men, their frame is huger, their eye
keener, their voice louder ; like the sorcerer of savage
times, they can assume other shapes to gain their ends,
they can become invisible, or they can travel very swiftly
through the air. Yet, on the other hand, they can be
wounded when they strive even with men ; accidents
happen to them, they require to eat and drink. They
eat, it is true, ambrosia, and drink nectar, which give
immortality ; and they have in their veins not human
blood but divine ichor. It is the fact of their immortality
that makes them different from men ; it has happened
that a man obtained immortality and became thereby
2 86 History of Religion ^art iv
a god. The line between gods and men may be crossed ;
in former times it was crossed more frequently. The
gods entered into relations with mortals ; many of the
heroes are of divine extraction, and the gods are still
interested in the royal houses they thus founded. But
such unions do not take place in the poet's time. The
world is growing less divine.
Homer, however, looks further back than this, and we
find in him the belief, found also in India and in Iceland,
that an older and more savage race of gods once ruled,
whom the present dynasty conquered and dethroned.
Of that older set was Kronos, the father of Zeus, and
the Titans, who are now cast down to Tartarus, the
nethermost region of all. The world known to men
was apportioned at the beginning of the present age
to the three sons of Kronos, Zeus obtaining the upper
world, including heaven, which is at the top of Mount
Olympus in Thessaly ; Poseidon the sea, and Hades
the under -world, above Tartarus, to which men go
after death.
Zeus rules in Olympus. He presides there over those
gods who are at present in power. He summons them
to council, he sits at meals with them. They are a very
human set of beings. They are moved by ordinary
human motives ; love and revenge, jealousy and anger,
rule in their breasts. They do not act from eternal
principles, but as men do, from sudden impulses or from
the desire of temporary advantages for themselves or for
their favourites. They even indulge in loose amours,
and are brought into ridiculous situations. They laugh
at each other ; the stronger god hurls the weaker out of
Olympus to the earth. Taking them together, we do
not find the Olympians an impressive set of beings.
Taking them, however, one by one, we judge of them
quite differently. The individual gods represent lofty
ideals and are not unworthy of worship. Whatever they
were once, powers of nature, fetishes or men, whatever
village legends they have brought with them from their
CHAP. XVI Greece 287
native place, or whatever traits of savage life still cleave
to them, to the poet they are the embodiments of
various moral excellences, Zeus, father of gods and
men, combines in his character the attributes of
righteousness and of kindness ; he is the founder of
social order and the defender of suppliants, he possesses
all wisdom. Hera is the matron of fully unfolded
beauty and matchless dignity ; Apollo is the faithful
son who carries out his father's counsel ; Athene is
the warrior-maiden skilled in battle but equipped with
every kind of skill, best counsellor and guide for the
mortal whom she favours ; Aphrodite is the goddess
of love, in whose girdle are contained all charms ; Ares
is the impetuous warrior, Hermes the trusty messenger,
of the heavenly circle ; Hephaestus, the lame and
awkward smith, is the artificer for the gods of all
manner of cunning work in metal. Around and under
the Olympians are many other deities ; such as Hebe,
the budding girl, and Ganymede, the youth born of
human race but taken up to heaven for his beauty to
minister to the gods at their banquets. Aphrodite is
attended by the graces, Apollo by the Muses, and the
world is not stripped by Homer of its local deities,
although the chief deities now dwell aloft ; mountains,
rivers, caves and isles of ocean, all have their immortal
occupants.
Worship in Homer. — The gods being of such a nature,
what relations does man keep up with them, and how
do they affect his life? Worship follows the simple
practice of the early world. It is not priestly. There
are priests, and they offer sacrifices regularly at the
shrines of which they have charge, but the king can
sacrifice, or the head of the house; and while one or
two temples are mentioned in the Iliad, sacrifice may
be offered anywhere. Temples first appear in Greece
merely as shelters for images, but in the Iliad the god
is generally worshipped not by means of an image but
as himself directly present ; the need of temples has not
288 History of Religion part iv
yet arisen. In the Odyssey temples of the gods are
spoken of as buildings no town could be without, but
this is less primitive. Sacrifice is a feast in which the
god's portion of the viands is first offered to him, and
the worshippers then eat and drink to their hearts'
content. There is a detailed description of the pro-
ceedings in Iliad i. 456 sqq. Here after the feast there
is music ; " All day long worshipped they the god with
music, singing the beautiful pasan to the Fardarter
(Apollo) ; and his heart was glad to hear." " The gods
appear manifest amongst us," we read in the seventh
book of the Odyssey, " whensoever we offer glorious
hecatombs, and they feast by our side, sitting at the
same board." There is nothing of the nature of an
expiation about such a sacrifice ; it is simply the
renewal of the bond between the god and those who
look for his aid, when a new enterprise is about to be
undertaken or a solemn engagement is entered on.
Prayers are very simple. Thus prays the wounded
Diomede to Athene {Iliad v. 115): " Hear me, daughter
of aegis-bearing Zeus, unwearied maiden! If ever in
kindly mood thou stoodest by my father in the heat
of battle, even so be thou kind to me, Athene ! Grant
me to slay this man, and bring within my spear-cast
him that took advantage to shoot me, and boasteth
over me ! "
As there are no bad gods, good and evil are con-
sidered to be sent by the same beings. Thus there is
a great deal of uncertainty in men's relations to the
gods. " All men need the gods," we read ; the Homeric
hero regards the companionship of a god as proper and
necessary for his enterprises. But some trouble must
be taken in order to secure their favour. They must
not be neglected ; their signs must be attended to ;
above all, a man must be reverent and must studiously
practise moderation in his conduct and in his ways of
thinking; else the gods may easily be offended or made
jealous, and withdraw their countenance. And if they
CHAP. XVI
Greece 289
are to a certain extent capricious, there is another con-
sideration which impairs confidence in them. They are
not all-powerful. There is a point beyond which they
cannot give a man any help. Each man has a fate or
destiny, which the gods did not fix and with which they
cannot interfere. When his hour comes, they must
leave him to his doom ; indeed they may even deceive
him, and lead him into folly so that his fate shall over-
take him. The punishment of crime, both in this world
and afterwards, is committed to a special set of beings,
the Erinnyes. The gods who are most worshipped do
not exercise that function ; they are not immovably
identified with the moral order of the world, but
frequently deviate from it themselves. In the Odyssey,
it is true, we meet with a deeper feeling. Here Zeus is
a kind of providence, in whom a man may trust when
he does right, and to all whose dispensations it behoves
him humbly to submit. A root of monotheism is
present here, as in all the Aryan religions from the first,
and in Greece it is destined to have a stately growth.
The Homeric pantheon, however, as a whole, shows
religion at a stage in which it is rather an external
ornament to life than an inner inspiration. Perhaps
there was never a set of real men who thought of the
gods and addressed them according to the fashion of
Homer. If such a religion ever actually existed, it was
not a strong one. These gods, with their caprices and
infirmities and their limited power, could never exercise
any strong moral influence or rouse any passion in their
worshippers. They are fair-weather gods ; the religion
is one of children, in whom conscience is not yet awake
and the deeper spiritual needs have not yet appeared.
What the mind of the Greek has done up to this stage
is to discover that nature is not above him ; the powers
of nature are human to him ; they are divine not
because they are essentially different from himself, but
because they are matchless ideals of his own qualities.
It is a religion of free men. But the Greek has not
T
290 History of Religion part iv
yet discovered how different he himself is from all that
is around him ; that element of himself which is above
nature will when he discovers it make such a religion as
the Homeric for ever impossible to him.
Omens. — As the godhead is never far away from the
Homeric Greek, and is an active being who takes an
interest in human affairs, signs of his presence are not
infrequent. The air is the scene of them ; in the flight
of birds, in sudden noises, the gods send messages ;
lightning is a sign from Zeus of approaching rain or
hail, it may be of approaching war. There are rules
for the interpretation of signs, which, however, are in
many cases of doubtful significance. Dreams also are
a favourite channel for divine communications, but they
also may be interpreted wrongly. There are persons
who have a special gift for knowing the divine will ;
the seer {fxavrii) is enlightened by the deity not by an
outward sign but inwardly ; he hears the god's voice,
and can declare the divine will directly. This gift may
reside in a certain family, and may be attached to
a certain spot, where a regular oracle is open for con-
sultation. At Dodona we read that the Selloi or Helloi,
a band or family of priests of ascetic habits, interpret
the rustling of the sacred oak, and Agamemnon consults
the Pythia, the Delphic priestess, before the Trojan
war.
The State after Death. — With regard to the state
after death, belief is not uniform in Homer. There are
elaborate funeral rites which point to the assumption
that the spirit of the hero is living somewhere and needs
various things. But the life of the departed was not
mapped out in Greece as it was in Egypt. The ritual
of Mycense had little influence, for the funeral celebra-
tions in Homer are very similar to those of other early
Aryan peoples, and undoubtedly were not imported.
What then is thought of the present existence of the
hero? He has ceased to exist. The body is the man,
the spirit when it has left the body has but a shadow-
CHAP. XVI Greece 291
life, without any strength or hope ; at the most it may
revive a Httle at the taste of blood. But while the
worship of the departed is seen from Homer to be
decaying among the Greeks, imagination is seen to be
occupied in more than one direction with the regions
where they are, and to be asserting for them a more
real and active existence than the old beliefs allowed.
The subterranean kingdom of Hades (the " Invisible")
is acquiring clearer shape. The punishments are
described which certain great transgressors, such as
Tantalus and Ixion, are there undergoing ; and other
details are also known. Of a different spirit is the
conception of the Elysian plains in the far west, whither
the hero is taken by the gods when he dies, and where
there is no snow nor storm nor rain.
Homer was not the only poet who furnished the
Greeks with a system of their gods ; nor was his
system everywhere accepted without demur. Hesiod,
writing in the latter half of the eighth century B.C.,
gives a " theogony " or birth of the gods, which is
also a genesis or origin of the world, for to the Greek
mind the gods and the world came into existence
together. He complains of those who on this subject
have taught fictions which resemble truths, referring
perhaps to Homer. His own system of the world
is not a light and airy fabric but a laborious work,
due no doubt to professional or priestly industry, in
which the attempt is made to treat all the divine
figures or half-figured spirits the Greeks knew, genea-
logically, and to give a complete enumeration of them.
Myths are given, some of them of a horrible character,
which do not occur in Homer. The battle of the
gods with the Titans occupies a large part of the
poem, and it concludes with a collection of stories
showing the descent of heroes from alliances between
gods and mortals. This work, as we saw, was con-
sidered, along with the Homeric poems, as a standard
authority on the subject of the gods, and was appealed
292 History of Religion part iv
to even in the early Christian centuries as showing
what the Greeks beHeved.
The Poets and the Working- Relig-ion. — The work
of these poets proves that the Greeks in their days
were anxious to arrive at clear and harmonious con-
ceptions about the gods. The movement on which
Homer and Hesiod set their seal, of fixing the
characters and attributes of the various deities, must
have been long going on ; and it led, as we see, to
different results in different places. That labour when
accomplished endowed Greece with a new religion.
The local rite still went on, which acknowledged no
central authority and presented the spectacle of an
infinite diversity. Each city carried on in grave and
solemn fashion the traditional worship of its own
gods, on whose favour its prosperity depended. The
other gods of the Pantheon the city did not need to
worship ; and moreover local worship was addressed
to a large extent to the Chthonian or earth-gods, as
Demeter and Dionysus, of whom the epic poems know
but little. The poets were of little assistance therefore
to the working religion ; but on the other hand the
happy and beautiful deities of Homer found entrance
wherever poetry was loved. This was a religion for
all Greece ; these gods were national ; though some
of them belonged originally to ^olia, they had become
national by being enshrined in poetry which the whole
nation regarded as its own. The Homeric conception
of deity acted therefore on the whole Greek mind ;
all gods rose in rank by the example, a subject was
set before the mind of the people, which the closely
succeeding development of religious art shows to have
been studied in the noblest way.
Rise of Religious Art. — The seventh century B.C.
was a period of rapid development and of great
prosperity in Greece. It was the age of colonisation ;
manufacture and trade were active, and though the
Phenicians were not now in the Egean, Greeks sailed
CHAP. XVI
Greece 293
to the East and brought home with them many ideas.
It was a time Hke the sixteenth century in Europe,
when the world of geography was quickly opening
out, and views and sentiments were also widening.
Worship could not fail to share in the upward move-
ment of such a period, and it is here that we find
the appearance of the ideas in religious art which
have made Greece the envy of the world. Architecture
received a new impulse from Egypt and Babylon ;
dwellings were built, not for human rulers, as in the
Mycenaean period, but for the gods. In country districts
or small towns the wooden shed might still suffice to
shelter the rude image, but in large towns, where the
higher conception of the gods and the artistic impulse
were both present in many minds, temples of more
durable material were built. This came to be a
universal practice; among the first tasks of a new
colony was always that of erecting on a commanding
site in the rising town, splendid temples to the gods
of the mother city. The Greek temple is not a place
to accommodate a large body of worshippers, but a
dwelling for the god. It is of oblong shape, and is
placed on a raised platform which is ascended by
steps. It is generally surrounded by pillars, is roofed,
and has a low gable at each end. The most important
chamber in it is that containing the image of the god.
From his dim chamber the god looks out to the east
through the doorway facing him, which opens on the
pillared portico in front. Here the worshipper stands
when praying, his face turned westward to the god.
As it was essential that the smoke of the sacrifice
should ascend freely to heaven, the god's real dwelling,
the altar stood outside. In some cases the roof was
partly open, and the altar could stand under the sky
in the cella of the god.
In the building and adornment of the temples Greek
art found its highest exercise. The architecture of
those soecimens which can still be seen or described
294 History of Religion part iv
is of a dignity and beauty never before attained ; the
beings must have been lofty and reverend indeed for
whom such dwellings were formed. The gable spaces
and the flat surfaces between the tops of the pillars
and the roof gave opportunity for sculpture; and the
archaeologist traces on these metopes (spaces between
the beam-ends under the roof) and friezes, the progress
of Greek sculpture from a rude stage to that in which
the sculptor has gained complete mastery over his
material, and can give an imposing representation of
a myth, or place on the marble a complete religious
procession of brave men and fair women. The images
of the gods to be placed in the temples called forth
the artist's highest skill ; even when the rude old god
was retained, a fine work of art could also find place.
It is the ideal gods of poetry that are coming to be
worshipped ; the conception of the poet is expressed
in marble. Sculpture, however, came to its highest
point in Greece somewhat later than architecture. And
offerings were made to the temples of just such rare
and costly things as men loved then and love still
to store up in their houses, — bowls and cups wrought
curiously in precious metals, statues and tapestries
and all kinds of treasure.
Festivals and Games. — The temple for which so
much was done, formed the centre of the city where
it stood. In it the town deposited its treasure and its
documents ; there oaths and agreements were ratified.
There also at certain times, such as the annual festival
of the god or the anniversary of some happy event
in the history of the town, — and as time went on
such occasions tended to multiply, — the town kept
holiday. Women escaped from their monotonous con-
finement and joined the procession to the holy place,
perhaps carrying a new dress for the deity. A sacrifice
was offered, the god received his share of the victim
or victims, and the worshippers feasted on what re-
mained. But before this part of the proceedings arrived
CHAP. XVI
GreeU 295
there was a pause, which was filled up with various
exercises all connected with the act of worship, but
tending also in a high degree to the delight of those
taking part in it. Dancing formed a part of every
rite, accompanied of course with music, and consist-
ing not of a careless exercise of the limbs, but of
a measured and carefully trained set of movements
expressive of the emotions connected with the occasion.
This part of the religious act is obviously capable of
great expansion. We find the art of poetry also
making its contributions to religious art ; poems are
recited bearing on the history of the god. The sacrifice
is followed by contests of various kinds ; the singers
compete for a prize, and athletic sports also take
place, the competitors for which have long been in
training for them. The winners are crowned with a
wreath or branch of the plant sacred to the god. The
games of Greece, which thus arose out of acts of
worship, and some of which became so famous and
attracted competitors from every Greek-speaking land,
are a notable sign of the spirit of Greek piety. There
is no asceticism in Greek religion ; the god is repre-
sented as a beautiful human person, and his worshippers
appear before him naked, in the fulness of their youth-
ful beauty and of their well-trained vigour, and offer
him their strength and skill in highest exercise ; —
the whole city, or a crowd much larger than the
city, rejoicing in the spectacle.
Thus does Greek religion enlist in its service all
the arts, and increase as they increase. At this period
irrational manifestations of piety tend to disappear,
human sacrifice and the worship of animals are heard
of afterwards only in remote quarters. The religion
which now prevails is a bright and happy self-identi-
fication with a being conceived as a type of human
beauty and excellence, by being as far as possible
beautiful oneself, creating beautiful objects, composing
beautiful verse, training the body to its highest pitch
296 History of Religion part iv
of strength and agility, and displaying its powers in
manly contests. This conception of religion, for a short
time realised in Greece, still haunts the mind as a vision
which once seen can never be forgotten. No one whose
eyes have opened to that vision can regard any religious
acts in which the effort after harmony and beauty forms
no part, as other than degraded and unworthy.
Zeus and Apollo. — It is impossible here to enter
specially on the worship of the individual gods. Two
of the gods, however, the same who even in Homer
stand above the level of the rest, still maintain that
superiority. Zeus draws to himself more and more all
the attributes of pure deity ; his name comes more and
more to stand simply for " God," as if there were no
other. He is the father of gods and men ; goodness
and love are natural to him. He is the supreme Ruler
and Disposer, whose word is fate and whose ways pious
thought feels called to justify ; but he is also the
Saviour, to whom every one may appeal. He is the
source of all wisdom ; all revelations come from him.
The other god who occupies a marked position is
Apollo, the god of light and the prophet of his father
Zeus. His oracle at Delphi was the most important in
Greece ; it was held to be the centre of the earth, and
was a meeting-place for Greeks from every quarter.
His priests exercised through the oracle a great in-
fluence on Greek life, and as their god required strict
purity and truthfulness and was the inspirer of every
kind of art and of none but noble purposes, the worship
of Apollo is one of the highest forms of Greek religion.
Chang-e of the Greek Spirit in the Sixth Century.
B.C. — But the time was at hand when the worship of
the gods of the poets was to prove, in spite of all that
art had done for it, inadequate to meet the spiritual
needs of Greece. Civilisation advances in the sixth
century B.C. with immense rapidity ; the Greeks, no
longer prompted by any foreign influence, quickly learn
to exercise their own powers, and to apply them in new
CHAr. XVI
Gixece 297
directions. Life grows richer and deeper, new modes of
sentiment appear, the nation grows more conscious of
its unity, and at the same time the individual learns to
value himself more highly and to assert himself more
strongly. On one side thought awakes to an inde-
pendent career and traditional beliefs are subjected
to criticism ; on the other spiritual needs are felt which
the old worship does not satisfy, and for which religion
has to find new outlets.
It is far beyond our scope to deal with the religious
movements of a people thus passing into the self-
conscious stage, and unfolding with unparalleled fresh-
ness and power all the various activities of the human
mind. We can only point out a few of the lines of
development which become prominent at this period.
And firstly we notice the rise of rationalism, that is
of the impulse to criticise belief and to ask for that
element in it which approves itself to the reflecting
mind. Reason asserts its right to judge of tradition ;
the doubter suggests emendations in the legend ; the
piously inclined turn their attention to those parts only
which are capable of lofty treatment. This tendency
is fatal to polytheism. As reason knows not gods but
only God, the gods can only hold their place on con-
dition that they are what God must be, and so they
all tend to become alike in their character ; attention
is turned most of all to Zeus, the highest god, and when
others are worshipped, it is as his prophets or delegates.
The poets of the fifth century reflect the conviction
which all the higher minds of their country were now
coming to hold, that the world is under the rule of one
god. From this they are led to take up the questions
of theodicy or of the principles of the divine govern-
ment, .^schylus and Sophocles, writing perhaps about
the same time as the author of the Book of Job, are full
of problems of this nature. Why is Prometheus, though
the noblest benefactor of the human race, doomed to
undergo such sufferings? Why does a curse cleave
298 History of Religion part iv
to a certain house, evil producing evil from generation
to generation ? What is the relation between the divine
laws which are written in the hearts of all men, and
human laws which sometimes contradict these older
ones? Thus to the educated Greeks of the fifth century
the old religion had in its essence passed away. With
unexampled rapidity had the journey here been traced
which India made more slowly, which Egypt made at
a very early period, but was not able to maintain, and
which every people starting from polytheism must make
if their religion is to prosper.
New Religious Feeling"; the Mysteries. — But the
conscience as well as the mind of Greece awakes at
this period, and Greek religion becomes inspired with a
deeper feeling. The simple objectivity of the Homeric
spirit is gone in which man could frankly worship
beings like himself and not very far above himself.
God at this time is growing greater and more awful,
and man, less certain of himself, is beginning to feel
a new sense of mystery and of shortcoming. Whether
it was due to the anxiety and depression felt in Greece
during the century before the Persian wars, or to foreign
influences, or mainly to the natural growth of the Greek
mind itself, religious phenomena of a new kind now
appear. Sacrifices are heard of, which are not merely
social reunions with the deity, but are intended to
expiate some guilt or to remove some pollution. The
sense of sin has arisen, which the Homeric world knows
not, and gives a new colour to man's converse with the
deity. Another new feature is the rise into prominence
of cults in which man feels himself taken possession of
and inspired by his god. Some of these belonged to
Asia Minor, the great centre of worships accompanied
with ecstasy and frenzy, but some were of native growth.
In these the common man found a satisfaction which
the stately ceremonial of the temples did not afford.
The official religion had grown cold and distant ; but
in the worship of Demeter or Dionysus, as afterwards
CHAP. XVI Greece 299
of the Phrygian Cybele, the " Great Mother " whom the
Romans imported, the least educated could feel the joy
of enthusiasm and of self-forgetting under the influence
of the god, and could be closely identified with the
object of worship by performing acts in which the ex-
perience of the god was symbolically repeated.
The rapid rise of the worships of Demeter and
Dionysus thus furnishes an instance of the law that a
religion of intellect and of art is apt to be confronted,
even when it appears to have overcome all obstacles,
by a religion of feeling, in which all the fair progress
that was made appears to be entirely set at naught.
When the worship of Zeus, Apollo, and Athene was
coming to its highest splendour, these cults began to
spread rapidly. They were originally peasant rites of
unknown antiquity in Attica and Boeotia, in which,
after the manner of rustic festivals, the coming of spring
or the dying of the year were celebrated amid jest and
song, and with certain prescribed actions in which the
fortune of the god, corresponding to the season, was
dramatically set forth. In spring Demeter, the mother
goddess, received her daughter Persephone, who had
left her for the winter; or in autumn Dionysus, the
god of vegetation, was defeated by his enemies and
driven away or torn in pieces. These worships, when
developed and forming a prominent part of Greek
religion, were called " mysteries," not because the
knowledge of them was confined to few, but because
some parts of them were transacted in deep silence,
and were the objects of such awe and reverence that
they were not spoken of. No one, moreover, could
assist at these rites without being solemnly initiated
after a period of probation and purification. Of the
Eleusinian mysteries at least, which were the most
widely diffused and which formed part of the state
religion of Athens, ancient writers agree in their report
that the course of training before admission was power-
fully elevating and solemnising, so that the period of
3CX> History of Religion part iv
initiation was the highest point of the rehgious life. It
was a condition that the candidate should be pure in
heart and not conscious of any crime. There was
apparently no doctrinal instruction ; everything was to
be inferred from the spectacle. The mind was kept in
a state of intense and devout expectation, knowledge
and insight growing, it was held, as the time of
admission came near. Before the final act there came
a period of fasting, then a march from Athens to
Eleusis along the sacred way, which was studded with
shrines ; then a search for the lost goddess in the dark
of a moonless night on the plains of Eleusis, and then
at last admission to the brightly - lighted building.
Here all the arts were enlisted to furnish a spectacle
of unparalleled magnificence, during which the candidate
was allowed to touch and kiss certain sacred objects of
a simple nature, and repeated a solemn formula at his
admission.
By partaking in these rites a man was believed to
part with his former sins, to form a special union with
the deity, in whose nature he was made to partake,
and to be started on a career in which he could not
fail to grow morally better. It is easy to see the
immense superiority of this worship to the official rites
of the temples. The great point is that a new principle
of religious association is here introduced. The tie
which binds the worshipper to his god and to his
fellow-worshippers is no longer that of blood or of
common political interests, but the higher one of a
common spiritual experience. All Greeks were eligible
for initiation at Eleusis. A man was not born into
this circle, but entered it of his own free will and by
means of voluntary effort and self-denial. A community
of a higher order thus makes its appearance in Greek
history, in which the limits of race and of locality are
overstepped, and each is connected with the rest, because
all have turned of their own voluntary motion to the
same ideal centre. The analogies between the com-
CHAP. XVI Greece 301
munity formed on the mysteries and the Christian
Church are too obvious to need to be insisted on. The
adversaries of Christianity asserted that in the mysteries
all the truths and the whole morality of that religion
were to be found.
Religion and Philosophy. — But while the mysteries
met to some extent the craving for a closer union with
deity, another need which had long been growing in the
Greek mind was to be satisfied in a very different manner.
The Greek religion we have described had very little to
offer in the way of doctrine. There are no sacred books
in it, there is no theology, there is no religious instruction.
When the mind of Greece awoke to intellectual life, and
the demand was made for an explanation of the world,
and for a view of the origin of things which should
explain man to himself, the Greek religion was mani-
festly little fitted to meet such a demand. But man
has everywhere looked to religion to do him this service,
and a religion which is incapable of rendering it, or
which like Buddhism explicitly refuses to take up the
task, stands in a perilous position. If the shrine has
no doctrine enabling man to understand the origin and
the connection of things, he will seek such a doctrine
elsewhere, and religion will have no control over it.
Another alternative is that of Buddhism where in
default of such a doctrine man is condemned to sub-
side into intellectual apathy.
This, however, could never be the case with the
Greeks, and their fate in this respect proved different
from that of any other people. After their intellectual
awakening took place, and when they had begun to seek
in every direction for a first principle of all things, never
doubting that the world was a system of reason, but
trying one key after another to unlock its secret, we
find that religion itself became aware of the need of
the times, and that the attempt was made, late in the
day but with deep earnestness and great ability, to
construct out of the myths a reasoned account of the
302 History of Religion part iv
origin of things. This was the aim of the Orphic poets.
Orpheus, the mythical singer of Thrace, who charmed
men and beasts with his songs on earth, had descended
into Hades to fetch back his wife, who had been taken
from him, and had beheld the secrets of the under-world.
The school which was named after him dealt with the
deepest problems, and sought to explain both the nature
of the gods and the destiny of the human soul. It
insisted strongly on the power and sole headship of
Zeus, in whom Greek religion had possessed from Homer
downwards a figure fitted for a monotheistic position,
" Zeus is the head, Zeus the middle, from Zeus are all
things made. He is male and female, he is the founda-
tion of the earth and of the starry heaven, the breath in
all, the strength of fire, the root of the sea, sun, and moon.
Zeus is the king, the progenitor of all things." The god
Dionysus also is placed by the Orphic writers at the
head of the whole process of creation. The myth of
his dismemberment and of the scattering of his ashes
over the whole world is made to symbolise the great
thought of the connection of all things with the same
source of life. Descriptions were also given, answering
to the growing sense of personal responsibility, of the
abodes of Hades and of the fate of souls there, and of
the metempsychoses through which the soul must pass.
This teaching had an influence which it is difficult to
measure ; it acted on the tragedians in their magnificent
attempts to reform the beliefs of their country by making
them moral ; it is to be traced in Plato, it also found
expression in the mysteries. In its own development
it gave rise to a new phenomenon in Greek religion,
that of itinerant preachers who went about appealing
to individuals to take thought for the salvation of their
souls, and also, strange to say, offering private charms
and spells to put them on the right way of salvation.
But Greek religion was not thus to be reformed.
It was not from the priests that the growth of the
higher faith of Greece was to proceed, but from the
CHAP. XVI Greece 303
philosophers. While much of the teaching of the philo-
sophers was apparently negative and destructive of
faith, — for Greece had her religious sceptics who turned
the shafts of ridicule on existing beliefs, her Agnostics
who considered that nothing certain could be affirmed
about the gods, and even her secularists who held
religion to be a mere invention of priests and rulers
for their own purposes, — the course of Greek philosophy
was, on the whole, constructive, even in matters of faith,
and laboured to provide religion with a stable founda-
tion in thought. In this great movement of the human
mind the thinkers of Greece — Socrates, Plato, Aristotle,
to name no more — were working at the same problem
which occupied the prophets of Israel, and building up
the rule of one God, a Being supremely wise and good,
source of all beauty, and the worker of all that is
wrought in the universe, in place of the many fickle
and weak deities who formerly bore sway. In many
ways the schools of Greece were the forerunners of
Christianity. As the Jews, carried far from their
temple, form a new principle of religious association
and learn to meet for the service of God, without any
sacrifice, in pious mental exercises, so the Greeks, for
whom their temples could do so little, form little com-
munities of earnest seekers after truth under some
teacher. The philosopher's discourse is held by students
of the early Christianity of the West to be the model
on which the Christian sermon was formed. Some of
the schools even developed a true pastoral activity,
exercising an oversight of their members, and seeking
to mould their moral life and habits according to the
dictates of true wisdom.
Thus there arose on Greek soil, after the temples had
grown cold, what may truly be called a second Greek
religion. It took possession of the Roman world, and
was, when Christianity appeared, the prevailing form of
religion among the more educated. Both in its outward
forms of association, in its doctrine of God, which went
304 History of Religion part iv
through later developments very similar to those of
Judaism, and in its concentration of thought on ethical
problems and on the moral life of the individual, it
powerfully prepared for Christianity. It was not a
religion, for it had neither any historical root nor any
belief and practice definite enough for the guidance
of the common people. Yet Christianity could not have
conquered the world without it.
Books Recommended
E. Meyer, Geschichte des Alterthums, vol. ii., contains the first attempt
to deal with Greek religion in the manner now required.
The Histories of Greece of Grote, Curtius, Abbott, and Holm,
Roscher, Lexikon der grieckischen, a Rdmischen Mythologie.
Dyer, The Gods of Greece.
Gardner and Jevons, Manual of Greek Antiquities, 1895.
L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States, 1896- 1907.
Nagelsbach, die Homerische Theologie.
Williamowitz, Homerische Untersuchnngen.
G. Anrich, das Antike Mysterienwesen.
Rohde, Psyche, 1891.
L. Campbell's Gifford Lectures on Religion in Greek Literature, 1898.
E. Caird, The Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers, 1904.
Holwerda, in De la Saussaye, Third Edition.
Ramsay on " Religion of Greece and Asia Minor " in Hastings' Biblt
Dictionary.
S. Reinach, in Oxford Proceedings, vol. ii. p. 117, sqq.
CHAPTER XVII
THE RELIGION OF ROME
The Romans themselves at a certain period in their
history identified their own gods with those of Greece,
and borrowed largely both from Greek ritual and Greek
mythology, so that they came to the conclusion that
the Roman and the Greek religions were essentially the
same. To the early Christian writers the religions of
Greece and Rome form one system ; and the world has
retained the impression that there was one old pagan
religion which assumed certain local differences in the
two countries, but was substantially the same in both,
Roman Religfion was different from Greek. — Now
the fact is that while Greek religion conquered Rome,
Italy had an older religion of its own, which was not
annihilated by the more brilliant newcomer, but re-
mained beside it and never entered into entire fusion
with it. The Romans were not a thinking so much as
an organising race ; in politics they were far ahead of
the rest of the world, but in thought and imagination
they were children ; and so it happened that they
borrowed ideas and usages from neighbours on this
side and on that, and organised the whole into a system
they could use, the organism being their own, but only
little of the contents.
We must therefore inquire, in the first place, as to the
religion the Romans had before they came under the
influence of Greek ideas. Their earliest religion is
to be traced in the calendar of their sacred year, in
U S05
3o6 History of Religion part iv
the lists of gods preserved for us in the writings of
the fathers, and in numberless usages and institutions
descended from early times.
The sacred year of early Rome is that of an agri-
cultural community. The festivals have to do with
sowing and reaping and storing corn, with vintage, with
flocks and herds, with wolves, with spirits of the woods,
with boundaries, with fountains, with changes of the sun
and of the moon. There are festivals of domestic life,
of the household fire, and of the spirits of the storeroom,
of the spirits of the departed, and of the household
ghosts. There are also festivals connected with warlike
matters, some connected with the river and the harbour
at its mouth, and some having to do with the arts of
a simple population. The calendar, taken by itself,
would create the impression that the community using
it began with agriculture and added to it afterwards
various other activities ; there is nothing in it to con-
tradict the supposition that Roman religion had its
beginnings in the fields and in the woods.
The earliest g'ods of Rome also agree with this.
They are, however, a very peculiar set of gods. Leaving
the great gods in the meantime, we notice two of the
agricultural deities ; there is a Saturnus, god of sowing,
and a Terminus, god of boundaries. These are what
are called functional deities, such as we met with in
Greece, p. 275, sqq. ; they take their name from the act
or province over which they preside. Saturnus means
one who has to do with sowing ; Terminus is a boundary
pure and simple. The god then, in these examples, is
not a great being who has come to have these functions
placed under him as well as others. He and the par-
ticular function belong together ; he owes all his deity
to it. Now these are only examples ; the same is found
to be the case with all or nearly all the distinctively
Roman gods ; they are, broadly speaking, all functional
beings. Each bears the name of an object or a process ;
and on the other hand there is no object and no act
CHAP. XVII The Religion of Rome 307
which has not its god. It is astounding to observe how
far the principle of the division of labour is carried
among these beings. Silvanus is the god of the wood,
Lympha of the stream, each wood and each stream
having its own Silvanus or Lympha. Seia has to do
with the corn before it sprouts, Segetia with corn when
shot up, Tutilina with corn stored in the granary,
Nodotus has for his care the knots in the straw. There
is a god Door, a goddess Hinge, a god Threshold.
Each act in opening infancy has its god or goddess.
The child has Cunina when lying in the cradle, Statina
when he stands, Edula when he eats, Locutius when he
begins to speak, Adeona when he makes for his mother,
Abeona when he leaves her; forty-three such gods of
childhood have been counted. Pilumnus, god of the
pestle, and Diverra, goddess of the broom, may close
our small sample of the limitless crowd.
It is usually said about these multitudinous petty
deities that the Roman was very religious, and saw in
every act and everything for which he had a name,
something mysterious and supernatural. The Greek,
it is said, sees things on his own level, and adds to
them a god who is human ; it is by the human spirit
that he interprets them. The Roman, on the contrary,
sees things as mysteries and fills them with gods who
are not human. That is true ; but the question to be
asked about these Roman gods is, to what stage of
religious development do they belong : do they prove
a primitive or an advanced stage of religious thought ?
It has been observed that these names of gods are all
epithets, or adjectives ; and it has been supposed that
there was originally a noun belonging to them, that
they were all epithets of one great deity, or, as some
are masculine and some feminine, of a great male and
a great female deity. The noun fell out of use, it is
supposed, but was still present to the mind of the
Roman, and thus his regiments of divine names are
not really designations of different persons, but titles
3o8 History of Religion part iv
of the same person, supposed to be present alike in
all these numberless manifestations. But it is not easy
to conceive how, if primitive Italy had reached the
conception of the unity of deity, that deity became so
remarkably subdivided, nor how his own proper name
and character were lost. It is much more natural to
suppose that the petty gods of Rome were all the
deities the early Latins had, and were worshipped for
their own sake. They represent the stage of thought
called Animism (see p. 41) when every part of nature is
thought to have its spirit, and the number of invisible
beings is liable to be multiplied indefinitely. While
other Aryan races had passed beyond this stage when
we first know them, and advanced to the belief in
great gods ruling great provinces of nature, the Latins,
whose mind was organising rather than productive,
made this advance more slowly, and instead of making
it organised the spiritual world of animism with a
thoroughness nowhere else equalled.^ They had, there-
fore, no gods properly so called, but only a host of
spirits. Even the beings they possessed, who after-
wards became great gods, were at first no more than
functional spirits. Janus, afterwards one of the chief
deities of Rome, is originally the "spirit of opening";
an abstraction capable of great multiplication ; a Janus
could be invoked for each act of that kind. Vesta is
the spirit of the hearth ; each household had its Vesta,
both in early and in later times. Juno is not one but
many : as each man had his genius, a spiritual self
accompanying or guarding him, so each woman had
— not her genius, but her Juno. There were many
Vestas, many Junos ; and it is only later that the
great goddess arises, who may be looked to from
every quarter. Others of the great gods of later Rome
have a similar early history. Mars was at first the
spirit which made the corn grow ; Diana was a tree-
^ See on this Mr. Jevons's preface to Plutarch's Romane Questions
(Nutt, 1892); which deserves to be published in a more accessible form.
CHAP, xvii The Religion of Rome 309
spirit, Jovis or Diovis himself, though his name con-
nects him with the Greek Zeus and the Sanscrit Dyaus,
and though he is afterwards, Hke these, the god of the
sky, was originally in Latin a spirit of wine, and was
worshipped, the Jovis of each village or each farm, at
the wine-feast in April when the first cask was
broached. Thus the gods of the Latins are not beings
who have an independent existence and features of
their own; they are limited each to the particular
object or process from which he derives his character,
and have no realm beyond it. And the same is true
of the family and house-gods, whose worship formed
perhaps the principal part of the working religion
of the Roman. The Lares represent the departed
ancestors of the family ; they dwell near the spot in
the house where they were buried, and still preside
over the household as they did in life. They are
worshipped daily with prayers and offerings of food
and drink ; the family adore in them not so much the
dead individuals, though their masks hang on the
wall, as the abstraction of its own family continuity.
The Penates or spirits of the store-chamber are wor-
shipped along with the Lares, they represent the con-
tinuity of the family fortune. A more general name
for the departed is the Manes, the kind ones ; they
are thought of as living below the earth ; it is not
individuals who are worshipped at their festivals, but
the dead in the abstract, the former upholders of the
family or of the people.
The character of Roman worship is determined by
the nature of its objects. As each of the gods has
his basis in a material object or action, there can be
no need of any images of them ; where the object or
the act is, there is the god, his character is expressed
in it and not to be expressed otherwise. Nor could
such gods require any temples. And what need of
priests for them, when every one who knew their
names (a great deal depended on that) could place
310 History of Religion part iv
himself in contact with them as soon as he saw the
object or took in hand the action behind which they
stood? Nor can many stories be told about gods
like these, — the Romans have no mythology. The
beings they worship are not persons but abstractions.
They have just enough character to be male or female,
but they cannot move about or act independently of
their natural basis ; they cannot marry, nor breed
scandal, nor make war. Nor can there be any motive
for identifying with such beings a great man who
has died ; where there are no true gods, there cannot
be any demi-gods or heroes. Only a very limited
power can possibly be put forth by such beings ; all
they can do is to give or to withhold prosperity,
each in the narrow section of affairs he has to do
with.
The aim of worship where such a set of beings is
concerned, is to get hold of the spirit or god connected
with the act one has in view, and so to deal with him
as to avert his disfavour, which the Roman always
apprehended, and gain his concurrence. The house-
gods are beings possessing a stated cult, but outside
the house-cult the worshipper has to face the question
at each emergency which god he ought to address.
He might choose the wrong one, which would make
his act of worship vain. If he names the god correctly
he will have a hold on him ; in a case of uncertainty,
therefore, he names a number of gods, in the hope that
one of them will be the right one ; or he invokes them
all. *' Whether thou be god or goddess " he will further
say, if he is in doubt on that point, " or by whatever
name thou desirest to be called." Each god has his
proper style and title, and it is vain to approach him
without these ; lists of the various gods and of their
correct styles were therefore drawn up in very early
times to serve as guides to the subject. The Latin
word " indigito," to point out, from " digitus," a finger,
is the term used of addressing a god ; the lists of deities
CHAP. XVII The Religion of Rome 311
with their proper appellations were called "indiglta-
menta"; and the gods named in them " Dii indigetes."
The act of worship is grave and formal ; it has to be
done with precision and in strict accordance with the
rules; silence is commanded; the sacrificer repeats the
prayer proper for the occasion after some one who
knows it by rote; the worshippers veil their heads.
In this the Roman ritual is markedly different from
the Greek. Mommsen says the Greek prayed bare-
headed, because his prayer was contemplation, looking
at and to the gods ; and the Roman with head covered,
because his prayer was an exercise of thought ; and in
this he sees a characteristic indication of the difference
between the two religions. A more modern interpreta-
tion of the Roman practice is that it arose from the fear
that the worshipper might see the god whom he has
just summoned by name, which would be dangerous.
If any mistake is made in worship, the act is vain and
has to be done over again.
The Great Gods. — The foregoing is the logic of the
system on which the Roman religion, as distinguished
from the foreign elements afterwards added to it, was
based ; the religion, however, does not come into view
historically till it has begun to rise above such a
worship of abstractions or of petty spirits, towards a
worship of gods. It was apparently by the growth of
larger social organisms that the Latin tribes advanced
to the worship of greater gods. While the family
religions continued to the end, the tribe had, as in the
case of other early peoples, a larger religion than the
family, and a union of tribes produced a religion on a
still greater scale. The history of early Rome consists
of a succession of such fusions of tribes into a larger
political whole. When history opens, " Rome is a fully-
formed and united city"; but Rome is made up of
several tribes, which maintain many separate institu-
tions. The religion of after times bears witness to
these successive unions. " Deus Fidius," the god of
3 1 2 History of Religion part iv
good faith, is the sacred impersonation of an alHance.
Mars and Quirinus are precisely similar to each other,
and each has a flamen, or blower of the sacrificial flame,
and a staff of twelve salii or dancers. Mars is the
Roman, Quirinus the Sabine deity ; and we see that
the two tribes had, before they were united, very similar
worships, which were both kept up after the union.
The feriae Latinae, or Latin festival, celebrated on
Mons Albanus, is common to the Latin tribes and
commemorates their union. Jovis rises into importance
with the growth of city life ; he comes to be called
father Jovis, Jupiter ; there are many Jupiters, but the
Jupiter of the city of Rome is the greatest and best of
all ; he bears the title of Optimus Maximus. He rises
above Mars, in earlier times the first Roman god, after
whom the first month of the year was called, before
the month of Janus and the month of Februus, the
purifier, were added to it. Janus, the great state-god
of opening, was the only one of whom there was a
representation ; Mars was represented symbolically by
a spear, but Janus was figured as a man with two faces.
Vesta, the hearth-goddess of the state, was of course a
great deity with a very important worship.
Here we must mention a side of Roman religion
which no doubt has its roots far back in prehistoric
darkness, but which could scarcely be organised as we
find it till the greater gods had risen to some degree of
power. It was believed that the gods were constantly
making signs to men, especially in occurrences which
take place in the air, such as thunder and lightning, and
the flight of birds, but also in many other ways. Some
of the signs were simple, so that any one could tell if
they were lucky or the reverse, but some were not to be
interpreted except by men possessing a special know-
ledge of the subject. And such men might be asked
by an individual or by the state when about to enter
on any undertaking, to seek a sign from heaven con-
cerning that business. This became with the Romans
CHAP. XVII The Religion of Rome 313
a great and important act, and those who had it in their
hands exercised great power.
Sacred Persons. — The priest in the earliest times was,
in the domestic reh'gion, the paterfamilias, in that of
the tribe, which was but an extended household, the
head of the leading family, and in the city, which was
constituted after the same model, the king. Religion
was the principal part of the service of the state; the
king as such had to offer sacrifice, to cause the gods
to be consulted, to prosecute and judge and punish
those who had violated the laws and came under the
anger of the gods. But as the state grew larger, various
offices were set up to relieve the king of part of these
duties ; when new worships were added to the old ones,
the care of them was in some cases committed to a
special person or college; and these priesthoods and
sacred guilds of early Rome maintained their place in
the constitution for many centuries, and carried on this
part of the public service long after the words they
spoke and the acts they did had become meaningless.
Beginning with the sacred persons attached to special
cults, we have, first, three flamens, one of Mars, one of
Quirinus, and one of Jovis (fl. Martialis, Ouirinalis,
Dialis). Mars and Quirinus have their dancers, as we
mentioned above. Other flamens of lower rank were
afterwards instituted for the separate worships of the
tribes. Very old are the " fratres arvales," field-brothers,
who served the creative goddess (Dea Dia) in the
country in the month of May, with a view to a good
growing summer, dancing to her and addressing hymns
to her which may be read now but cannot be under-
stood, and were unintelligible to the Romans themselves.
The Luperci (wolf-men) held a shepherd's festival in
the month of February, sacrificing goats and dogs to
some rustic deity, and running naked through the
streets afterwards, striking those they met with thongs
cut from the hides of the victims. The six vestal
virgins are well known, who had charge of keeping up
3 1 4 History of Religion part iv
the fire of Vesta, the house-fire of the state. They
devoted their whole lives to this office, and enjoyed
great respect. These priesthoods and corporations,
instituted to secure the continuance of special cults, are
not of a nature to bring the whole of life under the
influence of the priests and so to foster a priestly type
of religion. Nor were those other religious offices of
a nature to do so, which were not attached to special
cults but served the more general purpose of assisting
and advising the state in matters connected with religion.
First among these comes the office of pontifex, a word
which is variously interpreted, either as " bridge-maker,"
— that being a very important and solemn proceed-
ing,— or as leader in a religious procession. There were
originally five pontifices, and the number was after-
wards raised to fifteen. They exercised a great variety
of functions, and had a general oversight of all religious
matters, both public and domestic. They were experts
in ritual and in canon law ; they advised the state as
to the proper sacrifices to be offered for the public, and,
when consulted, would also direct the private individual.
Funerals, marriages, and other domestic occurrences
into which religious considerations entered, were under
their charge ; and on the occurrence of portents and
omens it was their duty to indicate the steps to be
taken in order to find out what the gods wished to
signify. They had charge of the calendar, and had to
fix what days were proper for carrying on the business
of the courts {dies fasti), and they were the authorities
on the forms of legal process. The chief pontiff" is
called the "judge and arbiter of things divine and
human," and the college had manifestly a very strong
position. The same is true of the augurs or experts in
signs and omens. Though they did not consult the
gods about public undertakings until the magistrate or
the general asked them to do so, they had power to
stop proceedings of which they disapproved ; and this
at certain periods of Roman history they very frequently
CHAP. XVII The Religion of Rome 315
did. In Cicero's treatise on Divination a great deal
of interesting matter may be found on this subject.
Another sacred college of somewhat later date is that
of the men, at first three in number, afterwards fifteen,
who acted as expounders of the sacred Sibylline books,
which King Tarquin purchased from the old woman or
Sibyl, of Cumae.
Roman Religion Legal rather than Priestly.— While
some of these priestly colleges exercised large powers,
these powers were always regarded not as inherent but
deputed. The sacred offices were not hereditary but
elective ; no course of training was necessary to qualify
for them ; men were chosen for them by the state as for
any other public office, and those who became priests
did not cease to be citizens but continued to sit in the
Senate, and, as it might happen, to hold other offices
at the same time. The growth of a priestly caste was
thus effectively prevented ; religion was precluded from
having any free development of its own, and kept in the
position of an instrument for the furtherance of ends of
state. There is no great religion in which ritual is so
much, doctrine and enthusiasm so little. All these
priests and colleges exist for no end but to carry out
with strict exactitude the ritual usage which is deemed
necessary to keep on good terms with the gods. They
have no doctrine to teach, no fervour to communicate,
they do not even tell any stories. Punctiliousness and
anxiety attend all their proceedings. To the Roman,
Ihne says, "religion turns out to be the fear lest the
gods should punish them for neglect ; any unusual
occurrence may be a sign that the gods are withdrawing
their co-operation from the state, and this must be
looked into, and the due expiations used if judged
necessary." Ritual must always be carried out with
the utmost precision ; it is not the goodwill of the
worshipper but his exactitude that counts. He may
even cheat the gods of their due if he is formally
correct in his observance. For example, if the auspices
3i6 History of Religion part iv
(the signs derived from birds) were unfavourable, they
could be repeated till a better result was obtained.
What we have described is the religion of Rome in
its original form, before it accepted foreign modifications.
Its gods are spirits of the woods and fields, of the
market, of the foray, of the treaty, of all the aspects,
in fact, which life had borne to the tribes of Central Italy,
especially to the Latins and the Sabines who combined
to form the state of Rome. These gods form no family
and have no history, they do not, like the gods of
Greece, lay hold of the imagination, nor, like those
of Germany, of the affections. They are only dimly
known ; but they are powerful, and it is necessary to
reckon with them ; and the only relations which car.
be kept up with such beings are those of business and
of law. It follows that this religion is one of constraint
and not of inspiration. In this it agrees with the
Roman character, which is much more inclined to order
than to freedom, to law than to art. The word religion
has here its origin ; its primary meaning is restraint or
check, since the chief feeling with which the Roman
regarded his gods was that of anxiety. Not <"hat the
gods were bad ; Vediovis, the bad counterpart of Jovis,
is a vanishing figure, — but they were ill-known, and
might have cause to be angry. Worship, therefore,
the practical cultivation of the friendship of the gods,
swallows up here the other elements of religion as a
whole. Religion does not free the forces of human
nature to realise themselves in spontaneous activity,
but enchains them to the punctilious service of a non-
human authority. Everything exciting is kept at a
distance, and men are trained in obedience and scrupu-
lousness and self-denial. They produce no beautiful
works of art, and have hardly any stories to delight
in ; but they are reverent and conscientious ; private
feeling is sacrificed with an austere satisfaction to the
public interest, and they accordingly build up a great ■
power. Living in an atmosphere of magic, where '
i
CHAP. XVII 71ie Religion of Rome 317
unseen dangers lurk on every side, and there is virtue
in words and forms correctly used to avert these
dangers, the Roman develops to perfection one side
of religion. To its inspirations and enthusiasms and
hidden consolation he is a stranger ; but he knows
it better than others as a conservative and regulating
force, which checks passion, calls for wary and orderly
conduct, and causes the individual to subordinate
himself to the community.
Chang-es introduced from without. — The Roman
religion had, properly speaking, no development. What
it might have become had it been left to unfold itself
without interference from without, we can only guess ;
but it was early brought under the influence of more
highly developed religions, and it proved to have so
little power of resisting innovations that it speedily
parted with much of its own native character. The
Romans were not unconscious that their religion was
an imperfect one ; they never claimed, when they were
conquering the world, that their religion was the only
true one, or had any mission to prevail over others.
They were tolerant from the first of the religions of
other peoples. The gods of other peoples they always
believed to be real beings, with whom it was well for
them also to be on good terms. If everything in the
world had its spirit, these gods also were the spirits
of their own countries and nations ; the very notion
of deity which the Romans entertained prevented them
from having any exclusive belief in their own gods or
from denying the right of the gods of others.^ When
therefore they came in contact with foreign religions,
they were not protected by any profound conviction
of the truth of their own, and were exposed to the
full force of the new ideas. The new religions came
to them along with the culture of peoples much further
advanced in art and in thought than they were them-
selves ; at each such contact, therefore, they felt the
' Cf. Celsus in Origen, Contra Celsu?n, vii. 68.
3i8 History of Religion part iv
foreigner to be superior to themselves in intellectual
matters ; and wherever this happens, the less highly-
gifted race is likely to change in its religion as well as in
other things. We have to note the changes which were
produced by such external influences.
In the first place, Rome borrowed from Etruria.
Etruscan religion was both more developed and more
savage than that of Rome. Human sacrifice was an
acknowledged feature of it ; divination was carried to
absurd lengths, one great branch of it consisting in
the prediction of the future from the appearance of the
entrails of slaughtered animals. Etruria had a hell with
regular torments for the departed ; in Rome the belief
in a future life was much less definite. On the other
hand, Etruria had deities who were something more
than abstractions ; there was a circle of twelve gods,
who held meetings on high, and regulated the affairs
of the world. Above them was a power, little defined,
to which the gods were subject, a kind of fate. Greek
influence, so notably apparent in Etruscan art, is present,
too, we see, in Etruscan religion; it is through this
somewhat dark passage that Greek religious ideas first
came to Rome. Under this influence various innova-
tions took place at Rome. Before the end of the
monarchy the Romans had begun to build houses for
their gods, after being for 170 years, we are told, with-
out any such arrangement. The Roman " templum "
was not originally a building, but a space marked
off, according to the rules of augury, for the observa-
tion of signs. A part of the sky was also marked off
for such " observation " and " contemplation." On such a
holy site, on the Capitoline hill, there was founded by
the earlier Tarquin the temple of Jupiter which always
continued to be the principal site of Roman religion.
Its architecture was Tuscan ; and it contained not
only a cella or holy place for the image of Jupiter
Optimus Maximus, but also a cella for Juno and one
for Minerva. The latter was both an Etruscan and a
CHAP. XVII The Religion of Rome 319
Roman deity, the goddess of memory. Art was thus
enlisted in the service of the gods ; the divine figures
acquired a reahty and distinctness quite wanting to the
earlier divine abstractions ; and a new notion of deity
was presented to the Roman mind. Other temples
followed, to Jupiter under other names than that which
he had in the Capitol, and to other deities. That of
Faith was a very early one. It was a rule in temple-
building that the image in the cella faced the west,
so that the worshipper, praying towards it, faced the
east. Here also the Roman custom is a departure from
the Greek ; for in Greek temples it is the rule that the
image faces the east, and the worshipper the west.
The Roman orientation of sacred buildings has passed
into the practice of the Christian Church. From Etruria
the Romans also derived a great addition to the rules
of divination ; but the more childish parts of Etruscan
divination were regarded at Rome as superstitious,
though private persons might frequently resort to them.
Greek Gods in Rome.— While Greek ideas thus came
indirectly from the north, the south of the peninsula
was becoming more and more Greek, and the gods and
temples of Hellas, established first at the sea-ports and
colonies, gradually came to Rome. This movement is
connected with the Sibylline books which were acquired
by the last of the kings. These books were brought
to Rome from the Greek town of Cumae; they were
written in Greek, and contained oracles which were
ascribed to an old Greek prophetess. They were con-
sulted in grave emergencies of state through the officials
who had charge of them, and what they generally pre-
scribed was that a god should be sent for from Greece,
and his worship set up in Rome. Many foreign
worships were thus imported. First came Apollo,
disguised under the Latin name of Aperta, "opener,"
for the books contained many of his oracles ; he was
received and worshipped as a god of purification, since
the state was in need of that process at the time, as
320 History of Religion part iv
well as of prophecy. In the year 496 B.C. came in
the same way Demeter, Persephone, and Dionysus,
identified with the old Latin Ceres, Libera, and Liber ;
and, a century later, Heracles, identified with the Latin
Hercules. In the year 291, on the occurrence of a
plague, Asclepios, in Latin Aesculapius, was brought
from Epidauros ; and when the crisis of the contest
with Hannibal was at hand (204 B.C.) Cybele, the great
mother of the gods, was fetched from Pessinus in
Phrygia. The people of that town generously handed
over to the Roman ambassadors the field-stone which
was their image of the goddess, and her journey to
Rome had the desired effect, in the expulsion of
Hannibal from Italy. The Venus of Mount Eryx in
Sicily arrived in Rome about the same time ; a goddess
combining the characters of Aphrodite and Astarte,
and quite different from the simple old Roman Venus,
who was a goddess of Spring, and presided over
gardens.
The process of which these are the outward land-
marks went on during the whole period of the Republic,
and resulted in the substitution of what may be called
with Mommsen the Grseco-Roman, for the old Roman
religion. The change was a very profound one. Not
only were some new gods added to the old ones, not
only did Greek art come to be emploj-ed in Roman
temples, not only were new rites introduced, such as
the lectisternium, in which couches were arranged, each
with the image of a god and that of a goddess, and
tables spread to regale the recumbent deities. The
very notion of deity was changed ; the Greek god,
represented by an image in human form and moving
freely in the upper world, was substituted for the Latin
god who was the unseen side of an act or process or
quality, from which he had his name, and apart from
which he was not. The following is a list of the
principal Roman gods and of the Greek ones with
whom they were identified: — Jupiter (Zeus), Juno
CHAP. XVII The Religion of Rome 321
(Hera), Neptunus (Poseidon), Minerva (Athene), Mars
(Ares), Venus (Aphrodite), Diana (Artemis), Vulcanus
(Hephaestus), Vesta (Hestia), Mercurius (Hermes),
Ceres (Demeter). The identifications are by no means
accurate ; Jupiter and Vesta, as we have seen, are the
only two Roman gods who are really identical with
Greek gods, the other equations are founded on
accidental resemblances, and are more arbitrary than
real. The result of them was, however, that the
Romans forgot to a large extent their own gods, and
got Greek ones instead. With the divine figures they
took over the mythology of Greece, and thus the gods
came to be well known with all their weaknesses,
instead of as before surrounded with mystery and awe.
The worship founded on the earlier conception of the
deity, and kept up with unwavering regularity, was
inapplicable to these new gods, and inevitably lost all
its reality. This is not the only cause, but it is one
of the chief causes which prepared for the fearful
spectacle presented by Roman religion at the end of
the Republic, when men of learning and distinction
officiated as the heads of a religion in which they had
no belief, and which they scoffed at in their writings.
Among the worships which came to Rome from the
East there were several which are not of Greek, but
of Oriental origin. The worship of Cybele belongs to
Asia Minor, though it had spread over Greece ; that
of Dionysus also came to Greece from Asia. The
practice of both these cults was accompanied by ex-
citement and self-abandonment on the part of the
worshippers ; and they formed a great contrast to the
staid and formal worship of the Romans, the only
admissible passion in which was a calm passion for
correctness. The worship of Cybele was carried on by
eunuchs, it had noisy processions, and depended on
begging for its support. When the Romans brought it
to their city, they ordained that Roman citizens should
not fill leading offices in it ; but it flourished so strongly,
X
32 2 History of Religion part iv
among the numerous foreigners in the capital and among
the poor, as to show that it met a great want there.
The worship of Bacchus had to be suppressed by the
state ; it was carried on at nocturnal meetings, which
even citizens attended, and it led to all kinds of irregu-
larities. As the subject of this chapter is not the
religions of Rome, but the Roman religion, we do not
here review the numerous foreign worships which were
brought to the capital from every part of the Empire,
and made Rome, towards the close of the Republic, the
residence of the gods of every nation. The Romans as
we saw were not led by any convictions of their own
to deny the truth of foreign religions ; and their policy
as rulers also inclined them to tolerate all worships which
did not offend against civil order. In the provinces it
was the rule not to interfere with local religion ; at
Rome the authorities recognised not the imported
religion itself, of which the state did not feel called to
judge, but the association practising it, which received
permission to do so. The worship was then protected
by the state — it became a religio licita. Amid the
meeting of all the gods and the clashing of all the
creeds which were thus brought about at Rome, the
Roman religion itself maintained its place, not as a
doctrine which any one believed, for the very priests
and augurs laughed at the rites and ceremonies they
carried on, but as a ritual which was bound up with
the whole past history of Rome, and believed to be
necessary for the welfare of the state as well as for the
satisfaction of the common people. In the atmosphere
of discussion and of far-reaching scepticism which then
prevailed it was not to be expected that faith could
again find any strong support in the historical religion
of Rome. The Emperor Augustus made a serious
attempt to reform and revive religion. He selected
the domestic worship of the Lares as the most living
part of the old system, and ordained that the two
Lares should be worshipped along with the genius
I
CHAP, xvii The Religion of Rome 323
of the Emperor, and that Rome should be divided into
districts, each with its temple of this strange trinity ;
while in the provinces each district was to support a
worship of Rome and of the Emperor in addition to
its existing cults. Temples were rebuilt at Rome,
new ones were raised, sacred offices were filled which
had been vacant, religious games were instituted to
carry the Roman mind back to the sacred past. Livy
and Virgil treated the past from a religious point of
view, showing the sacred mission of the Roman race,
and exhibiting the valour and piety of the founders
of the state. If the Roman religion could be revived
these were the proper means to do it. But the religion
of the future was not to be prepared in this way.
Books Recommended
The sections on religion in Mommsen's History of Rome.
Ramsay's Roman Antiquities.
Wissowa, Religion und Cultur der Romer.
Ilolwerda, in De la Saussaye.
For the period of the Empire, Boissier's La Religion Remains.
See also the work of Cumont, cited p. 169.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA
I. The Vedic Religion
No contrast could well be greater than that between the
German religion and that of India. In the one case we
have a people full of vigour, but not yet civilised ; in
the other a people of high organisation and culture, but
deficient in vigour ; the former religion is one of action,
the latter one of speculation. From the original Aryan
faith, to which that of the Teutons most closely approxi-
mates, Indian religion is removed by two great steps.
First we have as a variety of Aryan faith the Indo-Iranian
religion, that of the undivided ancestors of Persians and
Indians alike, in the dim period antecedent to the
Aryan settlement of India. Of this religion, the
common mother of those of Persia and of India, we
shall give some sketch after we have made acquaint-
ance with the gods of India, at the beginning of our
Persian chapter. Indian religion is a variety of Indo-
Iranian, which is a variety of the Aryan type. Neither
its genealogy nor its character entitles it to be taken
as a typical example of the Aryan religions. In literary
chronology it is the earliest of them, inasmuch as its
books are the oldest sacred literature of Aryan faith ;
but in point of development it is not an early but an
advanced product. The absorbing interest it offers to
the student of our science is due to the fact that it
presents in an unbroken sequence a growth of religious
324
CHAP, xviii The Vedic Religion 325
thought, which, beginning with simple conceptions and
advancing to a great priestly ritual, can be seen to
pass into mysticism and asceticism, and thence to the
rejection of all gods and rites, and a system of salva-
tion by individual good conduct. Nowhere else can
the progress of religion through what we might call
its seven ages of life be seen so clearly, nor the logical
connection of these ages with each other be recognised
so unmistakably. The present chapter deals with the
infancy and lusty youth of the religion as seen in
Vedism ; the later stages of Brahmanism and Buddhism
will be spoken of in subsequent chapters.
I. The Rigveda. — The Vedic religion takes its name
from the Rigveda, the oldest portion of Indian literature,
and the earliest literary document of Aryan religion. Of
four vedas or collections of hymns, the Rigveda is the
oldest and most interesting. It contains a set of hymns
which, with much more of their early religious litera-
ture, the Hindus ascribed to direct divine revelation,
but which we know to have been written by men who
claimed no special inspiration. Most of them date from
the time when the Aryans, having made good their
entry in India, but without by any means altogether
subduing the former inhabitants, were dwelling in the
Punjaub. The religion of the hymns is a strongly
national one. The Aryans appeal to their gods to
help them against the races, afterwards driven to the
south and to the sea coasts, who differ from themselves
in colour, in physiognomy, in language, in manners,
and in religion. Nor are these conquerors by any
means an uncultivated people ; they had long been
using metals ; they built houses, — a number together
in a village ; they lived principally by keeping cattle,
but also by tillage, and by hunting. They drank Sura,
a kind of brandy, and Soma, a kind of strong ale, of
which we shall hear more. They were, as a rule,
monogamous, the wife occupying a high position in
the household, and assisting her husband in offering
326 History of Religion part iv
the domestic sacrifice. At the head of each state was
a king, as among the Greeks of Homer ; he was not,
however, an absolute monarch ; his people met in
council and controlled him. The king himself offered
sacrifice for his tribe in his own house, — there were no
temples, — but he was frequently assisted by a man or
several men of special learning in such rites.
The hymns of the Rigveda were written for use at
sacrifices. The sacrifice consists of food and drink of
which the god who is addressed is invited to come and
partake, or which are conveyed to the gods seated on
their heavenly thrones, by means of fire. Soma, the
intoxicating juice of the soma plant, is an invariable
feature of the banquets in these hymns ; the solid
part consists of butter, milk, rice or cakes ; but animals
were also killed, and the horse-sacrifice was a specially
important one. The hymn also is an essential part
of the rite ; the sacrifice would have no virtue with-
out it. It consists of praise and prayer. The deity is
extolled for the exploits he has done, for his strength,
for his beauty, for his wisdom or his goodness, he is
invoked again and again to partake of what has been
provided for him, and in return he is asked to send
the worshipper food or cows, guidance or protection,
or whatever the latter is in want of.
The Vedic Gods. — And who are the gods who receive
this worship? They are parts of nature or celestial
phenomena, more or less personified. Worship is
directed now to one divine being, now to another ;
each has a story which is dwelt on and a number of
functions belonging to him, for the sake of which he
is extolled and sought after ; each god, that is to say,
has his myth. In this set of gods the myths are so
clear that we can identify with perfect confidence each
of the gods with that part of Nature from which he arose.
M. Barth classifies the Vedic gods according to the
degree in which they have become detached from their
natural basis. There are two which are not so detached
(
CHAP. XVIII The Vedic Religion 327
at all. Agni, who is one of the chief deities of the
Rigveda, is fire, and Soma, the deity to whom all the
hymns of the ninth book are addressed, is simply the
juice of the soma plant, the liquid part of every sacrifice,
Agni is not any particular fire, but fire as a cosmic
principle, born in heaven, born also daily at the sacrifice
by the rubbing together of two pieces of wood, his
parents whom he consumes. He is a priest carrying
the offerings of men up to the gods, but he was a priest
at the first sacrifice, the primeval heavenly sacrifice,
before he had come down to men. He is also the guest
and household friend of man, a kindly and familiar
being. But he pervades all nature, and all growth and
energy are due to him. Soma, also inseparably con-
nected with all sacrifice, who strengthens the gods and
makes them immortal, is likewise a universal principle ;
he too came at first from heaven, and he too is at work
all through the world. There are stories of his first pro-
duction among the gods, and of the first effects of his
appearance ; he is the nourisher of plants, he gives
inspiration to the poet and fervour to prayer. Along
with Agni he kindled the sun and the stars.
In other gods there is a nearer approach to a human
figure, and the physical side is not so obtrusive. Indra
is most frequently invoked of all the gods, and may be
called the national god of this period. He is described
as a chieftain standing in a chariot drawn by two horses.
He waged a great battle, but still wages it constantly,
against the monsters of heat and drought, Vrittra, the
coverer, and Ahi the dragon, for the deliverance of the
cows, the heavenly waters, kept by them in captivity.
The contest between the god and the demon goes on
for ever. Indra is also the giver of good things of
every kind, he keeps the heavenly bodies in their
places, he is the author and preserver of all life, the
inspirer of all noble thoughts and the answerer of pious
prayers, the rewarder of all who trust in him, and the
forgiver of the penitent. It is good to sacrifice to him
328 History of Religion part iv
and to offer him soma in abundance ; for it strengthens
him to take up afresh his conflicts and labours as the
champion of man. Indra is surrounded by the Maruts,
the storm-gods, who are separately invoked in many
hymns. They drive through the sky with splendour
and with mighty music, and bring rain to the parched
earth. Their father is Rudra, also a god of storms,
the handsomest of all the gods, and, in spite of his
thunderbolts, a helpful and kindly being. Wherever
he sees evil done, he hurls his spear to smite the evil-
doer, but he is also a healer of both physical and moral
evils, and the best of all physicians. Of the same order
of deities are Vata or Vayu, the wind, and Parjanya,
the rain-storm. But the loftiest of all the Vedic gods
is Varuna, the great serene luminous heaven. The
hymns addressed to him are comparatively few, but
among them are those which rise to the highest moral
and religious level. In language recalling that of the
psalmists and prophets of the Bible, they exalt Varuna
as the creator of the world and of heaven and the stars,
as the omniscient defender of the good and avenger of
all evil, as just and holy, and yet full of compassion, so
that the conscience-stricken suppliant is encouraged to
turn to him.
We here give a few extracts from hymns addressed to
some of the gods we have spoken of The versions are
those of the late Dr. John Muir. A metrical version can
scarcely represent the hymns with the accuracy the
scholar would desire, but, on the other hand, a literal
translation, such as that of Professor Max Miiller in
vol. xxxii. of the Sacred Books of the East, gives a
less true idea of the spirit of the pieces, and is less
fitted at least for a work like this.
To Indra
Thou, Indra, oft of old hast quaffed
With keen delight, our Soma draught.
All gods delicious Soma love ;
But thou, all other gods above.
CHAP. XVIII The Vedic Religion 329
Thy mother knew how well this juice
Was fitted for her infant's use,
Into a cup she crushed the sap
Which thou didst sip upon her lap ;
Yes, Indra, on thy natal morn,
The very hour that thou wast born,
Thou didst those jovial tastes display,
Which still survive in strength to-day.
And once, thou prince of genial souls.
Men say thou drained'st thirty bowls.
To thee the Soma draughts proceed,
As streamlets to the lake they feed,
Or rivers to the ocean speed.
Our cup is foaming to the brim
With Soma pressed to sound of hymn.
Come, drink, thy utmost craving slake.
Like thirsty stag in forest lake,
Or bull that roams in arid waste.
And burns the cooling brook to taste.
Indulge thy taste, and quaff at will ;
Drink, drink again, profusely swill 1
Another to Indra
And thou dost view with special grace,
The fair complexioned Aryan race,
Who own the gods, their laws obey,
And pious homage duly pay.
Thou giv'st us horses, cattle, gold.
As thou didst give our sires of old.
Thou sweep'st away the dark-skinned brood,
Inhuman, lawless, senseless, rude.
Who know not Indra, hate his friends,
And spoil the race which he defends.
Chase far away, the robbers, chase.
Slay those barbarians black and base.
And save us, Indra, from the spite
Of sprites that haunt us in the night.
Our rites disturb by contact vile.
Our hallowed offerings defile.
Preserve us, friend, dispel our fears.
And let us live a hundred years.
And when our earthly course we've run,
And gained the region of the Sun,
Then let us live in ceaseless glee,
Sweet Soma quaffing there with thee.
^S^ History of Religion part iv
To Agni
Great Agni, though thine essence be but one,
Thy forms are three ; as fire thou blazest here,
As lightning flashest in the atmosphere,
In heaven thou flamest as the golden sun.
It was in heaven thou hadst thy primal birth,
But thence of yore a holy sage benign,
Conveyed thee down on human hearths to shine,
And thou abid'st a denizen of earth.
Sprung from the mystic pair by priestly hands,
In wedlock joined, forth flashes Agni bright ;
But — O ye heaven and earth I tell you right —
The unnatural child devours the parent brands.
To Varuna
The mighty lord on high our deeds, as if at hand, espies ;
The gods know all men do, though men would fain their acts
disguise.
Whoever stands, whoever moves, or steals from place to place.
Or hides him in his secret cell, — the gods his movements trace.
Wherever two together plot, and deem they are alone
King Varuna is there, a third, and all their schemes are known.
This earth is his, to him belong those vast and boundless skies ;
Both seas within him rest, and yet in that small pool he lies.
Whoever far beyond the sky should think his way to wing,
He could not there elude the grasp of Varuna the king.
His spies, descending from the skies, glide all this world around,
Their thousand eyes all-scanning sweep to earth's remotest bound.
Whate'er exists in heaven and earth, whate'er beyond the skies,
Before the eyes of Varuna, the king, unfolded lies.
The ceaseless winkings all he counts of every mortal's eyes.
He wields this universal frame as gamester throws his dice.
Those knotted nooses which thou fling'st, O God, the bad to snare.
All liars let them overtake, but all the truthful spare.
Varuna, the all-embracing sky, is also in many hymns
a solar deity. There are also other solar deities ; Mitra
who is frequently invoked along with Varuna ; Surya,
Savitri, Vishnu, and Pushan, are all gods of this class.
Each of these has some attributes or some story of his
own. Surya keeps his eye on men and reports their fail-
ings to Varuna and Mitra. Savitri, the quickener, raises
CHAP. XVIII The Vedic Religion 331
all things from sleep in the morning with his long arms of
gold, and covers them with sleep in the evening. Vishnu,
the active, traverses the universe with three strides.
Pushan is a shepherd who loses none of his flock ; a
guide also, both in the journeys of this world and in the
last journey. A number of the principal gods have the
common title of Adityas or children of Aditi, immensity,
a being too vast and undetermined to be clearly repre-
sented. We should also mention Ushas, the dawn, a
goddess whom the sun-god is daily chasing ; the Asvins
or two heavenlycharioteers, who daily make the circuit of
the heavens ; Tvashtri, the smith who made the thunder-
bolt of Indra ; the Ribhus, artificers who were once men
and have been admitted to the society of the gods. Yama
is the god of the dead, he first traversed the road to the
country beyond, and now he rules over it, and comforts
with substantial joys the spirits guided there by Agni
(this points to cremation which was frequent but not
universal) or by Pushan. There the Pitris or fathers
sit at the same tables with the gods, and are eternally
happy. Brahmanaspati, lord of prayer, is a god of
another type, a personification of the act of ritual, and
his presence in the Vedas, beside the elemental deities,
shows how early speculation had begun.
To what Stag"e does this Relig-ion belong"? — Our
sketch of this system is necessarily brief; we have now
to inquire as to the place it occupies in the religious
growth of India. It is held, on the one hand, that it is
a primitive religious product, that it shows us some
of the very first efforts men made to have a religion ;
while on the other hand it is held that the Vedic hymns
and the Vedic system are sacerdotal, and are due to an
advanced organisation of worship and to a special set of
men who were much in advance of their age.
I. It is Primitive. — Mr. Max Miiller^ says that "the
sacred books of India offer the same advantages ... for
the study of the origin and growth of religion . . . which
^ Origin of Religion, p. 135.
332 History of Religion part iv
Sanscrit has offered for the study of the origin and
growth of human speech." Dr. Muir^ claims that the
Vedic hymns illustrate the natural workings of the
human mind in the period of its infancy. In the Vedas,
these writers consider, we are able to watch the process
by which the earliest men rose to the belief in gods, and
the naive and simple methods by which man's first
intercourse with gods was carried on The undoubted
antiquity of these pieces favours this view ; the Rigveda
is admitted on all hands to be the earliest part of
Indian literature, and many of the hymns were written
about 1 500 B.C.^ The pure and simple nature of the Vedic
religion may also appear to favour this view. It is a
religion singularly free from the lower elements of man's
early faith. Savage legends and especially immoral
stories of the gods are markedly absent from the
hymns; they are also free from the element of magic
and fetishism ; the gods are great beings, and religion
consists in intercourse with these great beings. Now
the later religious literature of India, the brahmanas or
commentaries on the Rigveda and the other later Vedas,
contain a variety of legends and a religion by no means
free from magic. It may be maintained therefore that
the pure religion of the Aryans afterwards became con-
taminated by contact with the lower religion of the
tribes the Aryans had conquered. It was from the
Dravidian and Kolarian aborigines, we are told, that
Indian religion took its later corruptions. The Vedic
religion has no idols, it has no dark descriptions of hell,
the caste system on which later Brahmanism was based
is absent from it, it has no demons to be guarded
against, and no bad deities. The doctrine of metem-
psychosis is not found here, except perhaps in germ.
The immolation of the widow on the funeral pile of her
husband is not sanctioned by the Vedas, and of ancestor-
^ Sanscrit Texts, vol. v. p. 4.
- According to Mr. Max Miiller the Mantra or hymn period is to be
placed 1000-800 B.C. ; but olhcr scholars place it earlier.
CHAP, xviii The Vedic Religion 333
worship only a few traces are found. All these, it may
be held, are later corruptions. The Vedic religion is a
bright and happy system, and the primitive beliefs of
mankind, less changed by the Indians than they were
elsewhere, are here to be seen ; the hymns show the
kind of faith to which a strong and happy race of men
naturally came, as their minds began to open to the
wonders of the world they lived in, the faith of " primi-
tive shepherds praising their gods as they lead their
flocks to the pasture." The Indians had preserved,
longer than other peoples, the gift of recognising deity
in nature ; and the primitive beliefs of mankind survive
here in something like their first integrity, while else-
where they were broken up and confused.
2. It is Advanced. — On the other hand, it is urged
that the society in which the hymns arose was not
a primitive one, but one considerably advanced both
in arts and institutions. The Rishis (seers), who
composed them, belonged to families who cultivated
such an art ; and the hymns were no artless out-
pourings of childlike emotion, but were written on
an elaborate metrical system for a definite purpose,
namely, to form part of great acts of worship. As
for the absence from them of savage myths and of
immoral stories of the gods, this fact does not prove
that such things were not known to the people at
the time, but only that the poets did not put them
in their hymns. Mr. Lang has collected the savage
myths, similar to those of other peoples in various
parts of the world, which are found in Indian literature
of a later date, and has also shown that the hymns
themselves were not quite ignorant of some of them.
The Indians knew the myth of the marriage of heaven
and earth, with the consequent birth of the gods.
They had the story of the deluge. They had the
still more primitive story of the raising up of the
earth from the bottom of the sea. They had vari-
ous myths of old conflicts of the gods, and of the
334 History of Religion part iv
production of the earth and all the men in it from the
dissection of an immense prototypal human monster.
Men were of different castes, they held, because they
came from different portions of Purusha's body when
it was cut up. Many stories are to be found in Indian
literature which when found elsewhere are judged to
be products of savage imagination, and the fact that
the Rigveda ignores some of them and refines others,
simply shows that the authors of that collection were
on a higher level than their people in point of cultiva-
tion and of piety, as the psalmists and the prophets
of Israel were in advance of theirs. We are led,
accordingly, towards the conclusion that during the
period when the hymns were written those who took
charge of the development of worship in India were
seeking to draw away attention from the more super-
stitious and childish elements of religion, and to bring
to the front the pure and lofty intercourse man could
have with the good gods. Bad gods are not cultivated ;
if there are foolish stories about the gods, they are
not repeated, everything dark and terrible, as well as
everything irrational, is removed from the working
religion. Ancestor-worship is not encouraged ; family
rites continued, but the worship was wider than the
family, and was not restricted to particular places.
The ideas connected with sacrifice are not indeed
very lofty. Sacrifice is, in the first place, barter.
Gifts are provided for the gods, that they may give
in their turn. In the second place it is a social function
in which the god and the worshipper both take part.
The food, and especially the soma, strengthens the
god, and man and god are thereby drawn into close
sympathy. But in the third place sacrifice was a piece
of magic. The mere accurate performance of the rite
had a mystic efficacy. It was believed to help to
uphold the order of the world ; without it the gods
would grow weak, the ordinances of nature would
fail, and man would relapse to the state of savagery.
CHAP. XVIII The Vedic Religion 335
The gods themselves first sacrificed ; from sacrifice
they themselves were born, so that sacrifice is an
essential principle of the universe, was so in the
beginning, and must always be so. The Vedic leaders
of religion, therefore, were not merely champions of
enlightenment in religion ; they were also ritualists,
the rite was to them an end in itself; the proper
performance of sacrifice was their principal object.
This side of their work had, as we shall see, grave
consequences. But the Rigveda did a great work
for India in cultivating gods who were moral, and to
whom man was drawn by higher than selfish motives.
Gods who are just and who watch man's conduct,
and do not fail to reward him according to his
deeds, must quicken the conscience of those who
believe in them, and gods who are able to help the
weak and to forgive the penitent must make their
people also merciful. In all the aberrations of Indian
religion the high moral standard set by the Vedic
gods is never lost sight of.
Where a plurality of gods is believed in, these gods
must stand in some relation to each other; and it is
of importance to notice how the grods of the Veda are
arranged. We can see here very clearly how unstable
a thing polytheism is. The position of the gods is
constantly changing with reference to each other. We
find Agni addressed as if he were undoubtedly supreme ;
he dwells in the highest heavens, he generates the
gods, he ordains the order of the universe ; but then
we find Indra spoken of in the same way, and Varuna,
and Mitra, and others. Then we find pairs of gods
addressed together. Indra and Agni are frequently
so treated ; so are Varuna and Mitra. There is no
supreme god, or rather, each god is supreme in turn ;
the poet wants a god capable of being exalted in
every way, and does so exalt the god he has before
him. In this way a Monotheism is reached ; the
mind recognises a god to whom unlimited adoration
336 History of Religion part iv
can be paid. But it is a monotheism, as M. Barth
well puts it, the titular god of which is always
changing; and Mr. Max Miiller gives to this partial
monotheism the name of Kathenotheism ; that is,
the worship of one god at a time without any denial
that other gods exist and are worthy of adoration.
Now this form of religion, in which several gods are
worshipped, each of whom in turn is regarded as
supreme, is not peculiar to India ; we have met with
it already, we shall meet with it again. But in India
a peculiar way was found out of the difficulty. The
Indian gods were too little defined, too little personal,
too much alike, to maintain their separate personalities
with great tenacity ; nor did they lend themselves to
a monarchical form of pantheon ; no one of them was
sufficiently marked out from the rest or above the
rest, to rule permanently over them. Yet the sense
of unity in Indian religion is very strong ; from the
first the Indian mind is seeking a way to adjust the
claims of the various gods, and view them all as one.
An early idea which makes in this direction is that
of Rita, the order, not specially connected with any
one god, which rules both in the physical and the
moral world, and with which all beings have to reckon.
Philosophy is busy from the first with the Vedic
gods ; the impulse to good conduct and that to
mysticism are equally innate in this religion. We
can see, even in the Rigveda, that India is to solve
the problem of its many gods not in the way of
Monotheism, by making one god rule over the others,
but in the way of Pantheism, by making all the gods
modes or manifestations of one being. "Agni is all
the Gods " we read here. And a religion which arranges
its objects of worship in this way will not be a religion
of action, but of speculation and of resignation.
CHAP, xvm The Vedic Religion 33;
Books Recommended
S. B. E. vol. xxxii. Vedic Hymns, xlvi. Hymns to Agni.
Muir's Sanscrit Texts.
M. Muller's Hibbert Lectures.
Monier Williams, Indian Wisdom; Hinduism in " Non - Christian
Religious Systems " (S.P.C.K.).
Kaegi, The Rigveda, the oldest literature of the Indians, i8S6.
Earth, The Religions of India, in Trlibner's Oriental Series.
Herrmann Oldenberg, Die Religion der Veda, 1894.
Bergaigne, La Religion Vidiqtie, 3 vols., 1878-83.
E. Hardy, Die Vedisch Brahmanische Periode der Religion des alter.
Indiens.
Lehmann, in De la Saussaye.
Rhys Davids, Oxford Proceedings, vol i p. i, sqq^
CHAPTER XIX
INDIA
II. Brahmanisin
The period in which the songs were collected by the
Aryans dwelling in the Punjaub was succeeded by a
period of wars and troubles, after which the successful
race is found to have spread further towards the East,
and to have settled on the Ganges and its tributaries.
Along with this change of position a great change has
also taken place in the spirit of the people, a change
which is strikingly seen in their religion. The priest-
hood has come to occupy the position of a separate
class to an extent not formerly the case, and all the
phenomena are apparent which are generally found
associated with a hierocracy or rule of priests. The
early religious writings have been formed into a sacred
canon : there is an active production of new works
which explain the old ones ; the sacrifices grow more
elaborate and new virtues are attributed to them ; and
along with this hardening and formalising of the outward
parts of religion there is a religious speculation of great
volume and of great freedom of character.
The Caste System : The Brahmans. — The key to the
whole movement is to be found in the new position of
the priesthood, or in the establishment at this period
of the system of caste. Though this system is only
once mentioned in the Rigveda, and that in a hymn of
late date, scholars find traces of it in the arrangement
of the hymns, and as it is found in Persia, the Indians,
probably had it before they entered India. It may]
even, it is judged, be traceable to the division of ranks]
338
CHAP. XIX Brakmanism 339
among the primitive Aryan families. Teutonic as well
as Indian legends are found explaining how mankind
were divided from the first into different classes.^ But
the primitive differences of rank must have had a great
development before they took shape in the rigid caste
system of India. This system appears to be organised
with a view expressly to the exaltation of the priesthood,
and must have been the result of a struggle between the
priests and the warrior or ruling classes. The priests have
made themselves indispensable in nearly all religious
acts. Their very title shows this. While Brahman, as
the name of a god, means primarily growth, and later,
devotion or prayer, brahmana (neut.) signifies the ritual
texts according to which worship is performed, and
brahman (mas.) is the name of those who use such
texts, and comes to stand for the highest caste of
Indian society. Without the brahman there can be
no satisfactory worship, because there can be no
security that any rite is performed correctly ; and a
rite which is not performed correctly has no efficacy.
Religion, therefore, is in the hands of this caste, whose
sacredness is hereditary, and cannot be acquired in any
other way than by birth. The members of that caste
and they alone are qualified to superintend religious
observances, and without them the intercourse between
man and the gods cannot be kept up. From his birth
the brahman is a being of superior holiness ; he is
destined for higher ends than other men, and the dis-
tinction between him and them must be manifested in
all his acts and habits throughout his life. He is the
natural lord of all the classes.
If the highest caste is strictly defined, so also are the
others. The second caste is that of the Kshatriyas,
warriors or rulers, the third that of the Vaisyas or
farmers. These three have rank, they are the twice-
born classes (their second birth answers to confirmation,
and takes place when a young man is invested with the
* Compare Hans Sachs, Die, Ungkichin Kinder Evds.
340 History of Religion part iv
sacred thread). The Sudras are the fourth and lowest
class ; no duty is assigned to them in the law books
but that of serving meekly the other castes. It has
been thought that the Sudras represent the conquered
aborigines, the three classes of rank belonging to the
Aryan invaders, but this is open to question.
The student of religion has to fix his attention on the
Brahmans, who have secured themselves in the position
of the leading caste. We speak first of the literary
movement in which they were concerned, then of the
sacrifices they conducted, and of their gods. We shall
then say something of the practical operation of their
religion as a rule of life, and lastly we shall come to
the speculative work of their period, which is not,
however, to be set down to them alone.
I. The Growth of the Sacred Literature. — The
Vedas rose in sacredness after the age which pro-
duced them passed away. A few centuries after they
were written they were not generally intelligible ;
they needed interpretation, but at the same time the
doctrine of their inspiration rose higher and higher.
The brahmans had both to interpret the words of the
old hymns and to explain how, when used at the
sacrifice, they produced the effect ascribed to them.
This led to the production of the earliest Indian prose,
the brahmanas or ritual treatises. Primarily intended
to be directories of worship for the priests, these works
were enriched with all sorts of ideas about the sacri-
fices, their origin, and their effects ; points in the ritual
are explained in them by mythological stories which
we should not otherwise know, and we see from them
that many superstitions, to which the Vedas gave no
encouragement, yet lived among the people. Each
Samhita, or collection of hymns, had its Brahmana,
and some of the collections had several. These works,
though transcending in dreariness most directories of
worship, are yet of great value for the light they throw
on the history of Indian manners and ideas, as well as
CHAP. XIX Brahmanism
34 T
on that of mythology. And as it happened among the
Jews in their later period so it happened here ; — the
sanctity of the text was extended to the commentary,
the brahmana also was held to be god-given and in-
spired, and by some was even more highly esteemed
than the hymns themselves. A third class of inspired
writings consists of the Upanishads, or speculative
treatises, of which we shall speak later. The " Veda "
in the larger sense is made up of these three bodies
of compositions, mantras, brahmanas, and upanishads.
These three belong to revelation or " S'ruti," i.e. hearing;
what is contained in these is to be regarded as having
been heard by inspired men from a higher source. The
counterpart of S'ruti is " smriti," i.e. recollection, tradi-
tion. This embraces the Sutras or works dealing with
ceremonial in the way of short rules gathered from
the older literature, with the exposition of the Vedas,
with domestic rites and conventional usages. The law
books, the epics, and the Puranas, or ancient legendary
histories, also belong to this class.
The doctrine of the Vedas, of their sacredness and
of their virtues, played a great part in Indian thought.
They were revered not as a written word, for they
were not written but handed down by memory, — the
Brahman still knows his sacred literature by heart, —
but as hymns possessing supernatural powers and of
far higher than human origin. They were raised to
the rank of a divinity, they were said to have had to
do with the creation of the world, or to have been
among the first created beings. The value of the study
of them was not to be exaggerated ; he who engages
in it, we hear, offers a complete sacrifice, obtains for
himself the world which does not pass away, and
becomes united with Brahma. The class of men who
had installed themselves as the authorised interpreters
of the hymns, had evidently taken up a very strong
position.
2. Sacrifice. — Indian ritual is an immense subject
342 History of Religion part iv
In the Vedic period there were several orders of sacri-
fice— the hymns of the Rigveda have to do with the
Soma-sacrifice alone — and several kinds of priests, and
it stands to reason that an elaborate ritual derived
from a distant age and cherished by a priestly caste
which was growing in power, could not quickly change.
In spite of the considerable amount of materials acces-
sible in the Brahmanas and Sutras, a history of Indian
sacrifice as a whole has still to be written.
It is characteristic of early Indian sacrifice that it
is not confined to a temple or to any sacred spot,
and that it does not require any image of the deity.
Instructions are always given for choosing and pre-
paring a place for the rite, and for erecting an altar ;
a place had to be prepared on each occasion. The
gods were asked to come, or were thought to be seated
in heaven looking on ; the sacrifice is in the open air.
While the celebration proceeded according to a certain
ritual, it lay with the worshippers to fix to what god
or gods the sacrifice should be addressed. There was
not one ritual for Agni and another for Indra, but the
same would serve for either or for both. The sacrifices
of which we hear in the Brahmanas are domestic rites ;
they are offered by the heads of the household, who
invite ancestors also to be present. A Brahman is
present to direct those who sacrifice and the inferior
priests who assist them, and the benefits of the act
extend to all the dependants of the household. The
time was determined by natural seasons or by house-
hold events. Some sacrifices were greater than others,
the more elaborate ones requiring several days, months,
or even years for their celebration. Among the kinds
of offerings which might be made we find that of man
enumerated ; human sacrifice, however, if it had pre-
vailed in earlier times, had now grown obsolete.
The rise of the Brahmans into a caste changed the
character of the sacrifice by making its due celebration
depend more on special knowledge, and by increasing
CHAP. XIX Brahmanism 343
its elaborate mystery. Once the hymn was recognised
as an essential element of such an act, the person who
could interpret the hymn and explain its effects acquired
great importance. And when the explanation of all the
various features of the sacrifice was once begun, a wide
door was opened to minute ingenuity. It is astonishing
to what trifles these priestly directories descend, what
explanations are brought from every part of earth and
heaven of the most trivial circumstances, and what
sacredness is found in the very blades of grass around
the altar. Now the effect of such a treatment of ritual
is inevitably that the rite itself, the outward mechanical
performance, comes to be regarded as important, and
that the ethical and religious end which was originally
aimed at, is lost sight of. The priest and those he acts
for are so intent on the minutiae of their celebration
that they forget about the god it is intended for. And
as they are quite convinced that the sacrifice, if offered
with perfect correctness and with nothing left out, must
produce its effect, the sacrifice itself comes to appear as
the agent of the desired blessing ; the god grows less
but the sacrifice grows more. This process, which may
be observed wherever ritualism exists, was carried in the
period of Brahmanism to its utmost length. In this
period the old gods lost the strong hold they had before
over the people's mind ; men ceased to look for their
gods to the sky or to the tempest, and began to look
instead to the long ceremonies of the priest or to the
hymn he chanted at the altar, or to the austerities he
practised. Gods of a new type now make their appear-
ance. As in the Vedic period we saw that Brahma-
naspati, lord of prayer, had a place beside Indra and
Varuna, so now we see that the supreme deity is named
Brahma. The prayer connected with the sacrifice has
given its name to the ruler of the universe. Other
names for the supreme are also found to be making
their way to general use, as the old historical and
mythological gods fall into the background, and an
344 History of Religion part iv
abstract divine unity is sought after. Prajapati, lord
of creatures, who is little heard of in the hymns, is
frequently invoked as the head of all the gods, and a
triad of gods is heard of, consisting of Agni, Vayu,
Surya, fire, the air, the sun, and summing up the divine
energies. The attributes of the gods are personified,
and a set of pale abstractions is thus added to the
Pantheon ; and spirits and goblins not heard of in the
hymns, though not therefore necessarily unknown in
the former period, make their appearance. These are,
perhaps, the gods of the aborigines, who thus revenge
themselves, as the religion of the invaders which at first
suppressed them loses its earlier vigour. The strong
gods retire and weak gods, many and shadowy, and
bad as well as good, are worshipped. The Asuras were
formerly the gods generally, now they are evil beings
with whom the good gods have to contend.
3. Practical Life. — We possess very complete pictures
of Indian life and manners in the period of Brahmanism.
Of the codes of ancient sages by which Hindu society
was supposed to be governed many are extant to us ;
and in Mr. Max Muller's Sacred Books of the East the
English reader may make himself acquainted with
several of these. The most famous and the longest,
is the laws of Manu, a mythical progenitor of mankind.
In the form in which we have it this work dates prob-
ably from the second century A.D., but the body of the
work is much older. Originally a local collection of
rules, it extended its authority gradually over the entire
Hindu population of India. With other collections, also
of local origin, it represents to us the condition of Indian
society after the caste system became fixed ; but much
of the law thus handed down to us must have had its
origin in prehistoric times.
The law of Manu hinges on the superiority of the
Brahman over the other castes. The Brahmans form
the centre of the state and really control everything ;
but their life, in turn, is framed in strict rules, and their
CHAP, XIX Brahmanism 345
whole history and actions are laid down for them to
the last detail from the moment of their birth. The
life of the Brahman is divided into four periods. For
a quarter of his life he is a student living with a teacher
and learning from him the sacred knowledge of the
Vedas. Every act of study begins with the so-called
Savitri-verse, " Let us meditate on that excellent glory
of the divine Vivifier. May he enlighten our under-
standings." This prayer, with the mystic syllable, Om
(thought to have to do with the three gods of a triad,
but probably the original meaning is Yes, an abstract
all-embracing yes, in which nothing but pure being is
affirmed), is repeated at every return to study, and also
with great frequency at other times. The teacher is
more to the student than his father, and is to be treated
with the greatest deference and courtesy ; these years
are a training in gentle and seemly conduct as well
as in law. His student days completed, the Brahman
offers his first sacrifice, marries, and becomes a house-
holder. Little is said of earning a living ; the Brahman
is not to be worldly, but he is to be independent if he
can. He is, however, allowed to beg if in want. But
more stress is laid on the continued pursuit of know-
ledge, and on the domestic sacrifices to gods and manes
which are to be his daily care. After he has brought
up a son to take charge of his house and goods, the
third stage of his life is reached ; he may retire from
the world and become a recluse, giving himself to con-
templation and austerities. The fourth stage is that of
the ascetic, bhikku or sannyasin, the aged man who
having given up all possessions, all human society, and
the practice of all rites, and subsisting only on alms,
seeks to purge his heart of all desire and to become
united by deep meditation with the supreme soul, thus
attaining union with Brahma and final liberation. In
this section of the laws of Manu an ideal of moral
perfection is set forth, which is not demanded at the
earlier stages of life.
34^ History of Religion part iv
" Let him not desire to die ; let him not desire to live ;
let him wait for his time as a servant for the payment of
his wages.
" Let him patiently bear hard words, let him not insult
any one, nor become any ones enemy for the sake of this
perishable body. Against an angry mayi let him not in
return show anger ; let him bless when he is cursed^
He is to be sedulously careful not to injure any living
creature, he is to meditate on the supreme soul which is
present in all organisms, both the highest and the lowest.
He is to give up all attachments, and in this way, as his
body decays, he enters even here into a state of perfect
freedom and repose and union with the great spirit.
Such ideas prove that the mind of Brahmanism was
not occupied with sacrifices alone. Manu speaks of the
superintendence of sacrifices as onlyone of several careers
which the Brahman might choose ; and if he might with
equal right devote himself to study or to self-discipline,
we see that another side of religion than that directing
itself to external gods or occupying itself with outward
acts, was pressing itself forward. The inner world of
the mind is growing larger as the outward gods grow
shadowy ; it is being found that salvation may be
reached by inwards efforts as well as by outward rites,
that the search for wisdom and the work of self-conquest,
and a union with the deity which is quite apart from
any offering or from any form of worship, also lead to
salvation. It is objected to the ethics of Manu that the
ideal they set up is not an active but a suffering one ;
the ascetic is placed on a higher platform than the
householder, men are encouraged to withdraw from the
performance of their duties in the family and in society,
and to devote themselves to an aim which, however
lofty, is personal and, so far, selfish. It is certainly a
weakness in the religion that it has no higher aim than
this to set before its most eager minds. Apart from
this, life is regulated in a way we cannot but admire.
Amid the mass of trivialities and formalities in which
CHAP. XIX B7ahmanism 347
every action is involved there breathes a grave humane
and gentle spirit, and a sound practical morality, and
the ordinary household of the Brahman may have
been a scene of activity and cheerfulness. The Sudra,
however, is spoken of everywhere as a being whose
degradation can never be removed, and to touch whom
is to be defiled. Those who belonged to no caste were
in a still worse plight and lived in the greatest misery.
4. Philosophy. — We have seen how both in the ritual
system they administered and in the ideal they formed
of the highest good, the Brahmans were led forward
from the old ground of the Vedic nature-worship to a
more inward and subjective religious attitude. The
exaltation of Brahma, the power of prayer, to be the
supreme god, was an advance from an external deity
to a deity both external and present in man's own
experience ; and the appearance of a new way of salva-
tion, though only permitted at first to the world-weary
ascetic, in which inner contemplation and absorption
could lead to the highest consummation of life, also
showed that a new form of religion was at hand. In
the philosophy of the Brahmanic period, the transition
is made from the service of gods external to man, by
the mechanism of rites, to the acknowledgment of a
divine being with whom man feels himself to be inwardly
akin and to whom he draws near by his own spiritual
effort. In this movement, to which we learn that
members of the lay aristocracy and even women of
intellectual distinction made important contributions,
and which may have appeared in its beginnings as a
sceptical revolt against their own system, the Brahmans
yet took part, and the works in which the record of
it is contained became a part of revelation. The
"Upanishads" or "communicated doctrines," form the
third branch of the sacred knowledge, and much of
this literature belongs to the period before Buddhism.
These books are read still by the educated Hindu as
part of scripture, and the philosophy of them is a part
348 History of Religion part iv
of his religion. We can only point out the principal
terms and notions of that philosophy.
Seeking to escape from the confusion of many gods
the Indian mind is looking out even from the Vedic
period for some means to conceive of them all as one.
In the earliest period each reigned in turn as the
supreme ; a god is supreme not because he is essentially
the greatest of the gods, but because circumstances
have brought him to the front. This is Henotheism.
Then we have attempts to sum them all up in one
expression. Prajapati, lord of creatures, Visvakarman,
maker of all things, represent such attempts. Then
we have as the supreme, Brahma, the power of prayer,^
a being of a different character from all his predecessors.
Brahma is an intellectual deity. He is a thinker, a
knower, he is the " Mahan Atma " or great spirit, which
sits in unbroken calm above the change and distraction
of the universe. In rendering Mahan Atma by great
spirit, however, we are anticipating. Atma, originally
breath or life, comes, afterwards, to mean the person,
the self when all that is accidental is removed from it,
the essential, innermost self. Now Brahma is the great
self, the inmost essence of all things, which was before
them, and is unaffected by their changes. But man
also has an atma, a self; it may be very small and
lodge in a part of the body where it cannot be detected,
but it is there, and the small atma is the same as the
great one. By what physiological doctrines this is up-
held, cannot here be traced ; but the notion of the atma,
the great form of which in Brahma is identical with its
small form in man, lies at the basis of Brahmanic thought.
In Brahma one god has been reached, but he has
been reached by thinking away from him everything
concrete. All predicates are unsuitable to him, as any
predicate implies a limitation ; he can only be described
in negatives, or in questionable metaphors. He is
* On the etymology of Brahma see Mr. Max Muller's Hibbert Lectures,
p. 366.
CHAP. XIX BrahmanisM 349
meant to satisfy the religious craving for a being quite
free from any imperfection and entirely supreme — and
it is the penalty of this that he has no clear outline or
character. And how indeed is he to be related to the
world .? This world of change and decay, of disappoint-
ment and sorrow, what has the perfect being to do with
that ? Did he make it, and is he responsible for it }
The answer to this in Hindu thought is that the world
is due to Maya, illusion. It was due to an aberration
in Brahma, which is represented in various ways, that
the transition was made from the one to the many, and
this error has been productive of all that has been
suffered on the earth. Or else it is held that it was not
Brahma who became subject to illusion, but that the
illusion resides in man's views and thoughts about the
world ; and if a man could free himself from the meshes
of Maya by recognising that the world is an illusion,
and that nothing exists but Brahma only, then he
would have done something for his own emancipation,
the Brahma in him would be free from illusion, and he
would also have done something, though little, for the
salvation of the world from its great error.
That the whole world-process is nothing but an
illusion, a confused and troubled dream passing over
the mind of Brahma, who himself alone is real, this
is the cardinal doctrine of Brahmanism, from which
Buddhism also, as we shall see, sets out. The world
is really nothing but an apparent world ; and the true
wisdom, the only salvation consists in knowing this,
and in living a life in accordance with that knowledge.
The wise man should regard a world which he knows
to be illusion, with complete indifference ; it can do
nothing to him, he can do nothing for it ; it affects him
only with an ineradicable regret that it exists at all,
and with a longing for its disappearance. The practical
outcome of the state of matters which he recognises is
firstly negative, that he must not allow the world to
influence him at all, and, secondly, positive, that he
350 History of Religion part iv
must strive to be united with Brahma. The negative
task is performed by withdrawing the mind from all
particular things, and letting it be filled with the general,
the absolute alone ; and similarly by forbidding the
desires to fasten on any worldly objects, by extinguish-
ing desire and ceasing to be affected in any way by
worldly things. The positive task is performed by
means of a mental process which we cannot here
describe, but by which the mind returns to the self
that is within and realises it as it is, cleared from all
particular thoughts and affections. These exercises
cannot be called moral ; where all is illusion morality
disappears. There is no good, no evil, no effort to
promote the good and lessen the evil. It is not because
the world is bad that it is condemned, but because it
exists. The energy which in other faiths is devoted
to a moral struggle, is here poured into the ascetic
discipline by which the individual looks to escape
altogether from the world as it is. There are no good
works, what is good is to abstain from all works ; there
is no benevolence further than that the mind must be
kept clear of all that confuses or degrades ; the salva-
tion of the individual alone is sought after ; there is no
desire to spread the light and save others, since few
are capable of that knowledge of the illusive nature of
all things by which alone salvation is possible.
This, it is plain, could never be a popular religion.
Brahma, the abstract one, does not appeal to the
imagination ; he could not drive out the popular nature-
gods with their definite myths and attributes. Nor
could a religion spread among the people, which
regarded the social and the domestic state as inferior,
and could only be practised by one who had left his
home and family. The hermits and ascetics and
begging monks may form the religious aristocracy ;
but a teaching of a different nature was necessary
for the people. And we find, in fact, two religions
prevailing in India in the period of Brahmanism ; that
CHAP. XIX Brahmanisnt 351
which we have described for the enlightened, who
escapes in it from all law, all creed, all ritual, whose
whole religion more than any other which ever flourished
in the world is within the mind ; ^ and on the other
hand, a religion in which outward gods are worshipped,
an outward law enforced which is counted sacred
because a god or gods inspired it, and in which
superstitions gathered from all quarters find shelter.
The higher religion by no means killed the lower one,
as we see in India to this day. On the contrary, the
withdrawal of the higher religion of the country to
a region whither the people could not follow, left the
religion of the people to sink into a degradation
unknown before. One doctrine must here be noticed.
The belief in transmigration which Buddhism received
from the religion it found existing in India, does not
belong to the higher thought of Brahmanism described
in this section ; the atman or self, which is identical
with the supreme self, belongs to quite a different order
of thought from the soul which was formerly in some
one else, is now in me, and may yet come to be in
many another being. The doctrine is thought to have
been an importation into India about the time we
are speaking of. It admits of being made a powerful
deterrent from vice and incentive to virtue. If my
present sufferings are due not to my acts, but to the
acts of the person in whom my soul dwelt before, it
is possible for me so to act that my soul's future
existence may be better and not worse than this one,
and that it shall not sink but rise in the order of beings,
and draw nearer to its final deliverance. Of this we
shall hear more in connection with Buddhism.
The further development of Indian religion, apart
from Buddhism, is in two directions. There is a
philosophical movement, in which the Brahmanic ideas
on God, the world, the soul and its changes, are further
^ "From the standpoint of unity with Brahma, the gods are no gods,
the Vedas no-Vcdas."
352 History of Religion part iv
worked out, and which leads to the six schools of Hindu
philosophy. On the other hand, the gods have their
history. Brahma remains the great god, but as his
character is so undefined he is little worshipped. Indra,
the old national god, yields to Vishnu, the old sun -god
of the three steps (heaven, the air, the earth), who
becomes the favourite deity. The stern and destructive
S'iva is a new figure, and seems to be partly an adapta-
tion of a god of the savage aborigines : his worship
is the most fanatical. These three, the Creator, the
Upholder, and the Destroyer, form the Trimurti, or
divine trinity of India, — a trinity arrived at not by
unfolding the riches of the one great god, but by com-
pounding the claims of three gods who were rivals.
The doctrine of incarnation is also found here. Vishnu
has ten avatars or incarnations in human form ; he
comes down to the earth when there is a special reason
for his interference. In these avatars, especially in
Krishna, the dark god, whose exploits as a hero are told
in the great epic the Mahabharata, the need is to some
extent met, of which both Buddhism and Christianity
lay hold, of a divine figure who is not too far away from
man, and who can be regarded with personal affection.
Books Recommended
Most of the books mentioned at the end of last chapter deal also with
Brahmanism.
Of the Brahmanic literature given in the Sacred Books of the East, the
following may be mentioned : —
Vols. i. and xv. Upanishads.
Vols. ii. and xiv. Sacred Laws of the Aryas.
Vol. vii. The Institutes of Vishnu.
Vols, xii., xxvi., and xli. The Satapatha - Brahmana (Sacrificial
Rituals).
Vol. XXV. Manu.
Vols, xxix., and xxx. Grihya-Sutras (Domestic Ceremonies).
Vol. xxxiv. Vedic Hymns, xlvi. Hymns to Agni.
Vols. xlii. -xliv. Hymns of the Atharva-Veda.
Vols, xxxiv., xxxviii., xlviii. Vedanta Sutras.
Muir's Sanscrit Texts.
Weber, Indischt Skizzen.
Haug, Aitaieya Brahmana.
CHAPTER XX
INDIA
III. Bitddhism
In Buddhism the great movement of Indian religion
works itself out to its ultimate conclusion and reaches
a stage beyond which there can be no advance. Here
we have a religion, if such it may be called, without
a god, without prayer, without priesthood or worship ;
a religion which owes its great success, not to its
theology, nor to its ritual, since it has neither, but to
its moral sentiment and to its external organisation.
Originating in the centre of India, and giving practical
form to Indian ideas, it spread rapidly and widely
both in the country of its birth and in neighbouring
lands. It is now extinct in India, yet it numbers
more adherents than any other religion. It has been
divided since the Christian era into two great branches.
Southern Buddhism is the religion of Ceylon, of Burmah,
and of Siam ; while Northern Buddhism extends over
Tibet, China, and Japan, and the islands of Java and
Sumatra.
The Literature. — These two branches of Buddhism
have different literary traditions, though some works
are common to both ; and these literatures, differing
from each other in language, also differ widely in
contents and in spirit. The southern tradition, com-
posed in Pali, the literary language of Ceylon, has
354 History of Religion part iv
recently been opened up to scholars, and has greatly
changed their views of the origin and the true nature
of this religion. The Canon of Southern Buddhism,
which we might call the Pali Bible, is a literature
about twice as large as the Bible of Europe, although
if the repetitions in it were removed, it would be some-
what smaller than the Bible. It consists of three
Pitakas, baskets or collections. The first is the Vinaya
Pitaka, dealing with discipline, but including the
Mahavagga, a history of the first beginnings of the
order as the founder gathered it around him. The
second is the Sutta Pitaka or collection of teachings.
It contains the earliest account of the later life of the
founder, books of meditation and devotion, collections
of sayings by the Master, poems, fairy tales, and fables,
stories about Buddhist saints, and so on. The third
collection, the Abidhamma, contains speculations and
discussions on various subjects. Much of these materials
is not peculiar to Buddhism, there is much pre-Buddhistic
speculation, and there are many stories which are not
peculiar even to India. Along with all this, however,
the books give us the earliest accounts of the life
and of the death of the founder, and contain a repre-
sentation written a century after his death, of what
he was considered to have taught. The founder him-
self wrote nothing ; but the work of composing books
about him and his doctrine began early, and much of
the canon is considered, especially by English scholars,
to have been in existence during the first Buddhist
century.^ For many centuries they were preserved
by memory alone.
^ The Buddhist literature given in the Sacred Books of the East is as
follows :
Vol. X. The Dhammapada, containing the quintessence of Buddhist
morality, and the Sutta-nipata, giving teachings of Buddha on
religion.
Vol. xi. Buddhist Suttas. Religious, moral, and philosophical dis-
courses. Vol. xlix. Buddhist Mahayana Sutras.
Vol. xiii. Vinaya Texts. The Patimokha or order of discipline, and
CHAP. XX Buddhism 355
Was there a Personal Founder? — Senart in his
Essai sur la legende du Buddha, and Kern in his Het
Buddhisme in Indie, both hold that we have here to
do with a sun-myth, and interpret the various features
of the legend in a very ingenious way in accordance
with that theory. This view has made io.^ converts.
Many incidents in the story are natural, and appear
to be due to a real tradition ; there is literary evidence
of the early existence of the books, and the religion
can be best understood if regarded as the work of
a real personality of commanding greatness.^
Scholars, however, are agreed as to the difficulty of
drawing the line between what is history and what
is legend. Even in the early Pali accounts the hero
has become a religious figure, he wears titles which
lift him above mankind, and he has supernatural powers
at his command. A laborious critical process must be
undertaken, comparing the various narratives with each
other and testing them in other ways, before the real
history can be regarded as made out beyond question.
The slight sketch of the story which we give does not
aim at such critical correctness ; we merely indicate
the outline of a narrative which is one of the principal
sources of the strength of the religion.
the beginning of the Mahavagga, containing an account of the
opening of the ministry of the founder.
Vol. xvii. Vinaya Texts ii. Mahavagga continued. Kullavagga
or discipline as established by the Master.
Vol. XX. Kullavagga continued.
Vols, xxii., xlv. contain Suttas of the religion of the Jainas.
Vols. XXXV., xxxvi. Questions of King Milinda.
■* Recent archaeological discoveries, of which an account is given bj'
Mr. Rhys Davids in the Century Magazine, April 1902, place it beyond
doubt that the Buddha really existed, and that pious offices were paid
to his ashes after his cremation by the members of his own clan as well
as by others. Inscriptions brought to light in 1898 show that the Sakhya
clan, of which he was a member, dwelt at the time of his death in what is
now a frontier district of Nepal. Three years before that event they were
driven from their old capital Kapilavastu ; but they formed a new one
fifteen miles further south, just beyond the present frontier of Nepal, and
there they erected a stupa or massive stone cairn, to guard the portio!i of
the ashes of the Buddha which was committed to their keeping.
356 History of Religion part iv
The Story of the Founder.— The founder's family
name was Gautama, and by that name he was com-
monly known during his lifetime. The personal name
given him as a child was Siddartha. Those who wished
after his death to speak of him with reverence called
him Sakya-Muni, the Sage of the Sakyas. These were
a tribe who dwelt, at the period of the story, i.e. half a
millennium before Christ, in the country to the north
of the sacred Ganges, a few days' journey from the city
of Benares. Gautama's father, Suddhodana, was rajah
(chief) of the Sakyas ; his residence was Kapilavastu,
near Oude. The future sage thus belonged to the
Kshatriya class, and was accustomed to a position of
rank and ease. We hear little of his youth ; he had
been married ten years, and his wife, whom he loved,
had just brought him a son, when, at the age of twenty-
nine, he suddenly and secretly left his home to devote
himself to the religious life. He was led to this step
by witnessing various painful sights which caused him
vividly to realise the suffering which accompanies all
existence, and made him scorn a life of luxury. It was
a time when many were seeking a better way, and when
a superior mind naturally turned to that retirement and
absorption in which it was believed that the key to life's
pains and mysteries was to be found. In the "Great
Renunciation," as this act is called, there is nothing
we cannot understand. This lofty act, however, was
followed by a temptation ; Mara, the spirit of evil,
urged him, but urged him in vain, to give up the
purpose he had formed. He then attached himself
to Brahmanic ascetics, from whom he learned their
philosophy ; and after this he devoted himself for six
years to a life of fasting and penance, the Brahmanic
method for drawing nearer the goal of the religious
life. After this period he gave up his fasting, not
having profited by it as he had expected, and returned
to an ordinary diet. This change cost him the adhesion
of five disciples who had become attached to him, and
CHAP. XX Buddhism 357
had been filled with wonder at his mortifications. But
the loss was a small one compared with the gain which
was at hand. After a second great spiritual struggle
and a renewal of the temptation, he at last reached
that which he had long been seeking. Seated under
a ficus reh'giosa, the tree afterwards called the tree of
knowledge, or the Bo-tree, he rose in contemplation
above all his temptations and doubts till he beheld
at length the true nature of things. From this moment
he was Buddha, Enlightened ; he had the key of truth,
and for himself he was assured that sorrow and evil
had lost all hold on him. His doctrine had dawned
in his mind. He had discovered the cause of the
sorrow which is so closely intertwined in man's life,
and had divined the way in which sorrow might be
overcome. The method had been found by which one
could escape from the unending succession of new lives,
all painful, to which, according to the general belief
of the time, men were condemned. The words placed
in the mouth of the founder when he attained to
Buddhahood tell their own tale. " Looking for the
Maker of this tabernacle, I have to run through a
course of many births so long as I do not find him ;
and painful is birth again and again. But now. Maker
of the tabernacle, thou hast been seen ; thou shalt not
make up this tabernacle again. All thy rafters are
broken; thy ridge-pole is sundered; the mind, approach-
ing the eternal, has attained to the extinction of all
desires."^
The great discovery being made, and duly pondered
and realised, the question arose. What was to be done
with it ? The Buddha shrinks from the work of preach-
ing it to others. Brahma himself is brought into the
story to encourage him to make his secret known to
others, and to assure him that many will receive it
with great joy. The Blessed One consents, and thus
replies : " Wide open is the gate of the Immortal to
^ Dhammapada, S. B. E. x. 42.
358 History of Religion part iv
all who have ears to hear ; let them send forth faith
to meet it. The teaching is sweet and good ; because
I despaired of the task, I spake not to men before." ^
He turns his steps, guided by his own supernatural
knowledge, to the city of Benares, to seek the five
monks who had formerly abandoned him. On his
way thither he meets a naked ascetic who asks the
reason of his cheerful mien ; he answers that he has
overcome all foes, has reached emancipation by the
destruction of desire, and has obtained Nirvana. "To
found the kingdom of Truth I go to the city of the
Kasis (Benares); I will beat the drum of the Immortal
in the darkness of this world." The account which
follows of the opening of the "kingdom of righteous-
ness" presents many analogies to the early stages of
other spiritual movements. The founder, immovably
sure of himself and of his doctrines, goes from place
to place, spending the rainy season in town, and
preaching everywhere. It is at Benares that the
" wheel of the law " is first set in motion ; there the
first sermon was preached. The circumstances are also
narrated under which other sermons were delivered,
details being given as to time, place, the persons who
heard them, the incidents which occasioned them. His
converts at first are few and their names are recorded,
but by degrees they become more numerous. The
more devoted of them become members of his order,
Bhikkus (for Bhikshus), mendicants ; they forsake
domestic life, shave their heads, adopt the yellow dress
and the alms-bowl. They also are sent out to preach.
" Go ye, O Bhikkus, and wander, for the welfare of
many, out of compassion for the world, for the gain
and for the welfare of gods and men. Let not two of
you go the same way. Preach, O Bhikkus, the doctrine
which is glorious in the beginning, glorious in the
middle, glorious in the end, in the spirit, and in the
letter ; proclaim a consummate, perfect, and pure life
^ Mahavagga, S. B. E. xiii. 88,
CHAP. XX Buddhism 359
of holiness. There are beings whose mental eyes are
covered with scarcely any dust, but if the doctrine is
not preached to them they cannot attain salvation."
The incidents narrated in this part of the story are
mostly connected with persons seeking admission to
the order, or persons requiring to be convinced ; the
doctrine and its spread are everything. That spread
takes place, as it is desired by the Buddha, chiefly
among the higher classes of society ; a great triumph
is reached when Bimbisara, king of Magadha, becomes
a patron of the order, and some accounts tell of the
conversion of the Buddha's own father and mother.
The work of the mission is of a peaceful nature ; the
Buddha lives on good terms with the Brahmans and
with other teachers and their pupils. The only for-
midable opposition he had to meet arose within the
order. His cousin Dewadatta, who had become a monk,
wished to found a new order with much stricter rules
than those of the original one. The Buddha refused
to attach importance, as was proposed, to matters of
clothes and food, or living in the open air ; to do so
would have made his movement narrower and less
universal than he desired.
The beginning of the ministry is told in some detail,
but of a long period of the life only a few scattered
incidents are given. There is a detailed account of
the three last months of the life. The Buddha is now
eighty years of age, and in the Maha-paranibbana
Sutta^ the tale of his migrations and preachings is
carried on according to the same scheme as in the
accounts of his early days. During the rainy season,
however, when he has reached the age of eighty, he
has an illness, and sees he cannot live long. This he
tells his monks, exhorting them with urgency to be
true to the teaching and the order, and to shed the
light abroad. His end is hastened by a meal of pork
set before him by a goldsmith, a man of low caste,
» S. B. E. vol. xl.
360 History of Religion part iv
who hospitably entertained him. After this his face
shines with a heavenly radiance, and as the end
approaches many heavenly signs appear. The Buddha
is fully conscious that he is about to leave the world,
and that his death is an event of supreme interest to
the heavenly powers, whom he believes to be thronging
around to watch his last hours. He is solicitous, how-
ever, to soothe the grief of his friends, large numbers
of whom also are around him, and to give them such
counsels and such incentives to a faithful upholding of
the cause as he yet may. They ask about his obsequies,
and he claims that the remains of such an one as he
is, of a Tathagata, " one who has attained perfection,"
should be treated as men treat the remains of a king
of kings. He recognises the kindness of Ananda, his
most intimate disciple, and tries to comfort him by
encouraging him to be earnest in effort, so that he
too may soon be free from evils. He directs his
disciples generally not to mourn too much at his re-
moval as if they were being deserted. The truths
which he has set forth, and the rules of the order he
has laid down for them, are to be their teacher after
he is gone. He asks if any of them has any doubt
or misgiving as to the Buddha, or the truth, or the faith,
or the way. If so, they are to inquire freely, so that
they may not reproach themselves afterwards for not
having consulted him while still among them. The
brethren, however, are silent, though addressed again
and again in the same way. In the whole assembly
there is not one who has any doubt or misgiving.
Even the most backward of these brethren has become
converted (lit, "entered into the current"); he is no
longer liable to be born to a state of suffering, but is
assured of eternal salvation.
" Then the Blessed One addressed the brethren and
said, ' Behold now, brethren, I exhort you,' saying,
'Decay is inherent in all things that have come into
being. Work out your salvation with diligence ! '
CHAP. XX Buddhism 361
" This was the last word of the Tathagata ! "
His death or Nirvana forms the era of Buddhist
chronology, and the date has now been approximately
fixed with some certainty ; it took place somewhere in
the decade 482-472 B.C.
Is Buddhism a Revolt against Brahmanism?—
Before proceeding to discuss the religion to which this
somewhat monkish narrative forms the preface, it is
necessary to say a few words on the relation which
that religion is now supposed to hold to the general
history of Indian piety. It was customary, till recently,
to regard Buddha as a great reformer, and his religion
as a great revolt against that which it found prevailing
in India. He is credited with having preached atheism
as a reaction against the burdensome worship of too
many gods, with having instituted a great social move-
ment consisting in the abolition of caste, with having
openly denied the authority of the Vedas, till then
unchallenged, and with having rebuked the pride of
Brahmanism by making his order of mendicants the
representatives of his religion. None of these asser-
tions can now be upheld. Instead of having been a
tremendous reaction against Brahmanism it is seen
that Buddhism was the natural outgrowth of that
system. The closer knowledge of both, gained by the
opening up of the sacred books of India, tends to show
that much that was formerly thought distinctive of
Buddhism was in reality inherited from Brahmanism.
We saw in dealing with the earlier form of Indian
religion that a form of piety had been struck out in
it which made the ascetic independent of sacrifice,
priesthood, even of the gods, all save the one God
who is in all things. In that phase of Indian religion
the authority of the Vedas had already been impugned,
an inner discipline had taken the place of outward wor-
ship, the saint had learned to forsake the world. This
turn of religious thought produced all the phenomena
of Buddhism before the period of Gautama. The
362 History of Religion part iv
sannyasin {vide sup., p. 345) of Brahmanism is also
called bhikku, mendicant; the rules of the older
ascetics are closely similar to those of the Buddhist
monk ; their very outfit, their cloak and alms-bowl,
are the same.
A circumstance which shows very clearly how far
Buddhism was from bearing the character of a revolt,
is the occurrence at the same time and in the same
district of India of another movement of a very simi-
lar nature. Jainism is an Indian religion so like
Buddhism as to have been considered by many to
be a sect of the latter. It also has an order of
monks with robes and with a rule like those of the
Buddhist fraternity. It also has a human founder
on whom many of the same titles are conferred as
on Gautama, and who is afterwards deified and wor-
shipped. Mahavira, the founder of Jainism, is, like
Gautama, the son of a royal house ; and the Jainist
and the Buddhist legend have many features in
common. Was the legend of Mahavira, then, a sec-
tarian version of the legend of Gautama, did no such
person exist, at least as the founder of a religious
body ? So it was formerly considered ; but it has now
been discovered that the Buddhist scriptures themselves
bear witness to the actual existence of Mahavira in
the lifetime of Gautama, who once had an encounter
with him and confuted him. It appears then that two
similar movements were going on close together at
the same time. They were independent of each other ;
the two rules differ in important particulars. Jainism
carries to a much greater length than Buddhism the
" ahimsa," or prohibition of the destruction of life ;
the Jainists practise austerities which Buddhism dis-
cards, and in the philosophies of the two systems
there are far-reaching discrepancies. On the other
hand, both Buddhism and Jainism borrow from Brah-
manism most of their practices and institutions ; both
are developments of the way of salvation struck out
CHAP. XX Buddhism 363
not by Brahmans alone, but by men of other castes
and other views, when faith in the old national gods
was growing dim.
We now proceed to discuss the Buddhist system,
taking it as it appears in the early books, which tell
us at least what was believed in the fourth century
B.C. to have been the ideas and intentions of the
founder. The following is the formula in which the
convert expressed his desire to be admitted to the
order : " I take shelter in the Buddha, I take shelter
in the Dhamma (doctrine), I take shelter in the Samgha
(order)."
I. The Buddha. — This confession of faith is directed
to a triad of which the Buddha is the first member.
Now the title Buddha was not invented by Buddhism,
but belongs to earlier Indian thought, which held that
from time to time, in a specially favoured age, an
Enlightened One and Enlightener, an omniscient and
perfect teacher, visited the world. Of these there had
been in former ages twenty-four, and the followers of
Gautama held him to be the twenty-fifth, but not the
last. The application to Gautama of this title removed
him, to the believer, from the ranks of ordinary men,
and was the signal for a constantly increasing exalta-
tion of his person. In adhering to the Buddha, there-
fore, the convert is not bowing to a mere man, but to
one in whom a new type of deity is on the way to
be realised. He is a man ; there is a record of his
human life, in which he made a great renunciation,
abandoning, out of compassion for men's sufferings, a
position of lordly ease for that of the mendicant. In
this way he is a saviour not too exalted for the pious
heart to love and follow. Having found out in his
own experience the way of peace, and opened up that
way for others, he is a pattern and an encouragement
as well as a lawgiver to the earnest soul ; and the
personal relation which may thus be enjoyed with the
founder is one great secret of the success of the religion.
364 History of Religion part iv
On the other hand, he is more than a man. The beHef
grew up very early that he was not born in the ordinary
way, but that his birth had been his own voluntary
act, and that his great renunciation consisted in his
choosing, out of compassion for men, to enter human
life and to bear the burden of its sufferings. In this
way a religion which originally had no gods and no
worship began to supply itself with these. Some
scholars hold that it was among the lay community,
among men not thoroughly initiated into Buddhist
thought, and failing to find in the new faith what
their former religions had afforded, that the deification
of the Buddha and the worship of him began ; it may
certainly be doubted whether the religion could have
lived long or spread far if these deficiencies had not
been early supplied.
2. The Doctrine. — The life of the founder gives us
the key to his doctrine. We see at once that that
doctrine was not negative but positive and constructive.
Neither was it socially of a revolutionary character,
nor did it deny any part of the existing religion. We
never read that Gautama's teaching was assailed by
the Brahmans as unsound ; it was centuries after his
death that antagonism broke out between the order
and the upholders of other systems. Nor again did
the teaching put forward a new philosophy. On certain
points which we shall notice there is a development
of thought in it ; but this was not obtruded.
In fact the doctrine is not a speculation at all, but
a way of salvation which is preached for its own sake,
and carefully guarded from being mixed up with
speculative or religious controversy. The Buddha is
one who has found out a new way to be saved, and
he comes forward to preach what he has discovered,
and that alone. Other matters he leaves as they are.
"All his discourses savour of redemption as all the
sea is salt." Other men may draw inferences as to
the relation his doctrine bears to the position of the
CHAP. XX Buddhism 365
Brahmans, or to the sacrifices, or to existing beliefs ;
he does not draw these inferences, he feels no need
to do so.
The doctrine professes to be an answer to a definite
problem — the problem of pain. It is the most character-
istic thing about both the founder and the doctrine,
that they start from the universal existence of pain,
to seek a remedy for it ; they are inspired therefore
from the first by a dark view of human life, and by
the sentiment of compassion. It was the impression
made on the young prince, of the general prevalence
of suffering, that drove him forth from the palace to
be a sannyasin or devotee. In a striking sermon he
uses the figure of fire to indicate how universal is the
rule of pain in all parts of nature and of human life.
" All is burning ; the eye is burning, and all it looks
on and all it remembers of what it has seen " ; so it
is with each of the senses, so also with the mind. The
fire is that of passion, of malice, of illusion, of birth,
of age, of death, of pain, despondency, and despair.
But the nature of the complaint from which man
suffers, and also the remedy for it, are described most
clearly in the "Four Noble Truths" set forth in the
opening sermon at Benares. In these memorable utter-
ances the teacher expresses himself according to the
rules of the medical art, first setting forth the nature
of the disease, then its cause, then how it takes end,
and lastly, the means to be adopted in order that it may
do so.
1. The Noble Truth of Suffering. Birth is suffering,
decay is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering.
Presence of objects we hate is suffering, separation from
objects we love is suffering, not to obtain what we
desire is suffering. Briefly, the fivefold clinging to
existence is suffering.
2. The Noble Truth of the Cause of Suffering. Thirst
that leads to rebirth, accompanied by pleasure and lust,
finding its delight here and there. This thirst is
366 History of Religion part iv
threefold, namely, thirst for pleasure, thirst for existence,
thirst for prosperity.
3. The Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering.
It ceases with the complete cessation of this thirst, a
cessation which consists in the absence of every passion,
with the abandoning of this thirst, with the deliverance
from it, with the destruction of desire.
4. The Noble Truth of the Path which leads to the
Cessation of Suffering. The holy eightfold Path ; that
is to say. Right Belief, Right Aspiration, Right Speech,
Right Conduct, Right Means of Livelihood, Right
Endeavour, Right Memory, Right Meditation.
In these statements there are some things which we
can readily understand, but also some things which
are not so easy. It is a thought with which Christians
are familiar, that desire is the parent of all sorts of
pain and disappointment, that the assertion of the
self, the putting forward of personal wishes and claims,
involves suffering. And we read in the Gospels that
the way to escape from such suffering is to cease from
desire, no longer to be anxious about what this world
can give us or take from us, and not to lay up treasures.
Buddhist doctrine has its moral basis in the perception
of the vanity of all human effort and desire, and in the
conviction that the true riches for man cannot consist
in any of those goods to which the heart naturally
clings. Where that perception does not exist, where
the first of the Noble Truths is not accepted as beyond
all question. Buddhism can have no hold. So far the
doctrine is easy to follow. But in the second of the
Truths we find that the cause of suffering is sought in
the history of the human person as Indian thought
conceives it. Man suffers because he has been born
again, has suffered a rebirth, and the cause of his re-
birth is the thirst which has been felt or even nourished
in a previous existence. The thought that suffering is
due to desire is not presented simply, as it is in our
Gospels, but in connection with a doctrine of man's
CHAP, XX Buddhism 367
life and of the connection of one generation with
another, which is quite strange to us, but apart from
which primitive Buddhism held that its doctrine of
suffering could not be understood. The Buddha, after
discovering the doctrine, is at first in doubt whether
or not he will preach it ; and the cause of his doubt
is that he is not sure if men will be able to understand
the law of causality and the chain of existence, on
which he himself meditated a whole night after his
enlightenment, and his discovery of which he regards
as a great part of his achievement. This chain of
causation is stated in a long series of asserted pro-
cesses, in which the connection between one genera-
tion and another, and the transmission from life to
life of the melancholy heritage of desire and sorrow,
is obscurely and enigmatically traced. The beginning
of all is ignorance (of the four truths) ; from ignorance
proceed the " samkharas " or forms of production, from
these in turn consciousness, the senses, contact, sensa-
tion, thirst, and so on to birth and the miseries of life.
Suffering is destroyed by tracing this sequence over
again in a negative way, so that, the first member of
it being destroyed, each subsequent member is destroyed
in turn.
It is no wonder that the founder doubted whether
this doctrine of causation would be generally under-
stood ; for it is in fact an attempt to reconcile two
opposite views of the nature of the human person. In
the first place we find in early Buddhism the thought
that there is no such thing as a self in the human
being ; a man is made up of various bundles of
attributes and sensations called skandhas, but he him-
self is none of these. There is no persistent substratum
of a self under these activities and forms, any more
than there is a carriage in addition to the wheels,
shafts, nails, etc., of which a carriage is composed.
The Buddhist is called on to give up the belief in a
permanent ego ; only where the various parts come
368 History of Religion part iv
together is the man there. This is the well-known
denial of the soul in this religion ; the soul is nothing
but the " name and form " of a chance collocation of
elements. It is hard to know where this doctrine
came from ; Kern says it is derived from the science
of dissection, others compare it with the doctrine of
Heraclitus, taught about the same time in Greece, that
all things are in constant flux, nothing permanent.
The last words of the Master assert that decay is
universal ; and the doctrine of the skandhas is a
corollary from that principle ; if all the elements of
which the human person is made up are in process
of decay, then the self cannot be a substantial and
persistent thing. That doctrine, however, does not
go well together with the belief in the universality
and inexorableness of suffering. If there is no self,
must not consciousness come to an end when the
elements fall asunder which chance has brought
together, and must not the hour of death be also the
hour of complete emancipation ? This, however, it was
impossible to hold in India at the time of Gautama ;
the belief in transmigration was too firmly fixed, he
never thought of disputing it. That belief indeed is
what chiefly makes the suffering of the world so lament-
able. To Indian eyes the pain actually in the world
was magnified a hundred-fold by the dark imagination
of its connection with the past and with the future.
What a man suffered was the result of acts done in
many former lives, all spent in the vain misery of
desire ; and the sad prospect was extended before him
that death would not end his pains, but that he would
be born again and again to suffer ever anew so long
as desire continued. But if this is the case, then the
soul would seem to be a durable and persistent thing
which is able to go through many lives and much
suffering without being brought to an end. On the
theory of transmigration the soul is not a mere shadow-
name of an aggregation of qualities, but the one durable
CHAP. XX Buddhism 369
thing which survives when all that is accidental and
temporary falls away from it. The doctrine of the
Skandhas and that of transmigration are thus opposed,
and the doctrine of the nidanas or the chain of causa-
tion is the bridge which satisfied Gautama's own mind,
but which he was doubtful about presenting to others,
to bring them into harmony. He aimed at showing
by his catalogue of these obscure processes how the
actions done in a life set up a tendency to a correspond-
ing existence in another life which begins after the
former one ends. Though there is no soul to be trans-
mitted, the moral effects of former lives are transmitted
to their successors.
The essential doctrine of the Buddha, however, is
determined by the belief in transmigration. His cry
of triumph at the time of his enlightenment is to the
effect that the long series of suffering existences through
which he has passed has now come to an end, and that
he will not be born again. And what he preaches with
constant iteration is the misery of this awful succession
of births to renewal of suffering, and the infinite blessed-
ness of escaping from this cycle. The disciple, when
converted, is to be able to say : " Hell is destroyed
for me, and rebirth as an animal or a ghost or in any
place of woe. I am converted, I am no longer liable
to be reborn in a state of suffering, and am assured
of eternal salvation."
Now it rests with a man's own acts to end his
sufferings. The chain of causation which ends with
suffering begins with ignorance. The ignorance which
is meant is that of the four noble truths, of the way of
salvation. Let a man cease from ignorance, let him
accept the Noble Truths and the insight they convey
into the cause of suffering, then by ceasing to thirst,
or to burn, or in our own language by turning his mind
away from all desire, believing that what he does will
be effective for his salvation, he sets up a chain of
causation in an opposite direction, and having destroyed
2 A
370 History of Religion part iv
ignorance he may rest assured that he has destroyed
suffering too and is in the right way. The burden he
lias inherited he will not need to carry any farther, but
will, when he dies, lay down for ever.
When we look at the fourth Noble Truth, which tells
what a man has to do in order to obtain this salvation,
we are at first surprised. After the deep earnestness
with which the nature of the disease and the cause
and cure of the disease have been stated, we expect
that stronger practical measures will be asked for than
these eight forms of moderation. Christianity speaks of
cutting off the right hand, plucking out the right eye,
in order to cut off desire : and the Brahmanic method
of union with the Deity was, as we have seen, that of
the most extreme self^-mortification united with con-
templation. This Brahmanic method, the yoga by
which the devotee sought to escape from all the
accidents of being and to make himself one with the
great Self, the Buddha had tried for six years ; but
he had given it up for a year when the hour of his
enlightenment struck, and he explicitly condemns for
others the path he had found unprofitable for himself
It is one of two extremes, both to be avoided, " The
one extreme is a life devoted to pleasures and lusts ;
this is degrading, sensual, vulgar, profitless ; the other
is a life given to mortifications ; this is painful, ignoble,
and profitless. By avoiding these two extremes the
Tathagata has gained the knowledge of the Middle
Path, which leads to insight, wisdom, calm, to Nirvana."
The way, therefore, to escape from the Karma, the
moral retribution which works inexorably in one life
the result stored up in previous lives, is that of a care-
ful and unintermitted self-discipline, which does not run
to extremes, but practices, with perfectly clear purpose
and self-possession, the needful virtues mentioned in the
fourth of the Noble Truths. What are these? There
is to be —
I. Right belief, without superstition or delusion.
CHAP. XX Buddhism 371
2. Right aspiration, after such things as the thought-
ful and earnest man sets store by.
3. Right speech, speech that is friendly and sincere.
4. Right conduct, conduct that is peaceable, honour-
able, and pure.
5. Right means of livelihood, i.e. a pursuit which does
not involve the taking or injuring of life.
6. Right endeavour, i.e. self-restraint and watchfulness.
7. Right memory, i.e. presence of mind, not forgetting
at any time what one ought to remember ; and
8. Right meditation, i.e. earnest occupation with the
riddles of life.
This is the path ; there are four stages of it —
1. The stage of him who has entered the path.
2. The stage of him who has yet to return once to life.
3. The stage of him who returns not again, but may
be born again as a superior being ; and
4. The stage of the worthy, holy one, the Arahat,
who is free from desire for existence, and also
from pride and self-righteousness, and who is
saved and has obtained holiness, even in this
life.
An Arahat is not equal to a Buddha ; the former is
himself saved, but the perfect Buddha is able by his
perfect knowledge to save others. Of Buddhas, how-
ever, there are not many. One becomes an Arahat by
a life of strenuous and untiring discipline. Ten fetters
are to be broken by which a man is kept from freedom ;
self-deception is one of them, trust in sacrifice another,
and the list embraces both sensual and intellectual
weaknesses. One must watch and be sober ; every act,
however trivial, is to be done with full self-conscious-
ness and earnestness. One must remember that he is
engaged in a great and a hard work, and must resolutely
"swim upstream," estimating at its proper value every
affection and temptation that would hold him back.
The body is to be contemned, and all natural ties ;
emotion is to be uprooted from the heart so that the
372 History of Religion part iv
proper state of entire calm and undi'sturbedness may-
be maintained. Then one is an Arahat, a true Brahman,
This manner of life requires withdrawal from the world;
the true salvation can only be attained by him who has
left his home for the houseless life. But Buddhism has
also a general moral code for those who have not taken
this step ; the keeping of it will not save them directly ;
from the life they are now leading that is impossible,
but it is a beginning ; it will make it easier for them
to become Arahats and attain salvation in some future
existence. For all it is good to be free from desire;
as all desire contains in itself a germ of death, there
is no approach to salvation except in this direction.
Buddhist Morality. — Towards fellow-men Buddhist
morality is based on the notion of the equality of all ;
respect is to be paid to all living beings. The five rules
of righteousness which are binding on all followers of the
Buddha are :
1. Not to kill any living being.
2. Not to take that which is not given.
3. To refrain from adultery.
4. To speak no untruth.
5. To abstain from all intoxicating liquors.
To these are added five more for members of the
order, who are also required to refrain from all sexual
intercourse, viz. :
1. Not to eat after mid-day.
2. Not to be present at dancing, singing, music, or
plays.
3. Not to use wreaths, scents, ointments, or personal
ornaments.
4. Not to use a high or a broad bed.
5. To possess no silver or gold.
These commandments, like those of the Decalogue,
are negative in form ; but in the Buddhist scriptures a
positive moral ideal is inculcated on all, which is grave
and attractive in its character, and is sustained by a
strong though quiet enthusiasm. We find here a delicate
CHAP. XX Buddhism 373
conscientiousness as to the relations to be cultivated
with one's fellow-men; the widest toleration is enjoined,
a toleration extending to all beings, to all opinions.
Hatred is to be repaid by love, life is to be filled with
kindness and compassion. The Dhammapada and the
Sutta-nipata deserve to be read by all who care for the
unseen riches of the soul. By their simple earnestness,
their quaint use of parable and metaphor, and their
mingling of the homeliest things with the highest truths,
these books take rank among the most impressive of
the religious books of the world. We give only a few
jewels from this treasury
From the Dhammapada. — Earnestness is the path of
immortality (Nirvana), thoughtlessness the path of death.
Those who are in earnest do not die, those who are
thoughtless are as if dead already.
All that we are is the result of what we have thought;
it is founded on what we have thought, it is made up of
what we have thought. If a man speaks or acts with a
pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that
never leaves him.
By oneself evil is done, by oneself one suffers ; by
oneself evil is left undone, by oneself one is purified.
Purity and impurity belong to oneself; no one can
purify another.
From the Sutta-nipata. — To live in a suitable country,
to have done good deeds in a former existence, and a
thorough study of oneself, this is the highest blessing.
As a mother at the risk of her life watches over
her own child, her only child, so also let every one
cultivate a boundless friendly mind towards all beings.
A Bhikku who has turned away from desire and
attachment, and is possessed of understanding in this
world, has already gone to the immortal place, the
unchangeable state of Nirvana.
Nirvana. — Our account of the doctrine would appear
incomplete if we did not attempt to answer the question,
What is Nirvana? It is, as the last extract shows,
374 History of Religion part iv
the state of salvation in Buddhism, As we have seen,
it is the condition of the man who has escaped from
the series of rebirths, and will never be born again.
It is attained even in this life by the Arahat, in
whom all desire and restlessness have come to an
end. On the other hand, it is said of such an one
that he enters Nirvana when he dies, as if it were a
state not of this life, but of the period beyond. Thus
it has been much debated whether the Buddhist (or
rather Indian, for the notion is not peculiar to Buddhism)
Nirvana is extinction, annihilation, of which the quench-
ing of desire in this life is the prelude, or if it is a
state of negative or quiescent blessedness, on which
the saint can enter here and now, but which is only
made perfect when he dies. But there are two
Nirvanas ; — that of entire passionlessness attained in
this life, and the consummate Nirvana entered at death.
The saint does not need to wait for death for his
redemption, nor must he hasten his death in order to
enjoy it fully ; Buddha, by example and by precept,
forbids any such anticipation. Death seals that which
was already won, there is no return from the Nirvana
of death to any further life. This, however, does not
amount to an assertion that the dead Arahat has no
life or knowledge in the beyond ; he is freed from
desire, but whether his consciousness is altogether
extinguished. Buddhism does not decide, and regards
as a vain speculation.
No Gods. — We shall speak afterwards of this view
of redemption, which is the key to the nature of the
Buddhist religion. We remark here that it is a
redemption man achieves by his own efforts, without
any outward prop or aid. In this system there is no
occasion for any priests or sacrifices, for any prayers,
or for any gods. There is no ritual, because there
is no object of worship, there is no sin in the sense
of offending a higher being. The gods are denied
not because of any speculative doubt of their existence,
CHAP. XX Buddhism 375
but because in that inner world of moral effort which
man has come to feel so supremely real and important,
they have no part to play. As all the gods faded
away in Indian speculation before Brahma, so Brahma's
own turn has come to fade away. The Buddhist speaks
of the gods as if they existed, and he makes no attack
on the sacrifices ; but no living god fills his heart. The
Buddha is greater than all the gods ; his teaching is for
the benefit of gods as well as men. But the Buddha is
not an object of worship. If the Buddhist can be said
to worship any higher power, it is the moral order
which never fails to reward men according to the
deeds done in this or former existences. That is for
him a real and tremendous, though impersonal power,
and in contemplating it he may be said to worship
after a fashion. But he has no aid to look for from
any power in heaven or earth in working out his
salvation. Buddhism is the most autosoteric of all
religions ; it declares more uncompromisingly than
any other, that man must save himself by his own
efforts, and that no one can possibly stand in his
place or relieve him of any part of his great task.
All that any one, even the Buddha, can do for another,
is to enlighten him, to open his eyes to the true
knowledge, and show him the narrow path on which
he must thenceforth walk.
3. The Order. — There were monks before Buddhism.
That religion made its appearance when Indian thought
was at the stage of growth at which monastic com-
munities may be expected to arise. When religion has
ceased to be regarded as the affair of the nation or the
tribe, and is cherished as the affair of the individual,
when the mind turns from the sacrifices and ritual of
public religion to cultivate relations with a power known
chiefly in the heart and soul, and when religious duty
has thus come to be recognised as a boundless and all-
embracing thing, not a service the hands and feet can
discharge, but the effort, never ending, still beginning,
376 History of Religion part iv
to make the whole personahty with all its acts and
aims conform to the ideal, then it is that men who are
living for religion seek for such aid as they can give
each other, and find it in an order and a discipline. The
rules of the Buddhist Samgha or order are extant, and
so are the rules of the contemporary Jainist fraternity.
The Samgha resembled the Franciscan more than the
other great Christian orders. The Bhikku on joining
it abandoned his family and property, assumed the
yellow robe and other scanty properties of the char-
acter, and lived thenceforth by begging, and in strict
subjection to the rules, in which every detail of his
food, his clothing, his residence, and his daily walk
and conversation, were laid down. The two great
objects of the society were mutual help in the religious
life and the preaching of the doctrine. Under the first
head come the frequent meetings of monks and the
confessions they make to each other according to a
fixed form. There is no vow of obedience ; the monk
obeys the law, not the human authority. In preaching
they are to go one by one, and they are to preach to
all. To all who would hear it was the gate open to
this salvation. Here the Buddhist neglect of caste
comes in. Buddhism makes no general or formal
declaration of the equality of all men, nor is there
any attack on the Brahman caste or any exaltation
of the lower castes. The order drew its recruits at
first from the ranks of the Brahmans. But the impel-
ling motive of the new religion was compassion, and
genuine compassion is not to be restrained in artificial
limits. The salvation preached was fitted for all men.
The disease to be cured was one from which all
suffer, and the cure was one which all could at least
begin to lay hold of. Thus Buddhism was fitted to
break through the barriers of caste, and to gather into
one religious community men of all castes alike. In
the community, it was held, these distinctions dis-
appeared. Not birth but conduct there made the true
CHAP. XX Buddhism 377
Brahman. The universalist tendency of the religion
also fitted it to spread to other lands. It was not
limited by anything in its teaching to the soil of India,
nor to the territory of any particular set of gods. So
wide indeed is its toleration, that a man may embrace
it without giving up the faith in which he lived before.
One can add it without incongruity to one's former
beliefs and practices. The believer in Shang-ti can be
a Buddhist as well as the believer in Brahma.^ The
absence of any hierarchy or centralised organisation
enabled it to spread freely, and the very meagreness
of its doctrine, and its freedom from ritual, were also
in its favour.
Buddhism made Popular. — Buddhism proved able to
spread over many lands because it was so simple, and
in its essence so moral and so broadly human. But,
like other faiths which have spread to many lands, it
assumed very different forms in different countries,
and the later form is often very different from the
early simplicity. Even at the outset it was not free
from a strong infusion of magic ; the Arahat, like the
Brahmanic ascetic before him, was believed to obtain
influence over the gods by his virtues, and thus a
claim to supernatural power is brought in, which agrees
but ill with the ethical doctrine. The religion, which
at first ignored the gods and bade each man trust to
his own efforts for his highest good, became, ere long,
what a popular religion at the stage of progress pre-
vailing at that time necessarily was, namely, a worship
of superior beings and a method of obtaining benefits
from them. The national gods were discarded, but
the deification of the founder early furnished a being
who could be worshipped. Legend grew luxuriantly
round his birth and early career ; and he obtained the
rank of the greatest of all the gods. Former Buddhas
who had lived in former ages still lived as gods ; and
* Millions of Buddhists in China and Japan are also adherents of the
other religions of these countries.
378 History of Religion part iv
the divine family, being once founded, admitted of
various additions ; even a popular deity, such as Indra^
could be joined to the growing circle. The chief
scenes of the life of the founder became holy places
and objects of pilgrimage, where relics were exposed
for adoration. The growth of legend and of magic
proceeded more rapidly, and went to greater lengths,
in Northern than in Southern Buddhism ; but in the
land of its birth, too, Buddhism proved unable to
serve as a working religion without additions and
modifications entirely foreign to its true character.
The profession of Buddhism was combined even with
the savage worship of the non-Aryan tribes ; Siva was
identified with Buddha and then worshipped instead
of him, as also was Vishnu, and the perversion and
degradation of the religion prepared for its expulsion
from the country of its birth. That expulsion was
probably brought about more immediately by the
advance of Mohammedanism in India, and took place
in the period of the early Middle Ages. We cannot
speak here of the strange guise Buddhism has assumed
in the north of India, notably in Tibet. The Lamaism
of that country, with its perpetual living incarnation
of the divine Buddha in a succession of human repre-
sentatives, its hierarchical church strongly resembling
in many of its features the Church of Rome, and the
prayer-flags and wheels for the mechanical discharge
of religious acts, have long been the wonder of the
world.
Conclusion. — It is not from what Buddhism is now in
any of the countries where it flourishes, and where it has
votaries who profess other religions also, that we can
judge of what it really is, or estimate its value as a
product of the human mind. It is to early Buddhism
that we must look for this. What are we to judge of this
religion without gods, and based on the assertion that
all life is suffering, and that the chief good is altogether
to escape from life? It is not true to characterise it as
CHAP. XX Buddhism 379
a religion in which there is no joy, and which dehberately
refuses to have anything to do with joy. The Arahat,
in whom desire is vanquished, and who has no further
birth to anticipate, is filled with a deep joy and triumph
as of a victor who has conquered every foe ; and those
who are less advanced in the path yet have their share
in this enthusiasm, and are inspired by it to continue
the struggle. Still Buddhism is a sad religion. It
arrives in India when the Deity there believed in has
deserted the world, and tells man he is alone in it.
There is no one to help him, no one to assure him
that the good cause in a wider sense — a cause extend-
ing beyond his own personal life — is destined to
succeed ; there is no upholder of any moral order
beyond that which works itself out in each individual
experience. The result is that the believer does not
trouble himself about the world, but only about his own
personal salvation. This religion is not a social force,
it aims not at a Kingdom of God to be built up by the
united efforts of multitudes of the faithful, but only at
saving individual souls, which in the act of being saved
are removed beyond all activity and all contact with
the world. Buddhism, therefore, is not a power which
makes actively for civilisation. It is a powerful agent
for the taming of passion and the prevention of vagrant
and lawless desires, it tends, therefore, towards peace.
But it offers no stimulus to the realisation of the riches
which are given to man in his own nature : it checks
rather than fosters enterprise, it favours a dull con-
formity to rule rather than the free cultivation of
various gifts. Its ideal is to empty life of everything
active and positive, rather than to concentrate energy
on a strong purpose. It does not train the affections
to virtuous and harmonious action, but denies to them
all action and consigns them to extinction. This con-
demnation it has incurred by parting with that highest
stimulus to human virtue and endeavour, which lies in
the belief in a living God. By so doing it ceased to
380 History of Religio7i part iv
fulfil the office of a religion for men, and though, for
historical purposes, we may class it among the religions
of the world, a system which leaves its adherents free
not to worship at all, or to find satisfaction for their
spiritual instincts in the worship of beings whom it
regards with indifference, comes short of the notion of
religion, and is not properly entitled to that name.
Books Recommended
Monier Williams, Buddhism, in its connection with Brahmanism and
Hinduism, and in its contrast with Christianity, 1889.
Rhys Davids, Buddhism (S.P.C.K.).
Oldenberg's, Buddha, hit Life, his Doctrine and his Order ^ 1 882 (out of
print). (Third German Edition, 1897.)
Spence Hardy, Manual of Buddhism, i860.
E. Hardy, Der Buddhismus.
CHAPTER XXI
PERSIA
The Aryans who entered India to become its dominant
race came from Central Asia, and left behind them
there other tribes of Aryan culture. These tribes
remained in what is called Iran, in the lands, that is to
say, between the Indus, the Caspian Sea, the Black Sea,
and the Persian Gulf. It is from this region, a part of
which bore in ancient times the name of Ariana, that
the word " Aryan " is derived. The languages of this
territory are akin to Sanscrit; and there is ample
evidence that before the Indian invasion the progenitors
of the Indians and those of the Iranians dwelt together
there, and enjoyed a common civilisation. If the
civilisation was the same the religion also was the same.
How the Indo-Iranian religion was developed in India,
we have seen. At first a worship of active and militant
deities, it became by degrees a religion of a passive
type, in which a suffering, acquiescent, and brooding
humanity presented to heaven its needs and problems,
and received a corresponding answer. The Aryans
who remained in Iran retained their active and practical
disposition. While by no means wanting in sensitive-
ness and flexibility of mind, they were less given to
speculation and more to a robust morality than their
Indian kinsmen. It has to be noted that while the
religion of India has not influenced Europe in any
manifest degree until the present century, that of Persia
381
382 History of Religion part iv
has contributed in a marked way to form the world of
thought in which we dwell.
Sources. — The views generally current about the
ancient religion of Persia are derived from late Greek
writers, whose accounts will be noticed at the end of
this chapter. A truer knowledge is now possible, since
the sacred books of the religion are now open to the
world. They were only obtained from the Parsis, who
keep up their ancient religion on the soil of India,
during last century, and the study of them has been
very laborious and difficult, and has given rise to great
controversies which are not yet settled. These ancient
books are furnished with Eastern translations and com-
mentaries. Is the Western scholar to place himself
under the guidance of these, which no doubt are part
of the historical tradition of the religion, or may he
claim that he is himself in as good a position as the
Oriental commentator for understanding the original
meaning of the texts; and will he best interpret them
by comparing them with the Vedas ? What is their
age; in which of the lands of Iran were they written ;
was any part of them written by Zoroaster, or is
Zoroaster to be regarded as an historical personage
at all ? On all these questions and on many others,
scholars are not yet agreed ; and while so much is
uncertain about the books, there must also be great
uncertainty about the history and the very nature of
the religion. In what follows we are guided mainly
by the scholars who have taken charge of the volumes
connected with Persia in the Sacred Books of the
East} In the last of these volumes (xxxi.) a new
clue is given to the subject, of which we shall gladly
avail ourselves.
The sacred books of Persia are known by the name
of " Zend-Avesta," which is an incorrect expression ; we
ought to say Avesta and Zend, "Avesta," like the
kindred word " Veda," signifies knowledge, and the word
^ Zend-Avesta, S. B. E., vols. iv. xxiii. xxxi.
CHAP. XXI Persia 383
" Zend " denotes here not the language of that name,
but the " commentary " afterwards added to the original
knowledge or text. The commentary is not written in
the Zend language, but in Pahlavi or Persian. The
Avesta, which is written in the older Zend, the sacred
language of Persia, is, like other Bibles, a collection of
books written in different ages, and even, it may be, in
different lands. The books were brought together into
one only at some period after the Christian era. The
later legends as to the supernatural communication to
Zoroaster of the earlier books need not detain us ;
we must notice, however, that the preserved books of
Persian religion are held to be no more than the scanty
ruins of an extensive literature. The Avesta consisted
originally of 21 Nosks or books, and most of these were
destroyed by Alexander when he invaded the East ;
only one Nosk was preserved entire. As we have it,
the Avesta is a liturgical work, it contains some legends
and some ancient hymns, as well as a good deal of law,
but its prevailing character is that of a service-book,
and it is to this that its partial preservation both at the
invasion of Alexander, and at that of the Mohammedans
in a later century, is probably due. It consists of three
parts. The oldest is the Yasna, a collection of liturgies,
which admit and indeed invite comparison with those
of early Christianity : along with these are found the
Gathas or hymns, the only part of the Avesta composed
in verse, and written in an older dialect. The Visperad
is a collection of litanies for the sacrifice ; and the
Vendidad is a code of early law, but contains also
various religious legends. Besides these works, which
constitute the Avesta proper, there is the Khorda (or
small) Avesta containing devotions for various times
of the day, for the days of the month, and for the
religious year ; these are for the use not of the priests
alone but of all the faithful, and many of them are still
so used.
The Contents of the Zend Avesta are Composite. —
384 History of Religion part iv
In these works the student soon observes that he has
before him not one religious system only but several.
In one place we find a worship of one god, as if
there were no others to be considered ; some of the
litanies on the other hand contain lengthy and elaborate
lists of objects of worship. In some parts the religion
is personal and immediate ; in others it is priestly.
Parsism is often called fire-worship, and the elements
of earth and water also obtain extreme sanctity in
it, but of this also there is in the oldest books little
trace. The variety in the literature no doubt reflects
a variety in the religion of Iran. Iran in fact had
not one religion but several, and thus the problem is
to trace how these successively entered into contact
with Mazdeism or Zoroastrianism, which is the religion
most native to Iran, and were embodied in it. The
different religions belonged to a certain extent to
different provinces. We know that Persia, the conqueror
of Media, was conquered in turn by the Median religion ;
we also know that the religion of the Persian kings
as read in their inscriptions ^ does not correspond to
any of the religious positions held in the Avesta.
The Magi, from whom also the religion as a whole
derives one of its names, belonged to Media and passed
from there to greater power in Iran as a whole. From
the Scythians on the north and from Babylonia on
the south, ideas and practices were imported ; and
in these and other ways, forms of religion arose as
different from the faith of Zoroaster as later forms of
Christianity from the simplicity of Christ, yet looking
to him as their founder and the giver of their law.
Zoroaster. — We begin with the teaching of Zoroaster.
Dr. E. Meyer in his Geschichte des Alterthums, vol. i.,
and Mr. Darmesteter in his admirable introduction to
the Avesta (5. B. E. vol. iv.) both treat Zoroaster as
a mythical personage, a figure-head of the official
class of the religion, who give currency to their edicts
* Records oj the Past, i. 107.
CHAP. XXI
Persia 385
under his name. Weighty authorities may, however,
be quoted for the historical reality of Zoroaster, and
what appears to us most important of all, the editor
of the Gathas, in the S. B. E. vol. xxxi., departing
from his collaborateur, Mr. Darmesteter, has treated
these hymns, which give an account of the founder's
acts and experiences when first proclaiming the true
doctrine, in such a way as to produce on the mind
of the reader the strongest impression of the historical
reality of the prophet and of his mission. They intro-
duce us to a religious movement actually in progress
in the poet's time, a movement in which a pure and
lofty faith is struggling to establish itself against pre-
vailing superstitions. The doctrine placed in the mouth
of the reformer is that which is most central in Persian
religion ; and only by such deep earnestness and
devotion as is here ascribed to him, could it have
attained that position. We start, then, with Zoroaster
and his work ; and first of all we ask what was his
date, where did he live, and what kind of religion did
he find existing in his country ?
The date of Zoroaster or Zarathustra — the former
is the Greek, the latter the old Iranian form of the
name, contracted in Persian to Zardusht — can only
be fixed very approximately. He stands at the very
beginning of the Avesta literature, and the develop-
ments in religion to which that literature testifies must
have occupied a long period. On the other hand no
one proposes to place Zarathustra before the departure
of the Indian Aryans from the Indo-Iranian stock.
From such vague data he may be assigned perhaps
to somewhere about 1400 B.C. As to his province,
there is considerable agreement among scholars that
his doctrine spread from the east of Iran westwards ;
and though tradition gives him a birthplace in Media,
his mission lay nearer to India, in Bactria.
Primitive Religion of Iran. — He did not preach to
men unacquainted with religion. Many of the religious
2 B
386 History of Religion part iv
ideas and figures of the Vedas occur also in Persia,
and by the study of these it is possible to form certain
inferences as to the mental history of Persia before
Zarathustra. Mithra the sun-god belongs to Persia
as well as India. The heaven-god known in India
as Varuna grew into the principal deity of Persia.
A fire-god, wind- and rain-gods, and the serpent hostile
to man, on whom these made war, are common to
both countries. The institution of sacrifice, in which
the deities are served with offerings and with hymns,
is markedly alike in both countries. In both alike
sacrifice is at first the affair not of a priesthood but
of laymen, especially of princes, and is not confined
to temples but is performed in the open air, on a
spot judged to be suitable. The most imposing sacrifice
is that of the horse, and an offering of constant
occurrence is that of the intoxicating liquor, in India
Soma, in Persia by a recognised transliteration Homa,
which is itself viewed as a cosmic principle of life,
and addressed as a deity. And in both countries
alike the view of sacrifice prevails in early times, that
the gods come to it to take their part in a banquet
which their worshippers share with them, and that
they are strengthened and encouraged by it.
These similarities, and others which might be
mentioned, show that the religion of India and that
of Persia started from a common stock of ideas and
usages. A further circumstance of great importance
shows not only the original identity of the two systems,
but also perhaps how they came to diverge from
each other. Two generic titles for deities occur in
India. The first of these — deva, is said to signify
the bright or shining one, the second — asura, the living
one. Now these titles are also found in Persia ; but
the use of the terms is different in the two countries.
In India both are at first titles for deity, but by
degrees, while " deva " continues to denote the god.s
who are worshipped, " asura " assumes a less favourable
CHAP. XXI
Persia 387
meaning, until at length it comes to stand for a second
order of beings, inferior to the devas, and including
such powers as are malignant and hostile. In Persia
the fortunes of the two words are reversed. Ahura
becomes the god par excellence^ the supreme god ;
while "deva," the title which in India remained in
honour, is in the Avesta that of evil gods who are
not to be worshipped. In this some scholars consider
that we may hear the watchwords of the conflict which
led to the separation of the two religions ; there was
a schism between the followers of the Ahuras and
those of the Devas, which led to the entire separation
of the two parties. This is the latest form of the
old view which makes Zoroastrianism the outcome of
a religious conflict, of a reaction against the gods
afterwards worshipped in India. There is no direct
evidence of such a conflict, and the difference we have
described may be due to the natural development of
the Indo-Iranian religion in different sets of circum-
stances and among different peoples. Zarathustra in
the Gathas finds the antithesis fully formed between
the good and the evil deities ; he appeals to his
countrymen on that matter as one which he does
not need to teach them, but with which they have
long been familiar. In speaking of his date this has
to be remembered.
We proceed now to describe from the Gathas the
work and teaching of Zarathustra. The Gathas are
poems written in metres which occur also in the Vedas,
and intended, like the Indian hymns, to be used in
worship. The account which they furnish of the
mission and the teaching of the sage are thus clothed
in a poetical dress, and do not narrate bare facts as
they occurred, but the facts as interpreted and treated
for religious use. They are in the mouth of Zarathustra
himself; he writes them for use at sacrifice, and re-
membering how they are to be rendered, he some-
times puts in the mouth of the celebrants the words,
388 History of Religion part iv
" Zarathustra and we." These words do not prove
that the hymns are not by him. As explained by
Dr. Mills, the hymns are seen to be very fully charged
with meaning and with sentiment. Uncouth and
inartistic in expression, and demanding an immense
amount of patience and ingenuity to trace their con-
nection of thought, they surprise the reader when once
he seizes their meaning, by the depth and spirituality
of their contents, and force him to acknowledge that
they are a worthy document of the birth of a great
religion.
The Call of Zarathustra. — The hymns give a vivid
picture of that early world in which the prophet lived.
It was a world distracted with conflict. On one side
there is an agricultural community bent on industry,
and, like the Hindus, even at this day, valuing as most
sacred the cattle which form their chief substance.
On the other hand, there are men who dwell on the
outskirts between the tilled land and the wilderness,
who are constantly making raids on the farms, driving
off and killing the cattle for sacrifice and for food, and
ruining the fields by destroying the irrigating works on
which their fertility depends. And there is a religious
difference as well as a difference in culture between
these two sets of people. The agriculturists are wor-
shippers of Ahura; the contemners of the cattle worship
beings called in the Gathas " daevas." This schism
was not of Zarathustra's making, he found it going on,
and being a priest was entitled to come forward and
seek to guide others with regard to it. Such is the
situation which the hymns present to us. We will try
to state the substance of some of those hymns. The
naked words of them, even when we are sure of the
correctness of the translation, are barely intelligible
without lengthy commentary ; and on the other hand,
no short statement in modern terms can convey the
force and solemnity of these struggling utterances.
As we are dealing with the origrinal revelation of
CHAP. XXI Persia 389
Zarathustra, the source of the Persian religion, we
shall give the story with some degree of detail.
The first hymn in the arrangement presented to us
in 5. B. E. deals with what we may term the call of
Zarathustra. It sums up in a poetic and dramatic
form the religious result of the movement which led
him to come forward.
The " Soul of the Kine " first speaks ; it is the imper-
sonation of the agricultural community, to whom their
cattle are most sacred. She raises a complaint to Ahura
and Asha (the righteousness which is an attribute of
Ahura, and like his other attributes often appears as
an independent person) of the insolence and high-
handed devastation and robbery she has to suffer.
" For whom did ye fashion me," she says ; " wherefore
was I made?" She appeals to the Immortals for
instruction in tillage with a view to security and
welfare.
Ahura then speaks and asks Asha what guardian
has been appointed for the kine to lead and to defend
her ; and Asha answers that no one, himself free from
passion and violence, could be found who was capable
of being an adequate guardian. The causes of these
evils lie at the roots of the constitution of things, and
therefore those seeking success in any enterprise must
approach Ahura himself and not any subordinate being.
Zarathustra speaks, and confirms the utterances of
Asha ; it is in Ahura himself that he and the kine
place their confidence ; to his will they submit them-
selves ; the doubts and questions arising from their
outward insecurity, they refer to him.
Ahura speaks and answers his own question. It is
true that no lord of the kine is to be found, who in
himself is quite equal to that position, but he appoints
Zarathustra as head to the agricultural community.
A chorus speaks, consisting of a company of the
faithful supposed to be present, or of the Ameshospends,
the personified attributes of Ahura, and praise the Lord
390 History of Religion part iv
for his bounty and for the wisdom he makes known ;
but asks whom he has endowed with the Good Mind,
or, as we might say, the Holy Spirit, to make known
to mortals his doctrine. The call of Zarathustra, in-
timated in the foregoing verse, is overlooked, as if it
were impossible that such a one as he could undertake
the office. Ahura replies, repeating his commission to
Zarathustra, here called also by his family name of
Spitama, and promising to establish him and make
him successful in his work.
The Soul of the Kine speaks, lamenting still that
no adequate lord has been assigned her. Zarathustra
is a feeble and pusillanimous man, not one of royal
state who is able to bring his purpose to effect. The
Ameshospends join in the cry for the true lord to
appear.
Zarathustra then speaks, accepting the mission in an
address to Ahura, whom he entreats to send his bless-
ings of peace and happiness, since none but he can
give them, and to set up in the minds of the disciples
of the cause that joy and that kingdom which, though
it first comes inwardly, yet brings with it also all
outward blessings. For himself also he prays that the
Good Mind and the Sovereign Power (another of the
attributes) of the Lord may hasten to come to him
and strengthen him for his mission.
This poetical rendering of the call of Zarathustra is
free both from miraculous embellishment and from
undue exaltation of the person of the prophet, and
forms a great contrast to later statements in the Avesta,
where the prophet is placed in secret conclave with
Ahura, asking him questions and receiving detailed
replies which at once rank as revelation. In the
Gathas, allowing for the theological and poetic form,
everything is human and natural. We are strongly
reminded of the accounts of the calls of prophets in
the Old Testament — there is the same choice by the
deity of an apparently weak instrument to accomplish
CHAP. XXI Persia 391
a work urgently called for by the times, the same sense
of insufficiency on the part of the prophet, but the
same absolute confidence on his part in the power of
the deity, and hence the same absolute assurance, once
the mission is accepted, that the cause which he has
been called to carry forward must succeed. In many
of the following Gathas the same parallel is strongly
impressed on the mind of the reader. The sense of
weakness is expressed again and again — the prophet
has no victorious career, but is exposed to much gain-
saying, which he feels acutely. Yet he never doubts
that his god is with him, and is working for him. To
him he commits his doubts and fears, of his goodness
he is joyfully assured, and his aid he expects with
confidence. He is entirely devoted to Ahura and his
cause, and offers himself up with his whole powers to
work out the divine will. He will teach, he says, as
long as he is able, till he has brought all the living
to believe. He is conscious of a divine power working
in him. Nothing in himself, he is strong by the divine
grace which Ahura sends him : his words have efficacy
to keep the fiends at a distance, and to advance in
men's minds the divine kingdom ; like St. Paul he
feels his message to be to some a savour of life unto
life, to others a savour of death unto death.
The Doctrine. — And what is the message he pro-
claims? It is a philosophy of the origin of the world,
but a philosophy the acceptance of which involves
immediate and strenuous action. The distracted con-
dition of the world before him requires to be explained,
so that a remedy for it may be found ; and Zarathustra
prays, when he is about to bring forward his doctrine,
that Ahura would help him to explain how the material
world arose. The explanation when it appears is not
quite new, it has been shaping itself already in the
mind of his people, but he sets it forth as a dogma,
and draws from it at once all its practical consequences.
In the third hymn of the first Gatha he solemnly brings
392 History of Religion part iv
forward his doctrine before the people, and appeals to
them, not as a people, but as individuals, each for
himself, with a full sense of his responsibility, to con-
sider it, and adopt it, and act upon it. It is the doctrine
of dualism, not in the fully developed later form in
which two personal potentates divide the universe
between them from the first, but as yet in a form
more speculative and vague. There are two primeval
principles, spirits, things, as is well known — the ex-
pression is indefinite — the counterparts of each other,
independent in their action, a better and a worse, and
Zarathustra calls on his audience to choose between
them, and not to choose as do the evildoers. The
world, as it is, was made by the joint action of the two
principles, and they also fixed the alternative fates of
men, for the wicked. Hell — the worst life ; and for
the holy, Heaven — the best mental state. After the
creation was accomplished, the two principles drew
off from each other, the evil one making choice of
evil and of evil works, and the bounteous spirit choosing
righteousness, making his strong seat in heaven, and
taking for his own those who do good and who believe
in him. The Daevas and their followers are incapable
of making a just choice between the good and the evil;
they have surrendered themselves from the outset to
the " Worst Mind," the demon of fury, and to all evil
works. (There are vague suggestions here of a tempta-
tion and a fall, but only of the evil spirits and their
followers.) From this point onwards the world is filled
with a great struggle. On the one side is Ahura, the
only god worshipped by name in the Gathas. Ahura
is a heaven-god, he is, in fact, the bright heaven, and
then the good and beneficent being who dwells in
brightness. In the hymns he is losing his definite
character and becoming an abstraction, a god of dog-
matics rather than of history. He is the good principle
personified, and as becomes a god of such transcendent
character, he does not act directly, but through his
CHAP. XXI Persia 393
satellites. His attributes personified, do his bidding,
aid the saints in spiritual ways, and prepare for the
better order of things. On the other hand are the
Daevas with the demon of wrath, who propagate every-
where lies and mischief, and heap up vengeance for
themselves against the final judgment. For the good
there is nothing better than to aid, — for they can aid,
in bringing on the renovation, dwelling with Ahura
even now, and by his attributes which work in them
as well as in him, reinforcing the righteous order, and
preparing themselves to dwell where wisdom has her
home. In the end the Demon of the Lie will be
rendered harmless and delivered up to Righteousness
as a captive.
Inconsistencies. — As it happens in every such reform,
the new teaching is not quite consistent with itself;
old views are taken up into the new teaching, although
they do not harmonise with it ; the spiritual way of
looking at things alternates with a more worldly way.
The following are some examples of this : — The great
doctrine of Heaven and Hell as inner states, as being
simply the best and the worst state of mind, is clearly
announced ; but the traditional view of future abodes
of happiness and misery also appears. The Kinvat-
bridge is mentioned several times in the Gathas, over
which Iran conceived that the individual had to pass
after death. If he was righteous the bridge bore him
safely over to the sacred mountain, where the good
lived again ; if he was wicked, he fell off the bridge
and found himself in the place of torment. It is
another inconsistency that Zarathustra expects, on the
one hand, to convert the world by his preaching, while
on the other hand his sense of the antagonism between
the good and the evil spirits and their followers often
hurries him into violent methods. One hymn con-
cludes with a summons to his adherents to fall on the
unbelievers with the halberd, and he is constantly pre-
dicting their sudden overthrow. Along with this, we
394 History of Religion part iv
may mention that he sought to ally himself with power-
ful families for the sake of the support they would
bring the cause. The name of Vishtaspa, king we
know not of what realm, is always associated with the
prophet as that of his royal patron ; other influential
friends are also mentioned. Another point, in which
we notice accommodation to existing usage, is that of
sacrifice. The Gathas have several noble passages
describing the true sacrifice man has to offer to God
for his goodness, as consisting simply in the offering
of self, in the devotion to the deity of all a man is,
and all he can do. At the same time Zarathustra has
not a word to say in disparagement of the sacrifice of
victims. He prays for guidance in this part of religious
duty ; he desires to have everything connected with
sacrifice done in the best way and with the most effec-
tive hymns. Thus the spiritual life is not left to stand
alone. There is a personal walk with God, our piety
is said to be God's daughter in us, his righteousness
is working in us and moulding us for his purposes ;
both will and deed of the good man are attributed to
him, and the processes are described with true insight
by which the soul is sanctified and wedded to her
task and her true destiny ; but at the same time there
is an intent looking to that sacred Fire which is an
outward representative of deity ; there is the offering
of victims, even of horses, when the prophet's mind is
bent on war (the Homa-offering does not occur, and
we may suppose the prophet rejected this service of
the deity by intoxication) ; there is the smiting of the
demons with prayer, and imprecations, similar to those
in the Psalms, against adversaries of the cause.
It is no proof of unspirituality that the welfare of
the Kine, with whose wail the call of the prophet
began, is steadily kept in view during his mission. The
agriculturists are on the side of the righteous being,
good and ever-better tillage is a means of pleasing
him ; it is his will that the kine should be freed from
CHAP. XXI
Persia 395
alarms and should prosper ; and he may be appealed to
to give lessons with a view to that end. The doctrine
passes far beyond its first occasion ; yet the occasion
which called for it is never lost sight of.
The Gathas, taken alone, tell us hardly anything of
the religion in which Zarathustra's fellow-countrymen
believed. They believed undoubtedly in many gods ;
in those parts of the Avesta which come next to the
hymns in time, polytheism is in full force. That
Zarathustra only speaks of one god, Ahura (though he
also speaks of "the Immortals" generally), may be due
to the limited extent and special purpose of the hymns,
but it may also be taken as an indication that the
prophet did not needlessly interfere with the beliefs of
his people : content to preach the doctrine with which
he was charged, and which was to him the sum and
substance of all religion, he, like several other religious
founders, stirred up no strife he could avoid. The
doctrine he preached was not unprepared for in the
mind of his country, and continued to be the leading
feature of Persian religion in subsequent periods.
It is a momentous step in religious progress, which
the prophet of Iran calls on his countrymen to take.
We notice the main features of the advance.
I. Man is Called to Judg-e between the Gods. —
Zarathustra, like Elijah, puts before his people the
choice between two worships. Various distinctions
between the two cases might be drawn. In the
Scripture case Baal is not a bad god, but simply the
wrong god for Israel to worship. In the case of our
reformer the difference between the two worships is
a deeper one. The individual is to choose his god,
he is to declare of his own motion that one god is
better than others, and that no worship whatever is
to be paid to these others. This was a new departure
in antiquity ; the early world loved to think of many
gods, all alike divine and worshipful, each race or
clan having its god whom it naturally served, or each
3g6 History of Religion part iv
part of the earth being portioned out to a divine lord
of its own. Neither Greece nor Rome ever thought
of making the individual man the arbiter among the
unseen beings vi'hom he knew, and requiring him to
decide which of them he should consider divine, and
which he should disown. In the case before us, more-
over, the choice is to be made on moral grounds.
Men are called to judge of the character of the beings
who are called gods, they are told that there is no
necessity to acknowledge those of whom they dis-
approve, they are emancipated from the fear of hurtful
and evil beings. There is war in heaven, and men are
encouraged to take part in that war, and to cast off
allegiance to such powers as do not make for righteous-
ness. How there came to be such strife among the
gods, and how it became necessary that men should
judge of it, we have no clear information ; we only
know that the momentous step was called for and
was taken.
The belief, however, remains even after the decision
that there are unseen evil beings, who had influence
in forming the constitution of things, and who have
influence still over the government of the world. The
position taken up is not monotheism. The good god
is not sole creator or sole governor of the world, he is
a limited being ; from the outset he has only in part
got his own way, and he has adversaries in the very
constitution of things, whom he cannot get rid of.
Persian thought is dualistic ; the conception of an
Evil Creator and Governor co-ordinate with the good
one differentiates it from the thought of India, which
always tends to a principle of unity.
2. In the second place, this religfion is essentially-
intolerant and persecuting. Having chosen his side
in the great war which divides the universe, man can
only prosecute that war with all his force ; he must
regard the Daevas and their followers as his enemies,
and try to weaken and extinguish them. The general
CHAP. XXI Persia 397
feeling of the ancient world about differences in religion
was that all religions were equally legitimate, each
on its own soil. The Jews, we know, shocked the
Greeks and Romans greatly by denying this, and
maintaining that there was only one true religion,
namely, their own, and that all the others were worships
of gods false and vain. But the Persians came before
the Jews in this ; the Gathas preach persecution, and
the insults offered by Persian kings in later times to
the religions of Egypt and Greece were no doubt
justified by their convictions. In Persia, as in Israel,
religion had come to entertain the notion of false
gods. And a religion which entertains that notion
must be exclusive. Those who have refused to worship
beings hitherto deemed gods, on the ground that they
ought not to be worshipped and are not truly gods,
cannot but desire to bring the worship of such beings
entirely to an end, and to make the worship of the
true God prevail instead, by rude or by gentle means,
as the stage of civilisation may in each case suggest.
Growth of Mazdeism. — After the Gathas proper we
have other hymns written in the Gathic dialect, from
which the history of the religion after its foundation
may be to some extent inferred.^ These show that
the Zarathustrian religion was regarded, after the
departure of the founder, as a great divine institution,
and was worked out on the lines he had laid down.
The forms of it became of course more fixed. The
god it serves is now called " Ahura Mazda," the All-
Knowing Lord" (the name is afterwards contracted
into the Greek Oromazdes, the Persian Hormazd ; and
the religion is called from it Mazdeism) ; he is still im-
plored for spiritual blessings both for this and for the
future life, and for furtherance in agriculture. There
is, however, a tendency to address prayer not only
to Ahura himself but to beings connected with him.
1 Yasna Haptanghaiti, 5. B. E. xxxi. p. 2 1 8, sqq.^ and others
following.
398 History of Religion part iv
As if the mind wearied of dwelling on the one supreme,
the Bountiful Immortals are associated with him, the
parts of his holy creation are invoked, the fire which
is most closely identified with him, the stars which
are his body, the waters, the earth, all good animals
and plants. The kine's soul receives sacrifice, and
not only the kine's soul which we have met before,
but the souls of "just men and holy women," the
Fravashis or spirits not only of the departed but of
the living also, the service of which continues and
increases henceforward in Persian religion. These are
invented deities and have a shadowy character ; but
gods of more substance, and more historical reality
also came into view at this point. Zarathustra becomes
a god, the hymns themselves are adored ; the Homa-
offering reappears, Mithra is often coupled with Ahura,
other old gods creep back and are mentioned along
with the moral abstractions, which also increase in
number ; in one passage there arc said to be thirty-
three objects of worship, a number which also occurs
in India.
Organisation of the Heavenly Beingfs. — With all
this multiplication there is, as we shall see, no com-
promise of the supreme claims of Ahura. In some of
the hymns, all beings, all attributes, all places, and all
times of a sacred nature are heaped indiscriminately
together, in interminable catalogues. But this apparent
confusion is corrected by a remarkable tendency to
organisation. The Persian religion ultimately came to
have a very simple and very striking theology ; and
that theology was made up by transforming the
abstractions in which the founder dealt, into persons,
and arranging them after the pattern of Oriental
society. In the later Yasnas (liturgies) a figure rises
into view which the Gathas do not mention ; that of
Angra Mainyu, later Ahriman, the Bad Spirit. In
this counterpart of Spenta Mainyu, the Good Spirit
(who is not at first identified with Ahura, but proceeds
CHAP, XXI Persia 399
from him), the demons obtain a personal head, and
the dualism which appears in all nature and all human
society is thus brought to a personal expression.
Ahura and Ahriman confront each other as the good
power and the evil. Both alike had part in making the
world what it is. In every part of the world, and in
all that is felt and done they are at strife. Ahura, to
quote Mr Darmesteter, is all light, truth, goodness,
and knowledge ; Angra Mainyu is all darkness, false-
hood, wickedness, and ignorance. Whatever the good
spirit makes, the evil spirit mars ; he opposes every
creation of Ahura's with a plague of his own, it is he
who mixed poison with plants, smoke with fire, sin
with man, and death with life.
The Attributes of Ahura. — Each of these beings has
his retinue. That of Ahura was formed first ; it con-
sists of his attributes. Even in the hymns the attributes
are regarded as persons, inseparable companions of
Ahura ; appeals are made to one or another of them,
according as the worshipper seeks help from one side
or the other of the divine being. By a process which
frequently occurs in religious thought, they afterwards
come to be more formally arranged and defined ; there
are six of them, and each is charged with a province
of the divine economy. They are as follows :
Vohu Mano (Bahman) Good Mind ; he is the head
and the guardian of the living creation of
Ahura.
Asha Vahista (Ardibehesht), Excellent Holiness ; he
is the genius of fire.
Kshathra Vairya (Shahrevar), Perfect Sovereignty; he
is the lord of metals.
Spenta Armaiti (Spendarmat) divine piety, conceived
as female, the goddess of the earth.
Haurvatat (Khordat) health.
Ameretat (Amerdat) immortality.
The last two are a pair, and have charge conjointly
of waters and of trees,
400 History of Religion part iv
Ahura is himself one of these spirits ; thus there are
seven supreme spirits.
Retinue of Ahriman. — Angra Mainyu on his part
comes to have a corresponding retinue of six daevas, each
being the evil counterpart of one of the good spirits.
Evil Mind, Sickness, and Decay are the names of some
of them. The whole spiritual world is ranged on the side
of the good or of the evil deity. The Izatas (Izeds) or
angels consist of gods of immemorial worship in Iran,
some of whom are the same as gods worshipped in
India ; but the title also applies to gods, heavenly and
earthly, of later creation, so that the class is a very
wide and elastic one. It comprises some beings who
have been reduced by the operation of the new ideas
from the first to the second rank of deities, such as
Verethragna, who corresponds to the Vedic Indra, and
Mithra, the sun-god. These now appear in the same
rank as gods of the newer style, such as Sraosha,
Obedience, and survivals of early superstition, such
as the "Curse of the wise," a very powerful Ized.
Zarathustra himself belongs to this class of deities, a
miscellaneous one indeed. Another class of sacred
beings of world-wide extent is that of the Fravashis
spoken of above. If the good spirits are many and
various, so are the evil. Of these are the great demon-
serpent Azhi who plays a great part in Persian
mythology, as Vrittra does in Indian. Aeshma, later
Asmodeus, may be named ; he is one of the Drvants,
or storm-fiends. Gahi, an unfaithful goddess, has fallen
to a demon of unchastity ; the Pairikas (Peris) are
female tempters ; the Yatu are demons connected
with sorcery.
The firm organisation of these hosts of spiritual
beings, and the sense of a great conflict in which they
are all engaged from the greatest to the least of them,
preserve Mazdeism from the weakness and absurdity
which are apt to creep over religion when the popula-
tion of the upper and the nether regions is unduly
CHAP. XXI Persia
401
multiplied. The faithful never forget Ahura in favour
of the minor deities, nor do they forget that morals
and industry are the chief ends of religion, and that
in cultivating these they hasten the coming of the
kingdom. The following is the formula, the "Praise
of Holiness," with which every act of worship begins
in the Yasts ^ (liturgies of the Izeds) :
May Ahura Mazda be rejoiced !
Holiness is the best of all good !
I confess myself a worshipper of Mazda, a follower of Zarathustra,
one who hates the daevas and obeys the laws of Ahura.
Ancient Testimonies to the Persian Relig-ion.— It is
at this stage, while it is still in a state of vigour, that we
hear of the Persian religion from various quarters in
ancient records. The chapters in the latter half of
Isaiah, which so vigorously denounce idolatry, hail the
approach of Cyrus towards Babylon, and claim unity of
religion between him and the Jews (Isaiah xliv. 28 sq^.
He is the shepherd who is to lead Jehovah's people
back to their own land, and to cause their temple to
be rebuilt. And this claim that the Jewish and the
Persian religions were the same, that the Jews and the
Persians were alike worshippers of the one true God,
while all the surrounding nations were polytheists and
idolaters, was admitted on the side of Persia. After
his conquest of Babylon, Cyrus at once permitted the
exiles to return to their own land. The Persian mon-
archs of the following century, Darius and Artaxerxes,
continued to take a friendly interest in the worship of
Jehovah, whom they apparently regarded as a form of
their own god, "the God of heaven," Hormazd (Ezra
vii. 21). They accordingly took measures for the
rebuilding of the temple at Jerusalem, and for the
introduction there of the new religious constitution
which had been prepared at Babylon. This could not
have happened if the religion of the Persian kings had
* S. B. E. vol. xxiii.
2 C
402 History of Religion part iv
not been a pure service of one god,^ and the other
information we have on the subject shows that the
Mazdeism of Persia at this period was a very elevated
form of the religion. The inscriptions of Darius do
not mention the spread of the worships of Mitra and
Anahita, which, however, make their appearance in the
later inscriptions of Artaxerxes ; in none of them is
Ahriman spoken of. This, of course, does not prove
that he was not believed in ; when the Jewish prophet
proclaims that Jehovah makes both light and darkness,
that he both wounds and heals, there may be a reference
to Persian dualism. Yet Mazdeism was capable of
appearing, and did appear to the foreigner, as a lofty
worship of a god of light and goodness. The same
impression is produced by the descriptions of the Greek
writers. Herodotus (i. 131, 132) writes as follows; he
is a contemporary of Ezra : " The following statements
as to the customs of the Persians is to be relied on.
They do not fashion images of the gods, nor build
temples, nor altars — they consider it wrong to do so,
and count it a proof of folly ; their reason for this
being, as I think, that they do not believe the gods
to be beings of the same nature with men as the
Greeks do. They are accustomed to offer sacrifices
to Zeus on the summits of mountains ; they call the
whole circle of heaven Zeus. They sacrifice also to
the sun, and the moon, and the earth, and to fire, and
to water, and to the winds. These are the ancient
parts of their ritual, but they have added the worship
of the Queen of heaven. Aphrodite ; it was from the
Assyrians and the Arabs that they acquired this. The
Assyrian name for Aphrodite is Mylitta, the Arabs call
her Alilat, the Persians, Anahita.^ Such being their
gods the Persians sacrifice to them on this wise. They
^ These two religions, Kuenen says, were more like each other than any
other two religions of antiquity. — Religion of Israel, iii. 33.
^ Herodotus says Mitra ; but this is a mistake, whether of the father of
history or of a transcriber.
CHAP. XXI Persia 403
have no altar, and do not use fire in sacrifice, nor do
they have libations nor flutes, nor wreaths nor barley.
He who wishes to sacrifice takes his victim to a clean
spot and there calls on the deity, his turban wreathed,
as a rule, with myrtle. He does not think of praying
for benefits for himself individually in connection with
his sacrifice ; he prays for the welfare of the Persian
people and king; he himself is one of the Persian
people. He then cuts up the victim, boils the pieces
and spreads them out on the softest grass he can find
— if possible, on clover. This done, one of the Magians
who has come to assist, sings a theogony,i as they call
the accompanying hymn ; no sacrifice is allowed to be
offered without one of the Magi being present. After
a short pause the sacrificer takes up the pieces of flesh
and does with them whatever he likes."
In other passages Herodotus tells us of the extreme
sanctity attributed by the Persians to waters, to fire, and
to the sun. He also tells us that they regarded lying as
the worst possible offence, and next to it falling into
debt, since the debtor is tempted to tell lies.
Plutarch writes as follows, quoting from an earlier
Greek writer of the third century B.C.: " Zoroaster the
Magician,^ who was 5000 years before the war of Troy,
named the good god Oromazes and the other Arimonius
. . . Oromazes is engendered of the clearest and purest
light, Arimonius of deep darkness ; and they war one
upon another. The former of these created six other
gods (here follow the Amshaspands), but the latter
produceth as many other in number, of adverse opera-
tion to the former. . . . There will come a time when
this Arimonius, who brings into the world plague and
famine, shall of necessity be rooted out and utterly
destroyed for ever . . . then shall men be all in happy
estate, they shall need no more food, nor cast any
shadow from them ; and that god who hath effected
^ One of the Yashts in praise of the particular deity.
• Holland's translation.
404 History of Religion part iv
all this shall repose himself for a time, and rest in
quiet."
The Vendidad: Laws of Purity. — These extracts
show the growth of certain ideas which we have not
noticed before. The dualism is being worked out more
in detail, other gods are coming in, and the doctrine
of the sanctity of the elements has made its appearance.
That doctrine is the basis of a new set of ideas and
practices which we have now to consider, those namely
which are contained in the Vendidad, one of the later
works of the Persian canon. To pass from the Gathas
to the Vendidad is like passing from Isaiah to Leviticus,
and the laws of purity of Persian religion bear a strong
analogy to those of Judaism. The Vendidad ^ is com-
posed principally of laws and rules designed to direct
the faithful in the great task of maintaining their ritual
purity. The whole of life is dominated in this work by
the ideas of purity and defilement ; the great business
of life is to avoid impurity, and when it is contracted
to remove it in the correct manner as quickly as possible.
Purity here is not primarily sanitary or even moral ;
though such considerations were no doubt indirectly
present Impure is what belongs to the bad spirit,
whether because he created it, as he did certain
noxious animals, or because he has established a hold
on it as he does on men at death. A man is impure,
not because he has exposed himself to the infection
of disease, not because he has contracted a stain on his
conscience, but because he has touched something of
which a Daeva has possession, and so has come under
the influence of that Daeva. Purification, therefore, and
the act of healing consist of exorcisms of various kinds.
This notion of purity plays a great part in other old
religions also ; it is here that we see its original meaning
most clearly. Another great feature of the doctrine
of purity in the Vendidad is that the elements, fire,
earth, and water, are holy, and to defile them in any
» S. B. E. vol. iv.
CHAP. XXI Persia 405
way is the most grievous of sins. As everything which
leaves the body is unclean, a man must not blow up
a fire with his breath, and bathing with a view to clean-
liness is not to be thought of. The disposal of the
dead was a matter of immense difficulty, since corpses,
being unclean, could be committed neither to Fire nor
to the Earth. They are ordered to be exposed naked
on a building constructed for that purpose on high
ground, so that birds of prey may devour them ; and
a great part of the Vendidad is taken up with directions
for purification, after a death has taken place, of the
persons who were in the house, of the house itself,
of those who carried the corpse, and of the road they
travelled, etc.
How this Doctrine Entered Mazdeism. — This system
was not in force in the time of Darius and Artaxerxes
(when the dead were buried or, as in the case of Croesus,
burned) though the ideas were appearing at that period
on which it is founded ; and it is plain that it has
no necessary or vital connection with the religion of
Zarathustra. But in later Mazdeism there are many
such importations. This religion, in its course from
east to west, came in contact with beliefs and usages
with which, though foreign to its own nature, it yet
came to terms. Mazdeism is not originally a markedly
priestly religion ; it is thought that it became so when
planted in Media. No doubt there were germs in the
early Iranian religion of a priestly system. Zarathustra
himself was a priest and was favourable to due religious
observances. But it is quite contrary to his spirit that
life should be governed entirely by ritual law. It was
in Media that this came to be the case. The name of
Magi, originally perhaps that of a tribe, became in Media
the name of the priesthood, and so furnished an addi-
tional title for Mazdeism. It is to this stage of the
religion that the priestly legislation of the Vendidad,
with all its puritanical regulation of life, is to be ascribed.
(The practice of exposing the bodies of the dead to be
4o6 History of Religion part iv
devoured by birds of prey is probably of Scythian
origin.) In this period also, remote from the origin of
the religion, we find a new view of Zarathustra himself
and of his revelation. In the earlier sources Zarathustra
composes his hymns in a natural manner ; he is not
an absolute lawgiver, but depends on princes for the
carrying out of his views. In the later works the
revelation takes place in a series of private interviews
between Ahura and Zarathustra ; the prophet puts
questions to the god, and the god dictates in reply
sentences which are at once promulgated as sacred
laws. Mazdeism, like other religions, has its wooden
age, its verbal inspiration, and its priestly code.
To trace the lines by which the influence of the
religion of Persia asserted itself in the wider world
would be a large enterprise : only a few indications can
be given here. One great service which that religion
did to the world was undoubtedly that it had sympathy
with the Jews, and enabled Jewish monotheism to take
a fresh start on its way to become a religion for
mankind. Mazdeism itself had a tinge of universalism ;
Zarathustra expected his religion to spread beyond his
own land, and it did spread over all the provinces of Iran.
It never became a world-religion, but it might have done
so had it not become swathed and choked in Magism
or had any new movement arisen in it to assert the
supremacy of its purely human over its artificial elements.
But Ahura himself, perhaps, was too abstract and
philosophic a god to inspire missionary ardour ; it
needed a being more firmly rooted in history, a god who
had done more to prove the energy and intensity of
his nature, and, further, a god more undoubtedly omni-
potent than Ahura, to establish a universal rule.
The interesting inquiry remains, how far the Jewish
religion was modified by its contact with the Persian.
The laws of purity in the Jewish priestly code find
a close parallel in the Vendidad ; but with the Israelites
the notion of religious purity existed, and was worked
CHAP. XXI
Persia 407
out in considerable detail, as we see from Deuteronomy,
before the exile, and therefore long before the period of
the Vendidad. The belief in the resurrection, found
among the Jews after the exile, and not before it, has
been maintained by many to be a loan from Persia,
where the belief in future reward and punishment was
a settled thing from the time of Zarathustra. But the
Jews do not appear to have grasped this belief all at
once or fully formed. They arrived at it gradually,
many Old Testament scholars affirm, and by spiritual
inferences timidly put forth at first, from their own
religious consciousness. A belief which the Jewish
religion was capable of producing of itself need not,
without clearer evidence than we possess, be regarded
as borrowed. We are not on much surer ground when
we come to ask whether the angels and demons of
Judaism are connected with those of Persia. This
belief also arises naturally in Judaism, where God came
to be thought of as very high and very inaccessible, and
intermediate beings were therefore needed. Some of
the figures of the Jewish spirit-world are, no doubt, due
to Persia ; the Ashmodeus of the book of Tobit is a
Persian figure. Later Judaism is like Parsism in arrang-
ing the heavenly beings in a hierarchy, and assigning
to the chief angels special functions in the administra-
tion of God's kingdom, and still more so when the
upper hierarchy is confronted by a lower one with a
great adversary and father of lies at its head. But this
takes place long after the Persian contact.
The Persian deities had, as a rule, too little legend to
enable them to be received in other countries. Ahura
does not travel. Anaitis is thought to have passed
into Greece, changing her name to Aphrodite, but also
to the severer Artemis ; but she is perhaps not original
in Persia. The Persian god best known in other lands
was Mithra, the sun-god and god of wisdom. He was
a favourite with the Roman armies in the early empire,
and representations of him as a hero in the act of
4o8 History of Religion part iv
slaying a bull in a cave have been found in many lands.
There were also mysteries connected with him, in which
the candidates had to pass through a great series of
trials and hardships. Persia influenced Europe and
. the west of Asia at the same period in another way.
Manicheism, a system which was one of the three great
universal religions of that time, and had a worship and
a priesthood and a sacred literature of its own, was
founded by a native of Persia. He laboured at a
distance from his own country, and the doctrines
he propounded came more from Chaldea than from
Persia, and consisted of great histories, like those of
the Gnostics, of the doings and sufferings of cosmic
and other persons ; a great struggle between the powers
of light and those of darkness was one of its principal
features. The worship of this church was spiritual ;
its morals were in theory of the purest and most ascetic
kind, being founded on a principle of dualism in the
material world, and requiring much self-denial and long
fasts. The higher virtue of the system was not, how-
ever, required of the ordinary member. Later Parsism,
both in Iran and in India, has shown a disposition to
cast off dualism, and to become, both philosophically
and practically, a monistic system.
Books Recommended
.S". B. E. vols, iv.jxxiii. (Darmesteter) ; xxxi. (Mills). The ZendavejiOt
vols, v., xviii., xxiv., xxxvii., xlvii. Pahlavi Texts ''E. W. West).
The Histories of Antiquity of Duncker, Maspero, and Zd. Meyer.
Haug's Essays on the Sacred Language, Writings, and Religion of the
Par sis. Second Edition, 1878.
F. Windischmann, Zoroastr. Studien, 1863.
Geldner, "Zoroaster," in Encyclopedia Briiannica', " Zoroastrianism,"
in Encyclopcedia Bibl.
Mills, A Study of the Five Zaralhusirian Gaihas^ \%'ji-^\,
Lehmann, in De la Saussaye.
Dadhabai Naoroji, The Pa/see Religion.
On Mithraism, Dieterich Eine Mithras-liturgit
Cumont, The Mysteries of Mithra, 1903.
PART V
UNIVERSAL RELIGION"
CHAPTER XXII
CHRISTIANITY
The writer is aware that in offering a chapter on
Christianity at the conclusion of this work, he attempts
a dif^cult task. If treated at all, Christianity must be
dealt with in the same way as the other religions, and
no assumptions must be made for it which were not
made for them. And a view of our own religion
written, not from the standpoint of the faith and love
we feel towards it but of scientific accuracy, must
appear to many pious Christians to be cold and meagre.
But, on the other hand, Christianity is the key of the
arch we have been building, the consummating member
of the development we have sought to trace, and to
withhold any estimate of its character would be to
leave our work most imperfect. It seems better, there-
fore, that some hints at least should be offered on this
part of the subject. Christianity cannot indeed be
dealt with in the same proportion as the other religions ;
that would far exceed our space. But some views are
offered regarding its essential nature, which the writer
believes to be so firmly founded in fact that even those
who are not Christians cannot deny them, and thus
to afford a valid criterion for the comparison of Chris-
tianity with other faiths.
In the chapter on the religion of Israel we saw
how the prophets before and during the exile began to
cherish the idea of a new relation between God and
411
412 History of Religion party
man, which would not depend on sacrifice nor be con-
fined to Israel. God, they declared, was preparing a
new age, in which he would receive man to more
intimate communion than before ; and man would be
guided in the right path, not by covenants and laws,
but by the constant inspiration of a present deity.
The new religion would be one which all nations could
share. Jerusalem, the seat of the true faith, would
attract all eyes ; all would turn to her because of the
Lord her God.
But, alas, instead of growing broader to realise its
universal destiny, the religion of Israel grew narrower
after the exile, and seemed to forget the prospects thus
opened up to it. Judaism, though immeasurably en-
riched in its inner consciousness by the teaching of the
prophets, maintained its earlier semi-heathenish forms
of worship, only surrounding them with new stateliness
and new significance ; and clothed itself in a hard shell
of public ritual and personal observance. The Jews
separated themselves rigorously from the world, and
cultivated an exclusive pride ; as if their religion had
been given them for themselves alone, and not for
mankind. Under the Maccabees they displayed the
most heroic courage and tenacity, maintaining their
own beliefs and rites amid the flood of Hellenism which
at one time almost swept them away. That they carried
their nationality unimpaired through this period is one
of the most wonderful achievements of the Jewish race.
In the succeeding period, however, many signs appeared
showing that their religion was losing energy. The rule
of the priests and scribes extended more and more over
the whole of life, tradition and observance grew more
and more extensive, but the moral judgment lost its
elasticity. The sense of the divine presence grew faint,
and multitudes of spirits filled the air instead, oppres-
sing human life with a sense of vague anxiety. As
political independence was lost, the people became less
happy and more easily excited. But while formalism
CHAP. XXII Christianity 413
held increasing sway over their actions, imagination
was free, and surrounded both the past history of Israel
and its future triumphs with manifold embellishments.
In such a condition was the religion of the Jews
when Jesus appeared in Palestine and created a new
order of things. Christianity was at first a movement
within Judaism. Like all the religions which trace
their history to personal founders, it grew from very
small beginnings ; but its doctrine was of such a
nature, that if circumstances favoured, it could not
fail to spread beyond Judaism, to men of other lands
and other tongues.
The doctrine consisted primarily in a declaration
that that great religious consummation, the kingdom
of God, which the prophets had foretold, which was
regarded by the fellow-countrymen of Jesus as a far-
off hope, and which had just been heralded by John
the Baptist as being immediately at hand, had actually
taken place. The perfect state was announced to
have arrived, and to be a thing not of the future but
of the present. The long-expected intercourse of God
and man on new terms of perfect agreement and
sympathy, had come into operation ; any one who
chose could assure himself of the fact. The title by
which Jesus described the intimate relationship of man
and God which he announced, sufficiently shows its
character. God is the Father in heaven ; men are
his children, and all that men have to do is to realise
that this is so, to enter the circle and begin to live
with God on such terms. The great God seeks to
have every one living with him as his child ; and
religion is no more, no less, than this communion.
Father and child dwell together in perfect love and
confidence ; no outward regulations are needed for
their intercourse, no bargains, no traditions, no ritual,
no pilgrimage, no sacrifice. The intercourse can be
carried on by any one, anywhere. It is not a matter
of apparatus, but a purely moral affair, an affair of
414 History of Religion part v
love. The Father knows all about the child, is able
to give him all he needs, even before he asks it ; is
willing to forgive his sins when he repents of them ;
is anxious above all to reinforce his efforts after good-
ness. The child knows that the Father is always
near him, carries every need and wish to him in
prayer, even though knowing that he is aware of
them beforehand ; regards all that happens, either
good or ill, as sent by him for the best ends, and
seeks in every case to know his will and to submit
to it sweetly, and execute it faithfully.
Nothing could be simpler, or deeper, or broader.
Religion is here presented free from all local or
accidental or obscuring elements ; religion itself is
here revealed. Accepted in this form, it does for
man all that it can. The relation between God and
man is made purely moral ; the link is not that of
race, nor does it consist in anything external. The
individual — every individual who will pause to hear —
is assured that there exists between God and him a
natural sympathy, and is urged to allow that sympathy
to have its way. It is easy to see what effect such
a belief must have. The individual, bidden to seek
the principle of union with God not in any external
circumstance or arrangement, but in his own heart,
becomes conscious of an inner freedom from all artificial
restraints. He finds in his own heart the secret of
happiness, and is raised above all fears and irritations ;
and hence the forces of his nature are encouraged to
unfold themselves freely. He sees clearly what as a
human person he is called to be and to do, and feels
a new energy to realise his ideals. As God has come
down to him, he is lifted up to God ; a divine power
has entered his life, which is able to do all things in
him and for him.
It may be said that what we have described are
the effects of religious inspiration generally, and may
take place in connection with any faith. But the
CHAP, xxii Christianity 415
divine impulse communicated to mankind in Christianity
differs from that of any other religion in two important
respects. In the first place, the God who here enters
into union with man possesses full reality and a character
of the utmost energy. It is Jehovah with whom we
have to do here, changed, indeed, but still the same ;
a God of real and irresistible power, on whom specula-
tion has not laid its weakening hand. The union of
man with God is not secured by making God abstract
and vague, nor is his infinite kindness and forgivingness
purchased at the expense of his intensity and awfulness.
With Jesus, God is still the power who has actual
control over everything that goes on, and who is able
to do even what appears to be most impossible. He
is a God of strict justice and holiness; though he is
so kind, his judgments have not ceased, but are still
impending over guilty men and a guilty people. It
is he who can cast both soul and body into hell. It
is a God of such energy, such zeal, who yet offers
himself as the willing benefactor and defender, and
the loving guide and helper of the humblest of his
human creatures. In the second place, the terms of
the union here formed between God and man are
such as can be found nowhere else. The deity inspires
man not to any particular kind of acts, not to sacrifices,
nor to withdrawal from the world, but inspires him
simply to realise himself. Man is assured of the
sympathy of this great God, and is then left in freedom
as to the mode in which he should serve him. No
rules are prescribed ; human life is not pressed into
an artificial mould, as is the case in so many great
religions ; no preference is accorded to any one pursuit
over others. This religion is not a yoke to coerce
men and to make them less, but an inspiration capable
of entering into every kind of life, and of making men
greater and better in whatever occupation. Even
religious duties are left to form themselves naturally;
all that is insisted on is that the child shall have
4 1 6 History of Religion part v
living and real intercourse with the Father. Prayer
is necessary, and so is the practice of good works ;
the child must keep in sympathy with the Father
by doing as he does. Further than this, the forms
of the religious life are not prescribed. With regard
to morals, it is the same. The moral life is to build
itself up freely from within ; goodness is not to be a
matter of rule, but the spontaneous and happy develop-
ment of a principle which lives and speaks deep in
the centre of the heart. Jesus is not a lawgiver, save
in a metaphorical sense : the law which he sets up is
nothing more than that which every man, when he turns
away from all that is artificial, can find in his own breast.
It is one feature of the spontaneity and spirituality
of the religion of Jesus, that it has no constitution.
Jesus regarded himself as the founder not of a new
religion, but only of an inner circle of more devoted
believers inside the old religion of his country ; he
did not therefore feel called to draw up rules for a
new faith, and the result of this is that the mechanism
of the religion is of later growth. The authority of
the founder can be appealed to for a direct and con-
stant intercourse with God as of a child with his
father, and for the conduct of men towards each other,
which such intercourse with God necessarily implies,
but for hardly anything more. Here, as in no other
historical religion, man is free.
The religion of Jesus, therefore, is one of love alone.
The divine nature consists in love, and the impulse
which religion communicates, is simply that which
proceeds from being loved and loving. And a religion
of love finds the way, as no other can, to make man
free, to unseal his energies, and to lead him upwards
to the best life. The appearance of such a religion
forms the most momentous epoch of human history.
He who brought it forward must occupy a unique
position in the estimation of mankind. It can never
be superseded.
CHAP, xxii Christianity 417
It is no doubt the case that the doctrine of Jesus was
not in all respects new. The ideas of the prophets live
again in him ; his followers have always found many
of the Jewish Psalms to be perfectly suited to their
experience. Jesus lived in the faith of Israel, and con-
sidered that he had come only to make that faith better
understood, and to free it from improper accretions.
What was new was his own person. His great work
was that he embodied his teaching in a life which
expressed it perfectly. It is far short of the truth to
say that there was no inconsistency between what he
taught and his own conduct. His life is a demonstra-
tion, in every detail, of the effects of his religion ; all
flows with the utmost simplicity, and even as a matter
of necessity, out of the truth he taught. What he
preached was, in fact, himself; he was himself living
in the kingdom of God, to which he called others to
come ; he knew in his own experience what it was to
live as a child with the Father in heaven, and to view
all persons, all things, all duties, in the light of that
intercourse. All his acts and words flowed from the
same spring in his own inner experience. In no other
way could his life shape itself than as it did, and he
saw with perfect clearness what men must be, and on
what terms they must live together when God and they
were as Father and children to each other. What he
thus knew he lived, as if no laws but those of the
kingdom of heaven had any authority for him, and so
he presented to the world that living embodiment
of the true religion, which has been the main strength
of Christianity, Jesus announces a new union of God
with man, a union in which he himself is the first to
rejoice, but which all may share along with him ; and
hence his person counts for more in his religion than
that of any other religious founder in his, and neces-
sarily becomes an object of faith to all who enter the
communion. The doctrine does not produce its specific
effect apart from the person of Jesus, Because in him
2 P
41 8 History of Religion part v
alone they know the truth which brings them peace, his
followers regard him, in a way which has no parallel
in any other religion, as their Saviour.
But this name is given to him by his followers, as it is
claimed by himself, for another reason also. Jesus was
more than a teacher. He felt a power to be present in
him which was able to supply all needs and to comfort
all sorrows ; he did not shrink from summoning all who
were weary and heavy laden to come to him, nor from
undertaking to give them rest. Keenly alive to the
sufferings of others, and able to perceive even those
sufferings of which they were not themselves conscious,
he felt it to be his mission to deal with the sadder side
of human life ; he was a physician sent to the sick, a
shepherd seeking the lost sheep. It was among the
poor and the sick, and even among the outcasts of
society, in whom the sense of need was strongest, that
he felt himself most at home and most able to fulfil
his calling. Thus the motive of compassion enters
strongly into all he said and did : but the compassion
is not hopeless in this case as in the similar case of
Gautama (pp. 357, 364), nor is the cure recommended
for the ills of humanity that of withdrawal from man-
kind or of forgetful ness. Here there is a belief in God.
The compassion from which the religion flows is not as
in the case of Gautama, that of a preacher who has
ceased to trust in any heavenly power ; it is announced
as existing first of all in the heart of God Himself.
God can do all things, and in his yearning pity for his
children has sent his representative to assure them of
his sympathy and to comfort them in their sorrows.
With Jesus therefore no evil is so great as not to admit
of a positive cure ; he feels the remedy of all human
ills to be present in his own heart, and so he appears
as the Messiah, not such a Messiah as his countrymen
looked for, but as the true Messiah, in whom all human
wants are met, and all human hopes fulfilled. The cure
which he announces for all ills consists in devotion to
CHAP. XXII Christianity 419
the will of the Father in heaven. To give oneself
unreservedly to the labour of realising the purposes of
the heavenly Father in one's own heart and in the
world, is to rise above all cares and sorrows; enthusiasm
in the Father's service is the sovereign remedy. To
one who believes in the Father, and seeks to live as
his child, no despair is possible. To be engaged in his
business is at all times the highest happiness, and his
kingdom is assuredly coming, though man has still the
privilege of working for it, — the kingdom in which all
darkness and evil will be put away.
We have indicated the chief points which in a scientific
comparison of Christianity with other religions appear
to constitute its distinctive character ; and we have
sought to make our statement such as the reasonable
adherent of other religions will feel to be warranted.
The points are these. Christianity is a religion of
freedom, it is a system of inner inspiration more than
of external law or system, it is embodied in the living
person of its founder, in which alone it can be truly
seen ; and the founder is one who is living himself in
the relation to God to which he calls men to come, and
feels himself called and sent to be the Saviour of men.
It is impossible in this work to treat Christianity on
the same scale as the other religions ; but the question
of its universalism must necessarily receive attention.
Jesus himself did not expressly say that his religion was
for all men. It was his immediate aim to bring about
the renewal of the faith of his countrymen, and to give
it a more spiritual character ; and some of his followers
considered that he had aimed at nothing more than
this. But he formed a circle of disciples and adherents,
which afterwards came to be the Christian Church, and
he attached no ritual condition whatever to member-
ship in that community. Nay, more; by his repudia-
tion of the Jewish system of tradition he showed that
the Jewish laws of ritual purity were not binding upon
his disciples, and the further inference could readily be
420 History of Religion part v
drawn, that one could enter the Kingdom without being
a Jew at all. The strong missionary impulse of the
infant religion brought it very early in contact with
Gentile life, and the question soon arose, whether those
who refused to become Jews could yet claim a share in
the Messiah. It was the task of the Apostle Paul to
work out the theory of the universalism of Christianity,
and after some conflict the principle was recognised that
in the Church all racial differences disappear; "in Christ
there is neither Jew nor Greek." This controversy once
settled — and a io."^ years sufficed to settle it — the new
religion was free to spread in all directions. It spread
rapidly; the gospel was very simple and imposed no
burdensome conditions, and it soon proved itself to be
capable of striking root in any country. The Apostle
Paul was the first great theologian of the Church ; but
his doctrine, as will happen in such a case, does not in
all points spring out of the nature of the religion itself.
The Pauline theology is an attempt to reconcile the
facts of Christianity and especially that great stumbling-
block to the Jews, the death of the Messiah, with the
requirements of Jewish thought. Instead of seeing in
the death of Christ, as the older apostles at first did,
a perplexing enigma, St. Paul saw in it the principal
manifestation of the compassion of the Saviour, and
the great purpose for which he had come into the
world. He concentrated attention on Christ's death
and made the cross rather than the doctrine of the
Messiah the burden of his teaching. To understand
Paul we must distinguish between his religion and his
theology. His religious position is essentially the same
as that of Jesus himself; with him, too, the new religion
is that of father and child, and of the consequences
which inevitably flow from such a union. But the
movement of thought which began at the moment of
the crucifixion, the concentration of Christian faith and
love on the person of the Saviour, was now complete.
The figure of the Crucified with its powerful tragic
CHAP. XXII Christianity 421
attraction, and with its deep lessons of conquest by
self-surrender, of life by dying, remained from St. Paul
onwards, in the centre of the faith.
The world of the early centuries was in great need
of a religion, and Christianity supplied the place which
was vacant. Brought in contact, in the great ocean
of the Roman Empire where all currents met, with
religions and philosophies of every kind, it proved best
suited to the task of supplying an inspiration for life,
uniting together different classes of men and schools
of thought. But in the wide arena of the Empire it
received as well as gave, and in its encounters with
strange rites and doctrines it also put on many a
strange aspect. It became the heir of the thoughts
and aspirations of a hundred empires ; all the pious
sentiments that flowed together from every quarter of
the world helped to enrich its doctrine, and to make
it the great reservoir it is of all the tendencies and
views, even those most contrary to each other, which
are connected with religion. Its institutions are of
diverse origin. From the Jews it received its earliest
Bible, for the Christians had at first no sacred books
but those of the old covenant, and its weekly festival,
though the day was changed. Its God was the God
of the Old Testament, and its Saviour was the Messiah
of Jewish prophecy, so that it was a continuation of the
Jewish religion, and the attempts which were made by
early Gnostics to dissolve this tie were soon forgotten.
From Greece it received much. The world it had
to conquer was Greek, and the conquest could only
take place by an accommodation to Greek thought
and to Greek ways. In the end of chapter xvi. we
spoke of the second Greek religion which arose under
the influence of philosophy, and found its way wherever
Greek culture spread. In this great movement, Chris-
tianity found a preparation for its coming in the Greek
world, without which its spread must have been much
more doubtful. In the Graeco-Roman religion the
42 2 History of Religion part v
advances which appear in Christianity are already pre-
figured. Thought has been busy in building up a
great doctrine of God, such a God as human reason
can arrive at, a Being infinitely wise and good, who
is the first cause and the hidden ground of all things,
the sum of all wisdom, beauty, and goodness, and in
whom all men alike may trust. Greek thought also
found much occupation in the attempt to reach a true
account of man's moral nature and destiny. Both in
theory and in practice many an attempt was made to
build up the ideal life of man, and thus many minds
were prepared for a religion which places the riches of
the inner life above all others. The Greek philosopher's
school was a semi-religious union, the central point of
which was, as is the case with Christianity also, not
outward sacrifice but mental activity. It is not wonder-
ful therefore if Christian institutions were assimilated
to some extent to the Greek schools. It has recently
been shown that the celebration of the Eucharist came
very early to bear a close resemblance to that of a
Greek mystery, and that there is an unbroken line
of connection between the discourse of the Greek
philosopher and the Christian sermon. In some of
the Greek schools pastoral visitation was practised,
and the preacher kept up an oversight of the moral
conduct of his adherents. While Christianity certainly
had vigour enough to shape its own institutions, and
may even be seen to be doing so in some of the books
of the New Testament, the agreement between Greek
and Christian practices amounts to something more
than coincidence.
It was towards the end of the second century that
the alliance between Christianity and the Greek world
was finally ratified. Till then belief and practice were
determined mainly by custom and tradition ; but now
these were to give way to definite laws and settled
institutions. There came to full development, about
the period we have mentioned, a highly-organised
CHAP. XXII Christianity 423
system of church government, a canon of sacred books
of Christian origin, and a creed in which the beliefs
of Christians were drawn together in one statement.
It cannot be denied that the elaborate external forms
with which the religion of Jesus was thus invested
went far to change its spirit also. But this happens
to every religion which reaches the stage of organising
itself in order to continue in the world and to rule per-
manently in human thought and in human society. No
external forms can adequately express living religious
ideas ; and yet there must be external forms in order
that religious ideas may be perpetuated. The ministers
of the new truth inevitably rise in dignity till they
grow into a hierarchy. That truth inevitably seeks
to establish itself as scientifically true, and with the
aid of the ruling philosophical tendency of the day
clothes itself in a view of the universe and in a creed.
Thus the essence of Christianity came to consist not
in loving the Master and following him in faith and
love, but in upholding the authority of the Church,
receiving her sacraments, and believing various meta-
physical and transcendental statements. Here also
a hard shell is formed round the spiritual kernel of
the religion which, if it is fitted to preserve the latter
in rude and stormy times, is also fitted to confuse and
also apt to conceal it.
In each of the countries to which it came, Christianity
adopted what it could of the religion formerly existing
there. The old religions of these lands were not all
alike, and hence it came to pass that as the language
of Rome was transformed in various ways, and passed
into the different yet cognate tongues of the Romance
nations, so the religion of the Empire, combining
with various forms of heathenism, passed into several
national religions, the differences of which are at
least as conspicuous as their similarity. In Italy
Christianity appears to be a system of local deities,
each village worshipping its own Madonna or saint.
424 History of Religion part v
In Holland worship consists almost entirely of preach-
ing. In other countries the ritual and the intellectual
elements of religion are blended in varying proportions ;
and the former heathenism of each land is also to be
traced in many a popular observance and belief So
great is the variety of the religions of Europe, not to
mention that of the negroes or the Shakers of America,
that many have doubted whether they ought all to be
considered as branches of one faith, or whether they
would not more fitly be regarded as so many national
religions which have all alike connected themselves
with Christianity. Against this there is to be urged
in the first place that as a matter of history they are
all undoubtedly offshoots of the religion of Jesus. It
may also be urged that wherever the name of Jesus
is named, his ideas must to some extent be present,
however much they are obscured and prevented from
operating by lower modes of view. The Christianity
of no country ought to be judged by the attitude of
its most ignorant or even of its average adherents ;
and in every land where Christianity prevails, an
influence connected with religion is at work, which
makes for the emancipation and elevation of the human
person, and for the awakening of the manifold energies
of human nature. This, as we saw, is the immediate
and native tendency of the religion of Jesus ; it opens
the prison doors to them that are bound ; it com-
municates by its inner encouragement an energy which
makes the infirm forget their weaknesses, it fills the
heart with hope and opens up new views of what man
can do and can become. It is this that makes it the
one truly universal religion. Islam, it is true, has also
proved its power to live in many lands, and Buddhism
has spread over half of Asia. But Buddhism is not a
full religion, it does not tend to action but to passivity,
and affords no help to progress. Islam, on the other
hand, is a yoke rather than an inspiration ; it is
inwardly hostile to freedom, and is incapable of aiding
CHAP, xxii Christianity 425
in higher moral development. Christianity has a
message to which men become always more willing
to respond as they rise in the scale of civilisation ; it
has proved its power to enter into the lives of various
nations, and to adapt itself to their circumstances
and guide their aspirations without humiliating them.
A religion which identifies itself, as Christianity does,
with the cause of freedom in every land, and tends to
unite all men in one great brotherhood under the
loving God who is the Father of all alike, is surely
the desire of all nations, and is destined to be the
faith of all mankind.
A bibliography of the recent study of Christianity would be far too
extensive for this book. An excellent statement on the subject will be
found at the hands of Professor Sanday in the Oxford Ftoceediti^a, vol. a.
p. 263, sqq.
CHAPTER XXIir
CONCLUSION
It will not be expected that the result of the great
movement traced in the chapters of this work can be
summed up in a few words. We set out with a defini-
tion of our subject which we said could only be fully
verified after religion had accomplished its growth and
had fully unfolded its nature. We also set out with
the assumption that all the religion of the world is
one, and that it exhibits a development which is in
the main continuous, from the most elementary to
the highest stages. We shall not now attempt to
justify by argument that definition or that assumption.
The history which we have sought to place before
the reader must itself be the proof of them. All that
can be done in bringing this work to a close is to
point out one great line of development, which may
be recognised more or less distinctly in the growth
of each religion, and may therefore be held to be
characteristic of religion as a whole. No doubt the
growth of religion, as of other human activities, has
many sides and aspects, but perhaps it may be possible
to specify the central line of growth in which the
explanation of all the subsidiary and parallel forward
movements is to be found.
It was stated in our first chapter that religion is
the expression of human needs with reference to higher
beings who are supposed to be capable of fulfilling
426
CHAP, xxiii Conclusion 427
men's desires, and it was also stated as an inference
from this, that the growth of human needs is the
cause of religious change and progress. If this is
true, then the key to the progress of religion is to
be found in the successive emergence in human experi-
ence of higher and still higher needs. If we can
discover the order in which higher aspirations succes-
sively emerge in the growth of humanity, then we shall
possess the chief clue to the course of religious advance.
Now while there is infinite variety in the needs and
desires of men, every land and each nation having
ideals all its own, we can yet discern, on a broad view
of human progress, an advance from lower to higher
needs which is common to the human race, and manifests
itself in the history of each nation. Three successive
conditions of human life stand out before us as markedly
distinct, and as occurring wherever civilisation continues
to advance. The first is that in which material needs
are all-absorbing ; the second that in which freedom
from material needs has been to some extent attained,
and the highest aspirations are directed to the safety
and advancem.ent of the nation in which men find
themselves united and secure ; and the third is that
in which the individual realises his own value apart
from the state, and develops a personal ideal which is
thenceforward his chief end. To these three stages
of human existence three types of religion correspond,
and the growth of religion consists in the main in
its passage from the lower to the higher of these
stages.
The religion of the tribe belongs to that stage of
man's existence in which his energies are entirely
occupied in the struggle against nature and against
other tribes. The conditions of his life do not allow
his higher faculties to grow, and while he is not
without many glimpses and anticipations of higher
things, his religion, as a whole, is a mass of childish
fancies, and of fixed traditions which he cannot explain,
428 History of Religion part v
but does not venture to criticise or change. His gods
are petty and capricious beings, and his modes of
influencing them, though used with zeal and fervour,
have Httle to do with reason or with taste or with
morality. It is in this kind of religion that magic
of all sorts is at home.
The advance from the religion of the tribe to that
of the nation was briefly described above (p. 81, sqq^.
The leading classes of the state at least having gained
some measure of security and leisure, ideas of a nobler
order spring up in their minds. The service of the great
gods of the state is organised with befitting dignity
and splendour ; the best minds contribute to it all
they can in the way of art, of poetry, of purified
legend, of stately ceremonial. Patriotism and religion
are one, the offices of worship are upheld by the whole
power of the state, and the gods speak with new
authority to the spirit of the worshipper. Now it is
that great religious systems arise, so powerful, so highly
organised, so splendidly adorned, and surrounded with
such venerable traditions, that they seem to be destined
for eternity. The priesthood becomes a very powerful
class, and acquires a personal holiness which marks
out its members as different from other men ; the
sacrifices acquire the character of divine mysteries,
every detail of which, even the most trivial, has a
sacred meaning ; religious books are compiled or
written, which by and by are regarded as inspired,
and as possessing absolute authority. It is to be
observed that the older style of religion is not at
once driven out by the growth of the new, but continues
to flourish beside it and under its shadow. The tribes
of whom the nation is composed still cherish and adore
their own special deities. That older worship is often
thought to bring blessings which the new worship of
the state does not command, and many a piece of
ancient magic, many a practice which has no connection
with the state religion, still goes on, especially among
CHAP. XXIII Conclusion
429
those who are not cultivated enough to appreciate the
nobler faith which has arisen.
This, however, does not keep the national faith from
growing in riches and consistency ; and religion appears,
as this growth proceeds, to have attained the highest
degree of power and authority at which it can possibly
arrive. Commanding as it does all the resources of
the nation, enriched by all that can be brought to it
of material or intellectual riches, placed in a position
of absolute exaltation and inviolableness, to what further
conquests can it still look forward ? Yet when a
national religion appears to be most firmly established,
the forces are most certainly at work which must ere
long lead to a far-reaching change. While the national
worship has been growing up to its highest splendours,
the lives of the citizens have also been growing richer
and deeper, and the individual soul has become aware
of wants and longings which cannot be satisfied in
the national temple. The further progress of religion
is apt to appear as a revolt against the system which
has grown so strong. The individual sets out to seek
a consistent intellectual view, and so figures as a sceptic.
He aims at a higher moral law than that of the priestly
system, and is accused of undermining public morality.
He feels a new call to personal goodness, a new need
for personal atonement with the ideal holiness which
he has learned to apprehend ; and as the public ritual
does not meet these needs, he seeks for new religious
associations and perhaps appears to preach a doctrine
contrary to patriotism, as it is subversive of the
established reh'glon of his country, and to be wilfully
destroying what his countrymen revere, and wilfully
breaking through old ties and obligations. Thus the
individualist stage of religion succeeds the national.
But the individualist stage is also, in part at least,
the universal stage. What the thinking mind and the
pious heart seeks and cannot find in the national
worship, is a religion free as the seeker himself has
430 History of Religion part v
become free, from all that is unreasonable and artificial,
a religion therefore in which every thinking mind and
every pious heart can have a share. What is gained
by individuals in this direction is capable, therefore,
if circumstances favour, of proving an acquisition not
only for the individual reformer or his nation, but for
all men. But as the rise of national religion does
not bring to an end the ruder worships of the tribes,
which still go on beside it, so neither does the rise
of individualism, even in its purest form, bring to an
end the national worship. In the long run this may
follow, but it does not take place at once. All three
forms of religion go on together ; the religion of magic,
that of stately public sacrifices and ceremonials, and
that of intellectual effort and pious meditation and
prayer. Each no doubt influences to some extent the
others, and is influenced by them in turn.
The movement thus indicated from tribal to national,
and from national to individual and to universal religion,
is the central development of religion, and all the
minor developments which might be traced, as that
of sacrifice from rude to spiritual forms, of the functions
of the sacred class, of the morality dictated by religion
at its various stages, or of the literature connected with
piety, may be explained by reference to this one. This
movement has taken place in every nation ; we have
seen something of it in each of our chapters. In some
nations it has been early arrested, so that no important
contribution has there been brought to the general
religion of mankind, in others it has run its full course,
and like a great river has arrived at the ocean at last,
to mingle its waters with those of other mighty streams.
The story of the growth of the world's religion has
therefore to be told in a number of parallel narratives,
each dealing with the experience of a separate nation.
There can scarcely be any general history of the religion
of the world, in addition to those special histories.
Some epochs, it is true, stand out as having witnessed
CHAP. XXIII Conclusion 431
simultaneous religious movements in many lands, as
if the mind of the whole human race had then been
passing through the same crisis of thought. The sixth
century B.C. is the age of Confucius and of Laotsze
in China, of Gautama in India, of Jeremiah, Ezekiel
and the Unknown Prophet of the Exile, of Pythagoras,
Heraclitus, and Xenophanes, and also of the rise into
prominence of the Greek mysteries. Widely different
as the movements are which thus took place con-
temporaneously in these lands, we may discern in all
of them alike the tendency to plant religion in the
mind and heart, and to create a deeper union than
the old external one, a union based on common
intellectual effort and spiritual sympathy. The period
immediately before and after the Christian era might
also appear to be one in which the mind of the world
as a whole made a great step forward. The union of
many nations under the sway of Rome, and the
universal diffusion of the Greek language as a means
of general communication, made men conscious at
this time as they had never been before, of the unity
of mankind in spite of all differences of race and
speech. A philosophy also was popular at this time
which was cosmopolitan in its character, and occupied
itself with the great problems, which are the same
for all, of man's relation to the gods and of his moral
duty. If we add to this the combination which took
place at Rome and wherever different races met, of
various rites and creeds, we see that the age was one
singularly disposed to the breaking down of artificial
barriers between men, and singularly fitted to promote
the growth of a belief in which men of all nations
might unite and feel themselves to be brethren.
In these two periods we may recognise important
steps in that great Education of the Human Race
which the Apostle Paul refers to in a bold philosophy
of history (Galat. iv.), and which later thinkers have
striven to set forth in detail. After the long servitude
432 History of Religion part v
of mankind to irrational practices and to gods who
were no gods, there comes first the period when men
recognise that the true God is to be found not merely
outside them but within their hearts and minds, and
then the period when they find that the true God
is the same to all men, that they are all children of
the same Father. But while these general movements
of the human mind may be acknowledged, the educa-
tion of the human race proceeds for the most part in
nations. As each nation has to elaborate its own art,
its own literature, its own system of law, so each
nation has to perfect its own religion. Even after a
universal faith has appeared, religion does not cease
to be a national thing. Each people moulds the
universal religion which it has adopted into a special
form, continues by means of it the rites and traditions
of the past, and expresses through it its own national
character and aspirations. Each nation as well as each
individual must necessarily have a faith specially its
own, arising out of its own character and experience
and in great part incommunicable to others. No two
nations could possibly exchange religions.
But on the other hand every nation contains within
itself forms of religion which differ from each other
as widely as those of two separate nations. It has
been said that no religious belief or usage which has
once lived can ever be destroyed ; and the proof of
this may be witnessed in every nation. Even after
that religion has come which has its main seat in the
heart and soul, the ruder forms of piety live on, and
even at times aggressively assert themselves. If there
are classes for whom the struggle against material
hardships still continues, no lofty religion can be
attained by them any more than by savage tribes.
As the conditions of their life forbid the growth of
their higher faculties, their religion cannot be one of
thought or of refinement, but must be one which
promises palpable benefits or an escape from immediate
CHAP. XXIII Conclusion 433
dangers. At a somewhat higher stage is the class of
those who, while partly escaped from the struggle
against want, have not yet fully realised themselves
as thinking and spiritual beings, and to whom the
benefits of religion still lie outside, rather than in the
inner life. When the benefits of religion are thus
conceived, its processes must be of a mechanical nature.
Hence the various systems of apparatus for connecting
the worshipper with a source of good distant from
him in time or space, and for fetching as it were
from another region, with certainty and accuracy,
needed supplies of grace.
The further development of religion in a community
so mixed must depend on the progressive education
and elevation of the people. As more and more of
them are freed first from distracting wants and cares,
and then from sordid and materialistic views, their
spiritual nature will expand. The need for God him-
self rather than for his gifts, will arise and increase
in their hearts, and they will grow capable of that
highest religion which is the life of the soul with
God ; they will feel its beauty and will drink of the
deep springs which it contains, of strength and peace.
To attain this true religion the human race has
had to travel far and to make many experiments.
Many temples were built and fell to ruin before the
true temple of the soul was reached in which, as each
finds what he as an individual requires, there is also
room for all mankind. Even after this highest religion
has been made known to men, it has often been
obscured and lost, and many a struggle has been
needed to vindicate its claims and help it to retain
its rightful place. But with growing experience the
world becomes more assured that the simplest and
broadest religion ever preached upon this earth is
also the best and the truest, and that in maintaining
Christianity as at first preached, and applying it in
every needed direction, lies the hope of the future of
2 E
434 History of Religion part v
mankind. To those who agree in this conclusion
the history of the rehgion of the world, full of errors
and of grievous failures as it has been seen to be,
cannot appear to have been a vain and purposeless
excursion in a land of shadows. Not without a divine
call, and not without divine guidance did man set out
so early, and persevere so constantly in spite of all
his disappointments, in the search for God.
INDEX
Aesir, 267
Ahura Mazda, 387, 391, 397. 398,
405
Allah, 222
Allat, "The Lady," 165, 173, 219
Amartas, 44
Anaitis, 407
Ancestor-worship, primitive, 33 40
China, 115
Aryan, 250
India, 338
Angels and demons, Persia, 400,
407
Animals, worship of, 29, 57
in Peru, 86
in Babylonia, 96
in Egypt, 130
how accounted for, 133
in Arabia, 219
in Greece, 277
Animation of Nature in savage
thought, 24
Animism, meaning of, 40, 96, 308
in Roman religion, 308
Anthropomorphism, S3
Babylonia, 96
Egypt, 132
Greece, 281
Apocalypse, 213
Arabia, before Mahomet, 218
gods of, 219
Judaism and Christianity in, 223
Art, Phenician, 174
Egyptian, 132
Greece, 280, 292
Aryans, the, 245
description of, 248
in Europe, 256
religion, 250
etymology of names of gods, 250
Ascetics, Brahmanic, 350
Ashera. Canaanite goddess, 172
Ashtoreth, 176
Association, forms of religious
Totem-Clan, 70
nation, 84
Greek mysteries, 298
Greek schools, 303
new form in Israel, 212
in Islam, 233
Asuras, 44
Baal, Canaanite god, 171, 189
Babylon and Assyria, religion of,
93
connection with Egypt, 94, 96,
97
China, 93, 98
mythology of, 100
Belief, an essential part of religion,
9, 13
less important than rite in
primitive religion, 66
Brahman, etymology of, 339
Brahmanism, 338
Buddhism, 353, sqq.
in China, 123
Burnt Njal, 264
Burton, Captain, Pilgrimage to E
Medinah and Mecca, 236
Caaba, 220, 236
Cabiri, 177
435
436
History of Religion
Canaanites, 170
religion of, 171, 191
Caste, 338
Celts, 257
China, 106
connection with Babylonia, 107
state religion of, 1 1 1
Christianity, 411, sqq.
Civilisation and religion advance
together, 15
origin of, 19
Classification of religions, 80
Confucius, 107, 117, sqq.
Continuity of growth in religion, 6
Curiosity, an element of religion,
12
Daniel, 213
Decalogues, 202
Definition of religion, preliminary,
8 ; fuller, 13
Degeneration in civilisation, 19
in religion, 38
Deuteronomy, 201
Devas, 44, 396
Development of religion, 8, 51, sqq.,
430, sqq.
Domestic worship, origin ot, 33
China, 115
Aryans, 251
Iceland, 264
Greece, 275
Rome, 311
Brahmanic, 342
Dualism, 56
Eddas, 266
Egypt, religion of, 126, sqq.
Elijah and Elisha, 190
Elves, 265
Ephod, 188
Etruria, religion of, 318
Exile of Israel, 202
Ezra, 204
Fairy Tales (German), 262
Fate, 289
Festivals, Greek, 294
Fetish- worship, 35
Fetishism, 38
Fire, 31
Frazer, Mr., 58, 59; Golden
Bough, 28, 279
Frisia, religion in, 263
Functional deities, Greece, 275
Rome, 308
Funeral practices, 62
Egypt, 149
Icelandic, 264
Greece, 282, 290
India, 332
Persian, 405
Games, Greek, 294
Gautama Buddha, 356
his death, 361
Germans, the ancient, 258
their gods, 259
identified with Roman, 260
working religion of, 260
later religion, 263
Ghosts, 34
Gods, the great, in Babylonia, 98
in Egypt, 137
of the Aryans, 252
German, 259
Icelandic, 266
of Homer, 285
Roman, 311
Indian, 326
Gomme, Ethnology in Folklore, 60,
249. 254
Greece, 274
Grimm, German Mythology, 260
Hades, 291
Hammurabi, 93, 95, 202
Hanyfs, 224
Hartmann, Edward von, 46
Heaven, 52
an object of primitive worship,
31, 53
Babylonia, 93
China, 112
Arabia, 219
India, 318, 326, 333
Hegira, 231
Hell, 229, 265, 392
Henotheism, 56
Heroic legends, Babylonian, lOO
German, 262
Hesiod, 291
Index
437
Homer, 283
worship in, 2S7
Homeric gods, 285
Hymns, Babylonian, loi
Egyptian, 144
Vedic, 328
Persian, 383. See Psalms
Iceland, 264
decay of old religion of, 272
Idols, none in primitive religion, 73
Arabia, 219, 220
German? 264
Immortality, China, 115
Egypt, 152
Incas, the religion of, 85-88
India, 324
Individual, the, not considered in
primitive religion, 76
Individual religion, Babylonia, 104
Israel, 205
Greece, 300
India, 346
a high stage of religion, 429
the porch to universatism, 430
See Buddhism
Indo-Europeans, See Aryans
Isaiah xli.-lxvi., 203
Islam, 217. See Mahomet
meaning of, 226
spread of, 237
a universal religion, 240
weakness of, 241
Israel, 179
Israel and Canaanites, 184
Prophets, 189
reforms of religion, 200
exile, 202
the return, 204
Istar, 10 1
Jainism, 362
Japan, 115
Jehovah, 182
Jesus Christ, 413, sqq.
Jewish religion, 205
spiritual elements of, 209
heathenish elements of, 210
Persian influence on? 215
Jinns, 220
Job, 215
Judaism, 205 sqq,
Hellenistic period of, 412
at time of Christ, 413
Kathenothkism, 55, 336
Koran, 225, 227, 239
Lang, Andrew, 25, 59: Myth^
Ritual, atid Religio7i, 22
Legge, Dr, no, 113
Literatures, sacred, 179
Babylonia, 93, 100
Buddhist, 353
China, 108
Eddas, 266
Egypt, 127, 154
Koran, 225, 227, 239
Israel, 179, 207
Sibylline books, 319
Vendidad, 406
Zend-Avesta, 382
Local nature of early religion, 60
Local observances, Aryan, 253
old German, 262
Icelandic, 264
Lockyer, Dawn of Astronomy, 94
Magi, 405
Magic, 74
Babylonia, 95
Egypt, 15s
Mahomet, 225, sqq,
preaching, 228
leaves Mecca, 231
at Medina, 232
breach with Judaism and Christi-
anity, 234
domestic, 235
Manicheism, 408
Mannhardt, Fild-und Waldkulte,
59, 262
Manu, law of, 344
Massebah, 172
Maya, 349
M'Lennan, 59
Mecca, 220
becomes capital of Islam, 23$
Meyer, E., 247
Mithra, 407
Moloch, 174
438
History of Religion
Monarchical Pantheon of the
Aryans, 253
Monotheism, not primitive, 37, 56
in Egypt? 144
emergence of, in Israel, 196
in India, 348
Morality, in primitive religion, 77
Egyptian religion, 155
Greece, 279
Vedic religion, 335
Brahmanism, 345
of Buddhism, 372
Moslem, meaning of, 226
duties of the, 238
MUller, Mr. Max, 10, 42, 246,
250, 332
his theory of the origin of re-
ligion, 43
Mycense, 282
Mysteries, the Greek, 298
Mythology, origin of, 51
Babylonia, 100
Egypt, 138
Greece, 2S0
Icelandic, 267
Indian, 333
National religion, how different
from earlier form, 81, 42S
Israel, 191
Natural religion, 80
Nature gods, growth of, 51
Nature-worship, the greater, 30, 43
the minor, 32, 42, 57
Nirvana, 361, 373
Omens, 290
Roman, 312
Orientation, of temples, 100
Origin of religion, (i) Primitive
revelation, 26
(2) Innate idea, 26
(3) Psychological necessity, 27
Orphism, 302
Other World, the
in Egypt, 151
with the Semite*, 167
Jewish beliefs about, 214
Arabia, 220
Iceland, 265, 266
Homer, 283
PANTHEiSAf, in Egypt, 148
India, 336, 348
Patriarchal society and religion of
Aryans, 248
Perkunas, 36
Persia, 381
primitive religion, 385
contact of Jews with, 401, 406
Pfleiderer, Otto, 47
Phenicians, 170
religion of, 176
influence on Greece, 282
Philistines, 170
Philosophy, Greek, 301
Indian, 347
Polytheism, origin of, 53
Indian, 335
Prayer, primitive, 7 1
Israel, 198, 212
Indian, 339
Persian, 382, 394
Priestly code, 202, 403
Priests, none in the earliest religion,
72
not necessary in early Israel, 187
Roman, 313
Brahmans, 338
Primitive religion, the, 21
difference between it and later
forms, 79
Prophets, in Israel, 189
their criticism of the old religion
of Israel, 192
Psalms, 210. See Hymns
Purity, laws of,
Israel, 209
Persia, 404
Rationalism, Greece, 297
India, 350
Reforms of Israelite religion, 200
of Augustus, 322
Renouf, Le Page, 145
Revealed religion, 80
R^ville, M., 25, 31, 42
Resurrection, 214
Retribution, after death,
in Egypt, 155
Mahomet, 229
Israel, 214
Rig-veda, the, 325
Index
439
Ritualism, Brahmanic, 343
Roman, 314
Persian, 403
Jewish, 204, 20S
Rome, 305, sqq.
Rouge, M. de la, 145
Sacred places, 59
Semitic, 165
Canaanite, 184, 200
Arabia, 219
Germany, 261
Sacred seasons, 75
Sacrifice, primitive, generally a
meal, 67
in China, 1 14
Semitic, 164
human (Phenician), 175
(Israel), 1S7
(Icelandic), 265
early Israelite, 183
denounced by O. T. prophets, 193
Jewish, 207
Icelandic, 264
Homeric, 2S7
Persia, 394
Saussaye, P. D. Chantepie de la, 17
Savage elements in all the great
religions, 21
Savages, their religion falls short of
the definition, 8
represent the original state of
mankind, 19
mental habits of, 23
all have religion, 25
the religion of, described, 29, sqq.
their beliefs furnish the elements
of the great religions, 63
Schrader (Aryans), 247, 252
Semites, 161
religion of, 162
gods of, 164, 173
goddess of, 99, 165, 219
Seraph, 220
Shin-to, 115
Sin, Babylon, 103
Israel, 205
Slavs, 256
Smith, Robertson, 61 ; Religion of
the Semites, 58, 70, 162
Spencer, Mr. H., 11, 39
Spirit, the great, 36
Spirits, of dead persons, 33
worship of, the origin of all re-
ligion? 38
in Babylonia, 95
in China, 114
in Arabia, 220
in Greece, 275
in Persia, 398
Standing stones, 60
Sun, 30
Sun-gods, Babylonia, 99
Egypt, 140, 148
Phenician, 176
Arabian, 219
Supreme Being, an object of
primitive worship? 36
Survival of savage state in the
great religions, 21
Synagogue, 212
Syncretism, of gods in Egypt, 148
Taboo, 72
Taoism, 121
Taylor, Dr. I., 247, 248
Temples, not primitive, 72
Babylonia, 99
Egyptian, 128, 130, 136
Phenician and Jewish, 178
Greek, 292
Roman, 318, 323
Teraphim, 188
Teutons, 256. See Germans
Thunder, 30, 265, 270
Tide, Dr. C. P., 15
Totemism, 58, 135, 277
Transmigration, 302, 351, 368
Tree-worship, primitive, 32, 59, 278
Babylonia, 10 1
Canaanites, 172
Arabia, 219
Greece, 278
Tribal religion, 57, 77, 427
Tylor, Mr., Primitive Culture, 10,
20, 25, 29, 39, 62, 63, 68
Under-World, the. Babylonia,
100, 102
Egypt, 140, 142, 152
Unity of all religion, 4
Universal deities of the Aryans, 252
440
History of Religion
Universalism,
in O. T. prophets, 195
in Islam, 240
in Christianity, 419
Urim and Thummim, 18S
Vedic hymns, 328
Vedic religion, 324, sqq.
its gods, 326
is it early or late? 331
Vow, original meaning of, 75
Waitz and Gerland's Anthropologic
der Naturv'dlker, 29
Wellhausen, J., 163, 218
Wells, sacred, 32, 57, 59
Worship, an essential element of
religion, 9
primitive, 66
Chinese, 112
Egyptian, 147
Canaanite, 173
Israelite, 187
Jewish, 207
Roman, 309
See Sacrifice
Zeus, etymology of, 250, 286, 296
Zoomorphism, 53
Zoroaster, 384
his call, 388
his doctrine, 391
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