Introduction To The Science Of Religion

INTRODUCTION

TO THE

SCIENCE

INTRODUCTION

TO THE

SCIENCE OF RELIG

FOUR, LECTURES

DELIVERED AT THE ROYAL INSTITUI
IN FEBRUARY AND MAY, 1870.

"BY

P, MAX MtTLLEB, M.J*

Fortfffn Member & the French Institute, ttc.
ISTew 'Edition.

SSMPBft, QU^^B OMN2St||C

LONGMAN^ GBEEN, AND <3t>

1882.

OXFORD:

BY X, HOKABD BALL, M.A., AND J. H. STACT,
FBINKEBS TO THE U^lVJUtSITY.

CONTENTS.

ON THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION:

Lecture I

Lecture II *

Lecture HI 52

Lecture IV 8 3

145

AND ILLUSTBATIONS :

The Emperor AH>ar

The Languages of Africa . . 2 9

Tedic Literature .... 2 3 6

Polynesian Mytholog7 . . . z ^

The Chinese name for God . * 24

Mythology of the Hottentots , ,

The Sacred Books of the East . 2>?6

Index 2 ^ 8

PREFACE,

THESE Lectur&, intended as an introduction to a
comparative study of the principal religions of the
worid 4 were delivered at the Boyal Institution in
London, in February tod March 1870, and printed
in Fraser's Magazine of February, March, April, and
May of the same year. I declined at that time to
publish them in a s'Sparate form, hoping that I might
find leisure n to wOrk up more fully the materials
whicify I had collected for many years. I thought
that I should thus be enabled to make these lectures
more instructive and more complete, and at the same
time meet several objections that had been raised by
some critics against the very possibility of a scientific
study of religions, and against the "views which I
ventured to put forward on the origin, the growth,
and the real yalue of the ancient systems ol faith,
elaborated by different branches of the human mee.
A small edition only of these 'lectures wad printed
privately, and sent to some of my frienda, whose
remarks 4iave proved in man$ cases most valuable
and instructive.

If now I have decKled oa. republishing these Lec-
tures, I have done so because I fear that as during
the three years that have elapsed since their delivery,

VOX PREFACE.

so again during the years to come I shall find " little
lefeure fo* thesu researches* * I have just finished a
new -edition of the test of the Kig-veda, ami I now
feef^ bound to print* the lasi* vdlurae of iffy large
edition of the Big-vda witB the commentary of
S&yarza, When tha* is done, Ihe translation of the
hymrta of the Big-veda, of wlfich \he first volume
was published in 1869, mil h&ve te be continued,
and I see but little chance tnat, with these .tasks
before me, I shall be able to devote much time to my
favourite study- of ancient language, mythology, and
religion.

I should gladly have left these Lectures to their
ephemeral fate; but as they hav8 beeiurepublished
in America, and translated in France and Italy /they
have become the subject of friendly and unfriendly
remarks in several works on Comparative Theology.
A German translation also being on the eve of pub- j
lication, I at last determined to publish them in their
original form, find to rendej them at least as perfect
as I could at the present moment. The Lectures
as now printed, contain considerable portions which
were written in 1870, but had to be left out in the
course of delivery, and therefore also in Fraser's
Magazine. I have inserted such corrections and sup-
plementary notes as I had made from timfc to time
in the course of my reading, and a few remarks were
added at the last moment, whifet seeing these sheets
through the Press.
For more complete information on many

PREFACE. IX

touched upon in these Letjires, I must refar my
reader? to my Essays w^ tfc$ Scieitfg of"Religi<m J
and the Essays on Mythology * Traditions and .Cus-
toms, published in 9863 nder tfie title of'Chiptf ^x>m
a Girma|i Workshop^,

The literature -of Cdfcaparative .-Theology is growing
rapidly, particularly Jh Aratajea. The works of JSames
F. Clarke, Sanwiel Johnson, O. B. Frothingham, the
lectures of T. W. Higgbison, W. C. Gannett, and J. W.
Chadwick, the philosophical pa$>ers by F. E. Abbot a
all show tiiat the New World, in* spite of all its pre-
occupations, has not ceased to feel at one with the
Old World; all tofer witness to a deep conviction
that the st^dy of* the ancient religions of mankind
will ^Lot remain without momentous practical results.
'That study, I feel convinced, if carried on in a bold,
but scholar-like, careful, and reverent spirit, will
remove many doubts and difficulties which are due
entirely to the narrowness of our religious horizon;
it will enlarge our sympathies, it ^rill raise our
thoughts above the small controversies of the day,
and at no dis^nt future evoke in the very heart of
Christianity a fresh spirit, and a new life.

F.MLM.
OXPOED, May is, 1873*

1 Since reputti&ed with ad&tona in 'Selected Essays,* a vols.
1881.

DEDICATED

TO RALPH WALDO EMERSON

IN MEMORY OF HIS VISIT TO OXFORD

IN MAY, MDCCCLXXIII,
AftD IN ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF CONSTANT REFRESHME1

OF HEAD AND HEART

DERIVED FROM HIS WRITINGS

DURING THE LAST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS,

LECTUEE.

DELIVERED AT JTHE ROYAL INSTITUTION",
Ip, 1870.

WHEN I Undertook for the first time to deliver
a course of lectures in this Institution, I chose
for my subject the Sciefice of Language. What I then
had at heart was to show to you, and to the woi'ld at
large, that the comparative study of the principal
languages of mankind was based on sound and truly
scientific principles^ and that it had brought to light
results whict deserved a larger share of public interest
than*they had as yet received. I tried to convince
not only scholars by profession, but historians, theo-
logians, and philosophers, nay everybody who had
once felt the charm of gazing inwardly upon the
secret workings of his own mind, veiled and revealed
as they are in the flowing folds of language, that the
discoveries made by comparative philologists could no
longer be ignored with impunity; and I submitted
that after the progress achieved in a scientific study
of the principal branches of the vast realm of human
speech, our new science, the Science of Language,
might claim by right its seat at the Bound-table of
the intellectual chivalry of our ftge,

Such was the goodness 01 the cause I haft then to
defend that, however imperfect my own pleading, the
verdict of the public has been immediate and almost
unanimous. During the yeara that have elapsed since

B

2 LECTURES ON THE SCIENCE 0:F BELIGIOtf,

the deliv^ujr of my first course of lectures, the Science
of Language has Lad its Ml share of public recog-
nition Whether we look at the number *of books
that have been published for tha a$vaneen*3nt and
elucidation of our scienee 3 or.at the excellent arti-
cles in the daily, weekly, forfcaightly, monthly, and
quarterly reviews, or at the fi^que^t notices of its
results* scattered about in works on philosophy,
theology, and ancient history, we "may well rest
satisfied. The example set by France and Gej'rcmny
in founding chairs of Sanskrit and Comparative Phi*
lology, has been followed of late in nearly all tho
universities of England, Ireland, and Scotland. We
need not fear for the future of the Science of Language*
A career so auspiciously begun, Jta spite of strong
prejudices that had to be encountered, Vill lead on
from year to year to greater triumphs. Out best
public schools, if they have not done so already, will
soon have to follow the example set by tho uni-
versities* It is but fair that nchoolboyB who arc made
to devote so many hours every day to the laborious
acquisition of* languages, should now and thon IKS
taken by a safe guide to efijoy from a higher point of
view that living panorama of human speech which
has been surveyed and carefully napped out by
patient explorers and bold discoverers : nor is there
any longer an excuse why, even in tho most ele-
mentary lessons, nay I should aay, why more par-
ticularly in theae elelnentary lessons, the*dark and
dreary passages of Greek and Latin, of French and
Gorman, grammar, should not Jbe brightened by the
electric light of Comparative Philology.
When last year I travelled in Germany I found

LECTURE I. SL

that lectures on Comparative Philology Wco attended
in the universities by nearly all who Btftdy fireek and
Latin. At Leipzig there were Jmndreds of ntti/lents
who crrftoded the Tecticre room of the Profi!Ms<# of
Comparajiive Philolog/, and tfce classes of the Pro-
fessor of Sanskrit conn&ted of more than fifty uitdi?r-
graduates, most*x>f them wishing to acquire *thafc
amount of knowledge *of Sanskrit which is absolutely
necessary before entering upon a study of Com-
paratire Grammar.

The introduction of Greek into the imiverHiUcs of
Europe in the fifteenth century could hardly have
caused a greater revolution than the discovery of
Sanskrit and the study of Comparative) Philology in
the nineteenth. Very few indeed now take their
degree of Master of Arts in Germany or would bo
allowed to teach at a public nchciol, without having
been examined in the principle** of Comparative
Philology, nay in the elements of Sanskrit grammar,
Why should it be different in England? Th0 in-
tellectual fibre, I know, is not different in the youth
of England and in the youth of Germany, and if there
is but a fair field and no favour, Comparative* Philology,
I feel convince^ will noon hold in Kngland too, that
place which it ought to hold at overy public school, in
every university, and in every classical examination *

In beginning to-day a courae of lectures on the

* Sinoe thi8*wuB written, CompitrMivo Ailology hftft beta admitted
to its rightful place in the University of Oxford. In th fiiwi Pobtto
Examination candidate* for Honour* in Grk or L*tia LiWhitaiw wtt 4
be oxfttnined in th* elenientu <ff Comparative Philology M iliu*far*tlag
the Greek and Latin Ungu*g, In th flnul Pnbllo

Comp*rative Philology will form * spl*l subject, by tfaa tide rtf th

hittory of Ancient Literature.

B a

4 LECTUEE3 OK THE SCIENCE JF KELIGION.

e crflteliffion, or I should rather say on some
preliminary points that have to he settled before we
can enter upon a truly scientific study of the* religions
of tfio world, I feel as I felt* whfcn first pleading in
this very place for th>Bcience*of Language.

I know that I shall have to meet determined an-
tagonists who will deny the Tory* possibility of a
Hcientitic treatment of religions, as formerly they
denied the possibility of a ^cientifTe treatment of
languages. I fores* to even far more serious conflicts
with familiar prejudices and <loip-rooted convictions;
but 1 feel at the same time that i am prepared to
moot my antagonists, and I have such faith in their
honesty and love of truth, that I doubt not of a
patii-rifc nml impartial hearing out their part, and of
a vonlicfc itittminctul by nothing but by* the evidence
that I shall have to place before them,

In these our days it i almost impossible to speak
of ruligioa at all, without giving offunoo either on the
right or on tin 1 , loft, With nowu, religion mutinM too
Haeruil a subject for scientific tri*atitiunt; with others
it stands on fi lovoi with lchotny and astrology, as a
mere tissue of errors or haluci nations, far beneath tho
notice of the man of science,

In a certain sonso, I accept both tnese views, R$*
ligion is a sacred subject, and whether in its most
perfect or in its most imperfect fonn ( it has a right to
our highest reverence. In this respect we might learn
something from those whpm we are so ready to teach.
I quote .from tho * Declaration of Principles' by which
the church founded by Keshufe Chuader Sen professes
to be guided, After stating that no created object
ahali ever be worshipped, nor any man or inferior being

LECTURE I. 5

or material object be treated as identical ^ijb God, or
like unto God, or as an 'incarnation o God* and tltat
no prayer or hymn shall be sai$ unto or In the <name
of any one except Ood^the declaration continues :

'No created being $r object that has been or^ay
hereafte? be worshipp^i liy any sect shall be ridiculed
or contemned injhe Bourse of the" divine service to be
conducted here.

'No book shall be acknowledged or received as the
infallible Word of Go3 ; yet no book which has been
or may hereafter be acknowledged by any sect to be
infallible shall be ridiculed or contemned.'

* No sect shall be vilified, ridiculed, or hated.*

It might bo thought, perhaps, that these broad
sentiments of religious toleration were borrowed by
Keshub Chflnder Sen, or rather by the founder of
the Brahma-Sam&j, Eammohun Boy, from Christian
writers. That may bo so. But they need not have
gono to Europe for these truly Christian principles.
They might have found them inscribed on the very
rocks of India, placed there more than 2000 ye ( ars
ago by Aaoka, who ruled from 259 to sm B,c.
Aaoka, who had left thfc old Vedic religion, and
had embraced the essential principles of Buddha's
teaching, says"in ono of bin Edicts: 'Tho King Pi-
yadaei wishes that all sects should dwell everywhere
(unmolested); for all of them approve of restraint (of
the sonsos) and purification of the soul,' And again,
6 The Kinjf Piyadasi honours all sects, monks and: house-
holders; he honours them* by liberality and various
kinds of favours. . * * But there is a fundamental law
for every sect, namely moderation in speech, that one
should not exalt one's own sect in decrying others,

6 LECTURES ON THE SCIENCE. OF BELIGIGN,

and not depreciate them lightly, but that one ought on
tbe contrary to^how always^to other sects the honour
due o them. In th$ manner one exalts one's own
se<$, and benefits others, while in Acting otherwise ono
injiftes one's own sect, and cfges not benefit others,
He who exalts his own sect agd decries otfeers, cloes
It from devotion toliis own sect in order to make it
illustrious, but really in acting thus he only damages
his own sect. Therefore peace 'alone cs good, so that
all should hear and listen glailly to the opinion of
others V

The Students of the Science of Religion snouui
at all events endeavour not to be outdone in impar-
tiality by this ancient king. Apd, as for myself, I
can promise that no ono who attends these lectures,
be he Chrintian or Jew, Hindu or iWohanmiGdan, shall
hear his own way of serving God spoken of irreve-
rently '* But true reverence does not consist in de-
claring a subject, because it is dear to us, to bo unfit
for free and honest inquiry: far from itt Truo reve-
rence IH shown in treating ovrry subject, howewr
sacred, however dear to u, with jwrfnct confidence;
without fear and without favour; with tenderness and
love> by all moans, kit, before all, with an unflinching
and uncompromising loyalty to truth,

On the other hand, I fully admit that roligion ban

1 *Le TfutcriptionB <fo rfyatburi,' par K, Hetmrt, 1881, p, 174$
8epttt<me Kdit; p. 349, DoussJlm Kclit.

9 My fttttmtinn haw \mm direc-teil to & cunoun ln^7io of reni
AtaviMin, My great grand fnibm*, BAe<low, tlie founder of the PMtttn-
thr(ij>innm,B,t DeHSfin, wrote Rlnifmt { of idem rertn ' that in the genrftl
divine wervico at hin achmil nothing Hh^ihl happen by wont or Awd,
oouU iwi be approval if by every wnrfthipptr of Ood, be h*
Jw, Moliamfnodan, w PeiHt/ He ' Aroliiv fur Leben*bo-
/ p. 63; Kftuiuer, ' Gusolm-hto der Padagogik/ ii. p. 374.

LECTUEE I. 7

stood" in former ages, and stands also in ojir own age,
if we look abroad, andif we look iafco some of the
highest and some of the lowest places af home, on a
level with alchepiy^nd astrology. There exist supeKati*
tions, little short of fet^hism ; and, what is worse, %ere
exists hypocrisy, as ba/jl as thaof the Roman augurs*

In practical Jife it would bo wrong to assume a
neutral position between such conflicting^ views.
Where wo see* that the reverence due to religion 5s
violated, we are bound to protest; where we see that
superstition saps the roots of faith, and hypocrisy
poisons the springs of morality, we must take sides.
But as students of the Science of Religion we move
in a higher and mere serene atmosphere. We study
error, as the physiologist studios a disease, looking for
its causes, tracing its influence, speculating on possible
remedies of this l/wte i/o5<ro?, but leaving the applica-
tion of such remedies to a different class of men, to
the surgeon and the practical physician. Dwer&oa
diver&a jtwant applies here as everywhere else, and a
division of labour, according to the peculiar abilities
and tastes of different individuals, will always yield
tho best results. The stftdont of the history of the
physical sciencoB is not angry with tho alchemists,
nor docs ho arguo with tho astrologies : ho rather
tries to enter into their view of things, and to dis-
cover in the errors of alchemy the seeds of chemistry,
and in the halucinations of astrology a yearning and
groping after a true knowledge of the heavenly bodies.
It is the same with the "student of the Science of
Religion. He wantg, to find out what Religion is,
what foundation it has in the soul of man, and what
laws it follows in its historical growth, For that

8 LEtfTTOES Off THE SCIENCE 0ff BELIQION.

purpose th study of errors is to him more instructive
than the ^tudy. of that religion which he considers
the ijrue on, and the^smiling augur as interesting a
subjject as the Boman suppliant wl^o*veiled his, face in
pray%r,-that he might be alone*with his God.

The very title of the* Science^of Keligion w*ll jar, I
know, on the ears of many persons, and a comparison
of alF the religions of the world, in which none can
claim a privileged position, will no doubt seem to
many dangerous and reprehensible 1 , because ignoring
that peculiar reverence which everybody, down to the
mere fetish worshipper, feels for his (nun religion and
for his own God. Let me say then at once that I
myself have shared these misgivings, but that I have
tried to overcome them, because I would not and
could not allow myself to surrender*eitherwhat I hold
to be the truth, or what I hold still dearer tha* the
truth, the right of testing truth. Nor do I regret it.
I do not say that the Science of Religion is all gain.
No, it entails losses, and losses of many things which
we hold dear. But this I will say, that, as far as my
humble judgment goes, it does not entail the loss of
anything that is essential to true religion, and that
if we strike the balance honestly, the gain 'is im-
measurably greater than the loss.

One of the first questions that was asked by classical
scholars when invited to consider the value of the
Science of Language, was, 'What shall we gain by a
comparative study of languages V Language*, it was
said, are wanted for practidal purposes, for speaking

1 <Tbe so-called "Science of Religion" Sf the present day, with its
attempts to put into competition the sacred books of India and the
Holy Scnptrcures, is deeply to be deprecated.' Bishop of Gloucester*

LECTURE I.

and ifeading ; and by studying too many languages au
once, we run the risk of losing the firm g^asp which
we ought to have on the few th%t are really important.
Our kfcowledge^ *ljy becoming wider, must needg, it
was thought, become $iallower, and the gain, if $here
is any,*in knowing he structure of dialects which
havfe never pr$duce,d any literature at all, would
certainly be outweighed by the loss in accurate and
practical scholarship.*

if jbhis could be said of a comparative study of
languages, with how much greater force will it be
urged against a comparative study of religions!
Though I do not expect that those who study the
religious books of *Brahmans and Buddhists, of Con-
fucius and Laotse,jpf Mohammed and Nanak, will be
accused of Cherishing in their secret heart the doc*
trinen of those ancient masters, or of having lost the
firm hold on their own religious convictions, yet I
doubt whether the practical utility of wider studies
in the vast field of the religions of the world will be
admitted with greater readiness by professed theo-
logians than the value of a knowledge of Sanskrit,
Zend, Gothic, or Celtic "for a thorough mastery of
Greek and Latin, and for a rettl appreciation of the
nature, the purpose, the laws, the growth and decay of
language was admitted, or is even now admitted, by
some of our most eminent professors and teachers.

People ask, What is gained by comparison? Why,
all higher knowledge is acquired by comparison^ n,d
rests on comparison. If ?t is said that the kharact&r
of scientific research jn our age is pre-emfeatly com-
parative, this really means that our researches are
now based on the widest evidence that can be ob*

10 LECTURES ON THE SCIENCE rOF BELIQION.

tained, on t]ie broadest inductions that can be gifcsped
by the hujnan jaind.

Wfcat caiS be gainqfl by comparison ? Why, look
at Jhe study of languages. If ypfl ft go bacfc but a
hundred years and examine ijjae folios of the most
learned writers on questions connected with language,
and then open a bofck written Igr the merest tiro in
Comparative Philology, you will see what can be
gained, what has been gained,' by the comparative
method. A few hundred yeafs ago, the idea^ that
Hebrew was the original language of mankind was
accepted as a matter of course, even as a matter of
iaith, the only problem being to find out by what
process Greek, or Latin, or any oiier language could
have been developed out of Hebrew. The idea, too,
that language was revealed, in the *scholatic sense of
the word, was generally accepted, although, as arly
as the fourtih century, St. Gregory, the learned bishop
of Nyssa, had strongly protested against it 1 . The
grammatical framework of a language was either
considered as the result of a conventional agreement,
or the terminations of nouns and verbs were supposed
to have sprouted forth like *huds from the roots and
stems of language; and the vaguest similarity in the
sound and meaning of words was taken to be a suf-
ficient criterion for testing their origin and their
relationship. Of all this philological somnambulism
we hardly find a trace in works published since the
days of Humboldt, Bopp, and Grimm.

Has there been any loss*here ? Has it not been
pure gain"? Does language exjite our imagination
less, because we know that, though the faculty of

1 ' Lectures on the Science of Language,' vol. i. p. 32.

LECTUBE I. 11

speafting is the work of Him who "W$ijJ$:s nNS2
things, the invention <*>f words for, naming each
object was left to man, and j^as achieved through
the working of %fre human mind? Is Hebrew Jess
carefully studied, because it is no longer believed to
be a repealed language, sent down from heaven, but a
language doseljr allied to Arabic, Syriac and ancient
Babylonian, and receiving light from these Cognate,
and in some respects more primitive, languagesj for
tha explanation of ifiany of its grammatical forms,
and for the exact interpretation of many of its
obscure and difficult words? Is the grammatical
articulation of Greek and Latin less instructive,
because instead of seeing in the terminations of nouns
and verbs merely arbitrary signs to distinguish the
plural from the singular, or the future from the
present, we can now perceive an intelligible principle
in the gradual production of formal out of the
material elements of language? And are our ety-
mologies less important, because, instead of being
suggested by superficial similarities, they are now
based on honest historical and physiological research?
Lastly, has our own language ceased to hold its own
peculiar place? Is our lover for our own native
tongue at alb impaired ? Do men speak less boldly
or pray less fervently in their own mother tongue,
because they know its true origin and its unadorned
history; because they know that everything in
language that goes beyond the objects of sense, is and-
must be pure metaphor? Or does any one deplore
the fact that there j.a in all languages, ^ven in the
jargons of the lowest savages, order and wisdom;
nay, something that makes the world akin?

12 LEOTUBKS ON THE SCIENCE dOF RELIGION.

Why, iji$n, should we hesitate to apply the* com-
parative method, which has produced such great results
in otfcer spheres of knpwledge, to a study of religion?
Th%t it will change many of the *vjews commonly
held*about the origin, the character, the growth, and
decay of the religions "of the -yorld, I do n<ft deny;
but unless we hold Tihat fearless, progression in new
inquiries, which is our bounden duty and our honest
pride in all other branches of knowledge, is dangerous
in the study of religions, unless Ve allow ourselves to
be frightened by the once famous dictum, that what-
ever is new in theology is false, this ought to be the
very reason why a comparative study of religions
should no longer be neglected or delayed.

When the students of Comparative Philology boldly
adapted Goethe's paradox, ' He who &nows one language
knows none^ people were startled at first; butthey
soon began to feel the truth which was hidden beneath
the paradox. Could Goethe have meant that Homer
did not know Greek, or that Shakespeare did not
know English, because neither of them knew more
bhan his own mother tongue ? No I what was meant
was that neither Homer nor Shakespeare knew what
that language really ^ras which he handled with so
much power and cunning. Unfortunately the old
rerb f to can/ from which 'canny' and 'cunning,' is
ost in English, otherwise we should be able in two
tfords to express our meaning, and to keep apart the
wo kinds of knowledge of which we are here speaking.
Is we say in German konndh is not bennen, we might
ay in English, to can, that is to Jbe cunning, is not to
m 9 that is to know ; and it would then become clear
.t once, that the most eloquent speaker and the most

LECTURE I. 19

gifted poet, with all their cunning of wordg ^nd skilful
mastery of expression, ^rould have toot litfte to say if
asked, -vfhat really is language,? The same applies to
religion. He tyfto^knows one, knows none. There, are
thousands of people -^hose faith is such that'it'fcould
move mountains, ang who yet, if they were asked
what religion ^ally is, would remain silent, or would
speak of outward tokens rather than of th^ inward
nature, or of the faculty of faith.

3t rt will be easily perceived that religion means at
least two very different things. When we speak of
the Jewish, or the Christian, or the Hindu religion,
we mean a body of doctrines handed down by
tradition, or in canonical books, and containing all
that constitutes the faith of Jew, Christian, or Hindu.
Using religion in that sense, we may say that a man
has Changed his religion, that is, that he has adopted
the Christian instead of the Brahmanical body of
religious doctrines, just as a man may learn to speak
English instead of Hindustani.

But religion is also used in a different sense. As
there is a faculty of speech, independent of all the
historical forms of language, there is a faculty of
faith in man, independent of <all historical religions.
If we say that it is religion which distinguishes man
from the animal, we do not mean the Christian or
Jewish religion; we do not mean any special religion;
but we mean a mental faculty or disposition, which,
independent of, nay in spite of sense and fc jreaacv
enables man to apprehend the Infinite under different
names, and under pwrying disguises. ,"Wtoout that
faculty, no religion, not even the lowest worship of
idols and fetishes, would be possible ; and if we will

14 LEOTUBES ON THE SCIENCE OF BELIGION.

but listen attentively, we can hear in all religions a
groaning o/ the,j9pirit, a struggle to conceive the in-
conceivable, r to utter $ie unutterable, a longing after
the ^Infinite, a love of*God. Whetjbfir the etymology
whic the ancients gave of the r Greek word fodptoiros,
man, be true or not (thfy derivejj. it from 6 &v& &6p&v,
he who looks upward), certain it r is tljat what makes
man man, is that he alone can turn his face to
heaven f certain it is that he alone yearns for some-
thing that neither sense nor reftson can supply,, nay
for something which both sense and reason by them-
selves are bound to deny.

I then there is a philosophical discipline which
examines into the conditions of sensuous or intuitional
knowledge, and if there is another philosophical dis-
cipline which examines into the conaitions*of rational
or conceptual knowledge, there is clearly a place for a
third philosophical discipline that has to examine into
the existence and the conditions of that third faculty
of man, co-ordinate with, yet independent of, sense and
reason, the faculty of the Infinite 1 , which is at the
root of all religions. In German we can distinguish
that third faculty by the name of Vernunft, as opposed
to V&rstand, reason, and Sinn, sense. In English I
know no better name for it, than the faculty of faith,
though it will have to be guarded by careful definition,
in order to confine it to those objects only, which can-
not be supplied either by the evidence of the senses, or
,by the evidence of reason, and the existence f which
is nevertheless postulated }fy something without us

1 I use the word Infinite, because it is lescf liable to be misunderstood
than the Absolute, or the Unconditioned, or the Unknowable. On the
distinction between the Infinite and the Indefinite, see Kant, * Critique
of Pure Reason, 7 translated by M. M., vol. ii, p. 443.

LECTTOE I. 15

which we cannot resist. No simply historical fact
can e^er fall under the> cognisance of faijji, in our
sense of *the word.

If w$ look at*t]ie history of modern thought,, we
find that the dominan school of philosophy, pretious
to Kanf, had reducec^all intellectual activity to one
faculty, that of _the Censes, * NiMl in intellects quod
non ante fuerit in sensu' ' Nothing exists in the
intellect but what has before existed in the senses/
wa their watchword ;*and Leibniz answered epigram-
matically, but most profoundly, 'Nihil nisi intel-
lectual * Yes, nothing but the intellect.' Then followed
Kant, who, in his 'Criticism of Pure Eeason/ written
ninety years ago, but not yet antiquated, proved that
our knowledge requires, besides the data of sensation,
the admission of Ihe intuitions of space and time,
and the categories, or, as we might call them, the
laws and necessities of the understanding. Satisfied
with having established the a priori character of the
categories and the intuitions of space and time, or, to
use his own technical language, satisfied with, having
proved the possibility of synthetic judgments a priori,
Kant declined to go further, and he most energetically
denied to the human intellect tbe power of transcend-
ing the finite,* or the faculty of approaching the In-
finite. He closed the ancient gates through which
man had gazed into Infinity ; but, in spite of himself,
he was driven in his * Criticism of Practical Reason,' to
open a side-door through which to admit the sense of
duty, and with it the sen& of the Divine. Tbis has
always seemed to me the vulnerable point *in Kant's
philosophy, for if philosophy has to explain what is,
not what ought to be, there will be and can be no

16 LECTURES ON THE SCIENOE.OF RELIGION.

rest till we fr admit that there is in man a third faculty,
TOhich I ^all si$nply the faculty of apprehending the
Inflate, ndb only in religion, but in all things; a
poorer independent o sense and refispn, a poorer in a
certfiur sense contradicted by^sense and reason, but
yet a very real powefj which as held its cTwn from
the beginning of th% world, neither jiense nor reason
being able to overcome it, while it alone is able to
overcome in many cases both reason and sense 1 .

According to the two meanings of the word* re-
ligion, then, the science of religion is divided into two
parts; the former, which has to deal with the his-
torical forms of religion, is called Comparative Theo-

1 As this passage lias given rise to strange misunderstandings, I
quote a passage from another lecture of mine, m not yet published ' It is
difficult at present to speak of the human mind &n any technical
language whatsoever, without being called to order by some philosopher
or other. According to some, the mind is one and indivisible, and it is
the subject-matter only of our consciousness which gives to the acts of
the mind the different appearances of feeling, remembering, imagining,
knowing, willing or believing. According to others, mind, as a subject,
has no existence whatever, and nothing ought to be spoken of except
states of consciousness, some passive, some active, some mixed. I
myself have been sharply taken to task for venturing to speak, in this
enlightened igih century of ours, of different faculties of the mind,
faculties being purely imaginary creations, the illegitimate offspring of
mediaeval scholasticism* STow I confess I am amused rather than
frightened by such pedantry* Faculty, facultas, seems to me BO good a
word that, if it did not exist, it ought to be invented in order to express
the different modes of action of what we may still be allowed to call
our mind. It does not commit us to more than if we were to speak of
-&.Q facilities or agihfaes of the mind, and those only who change the
forces of nature into gods or demons, would be frightened by the
faculties as green-eyed monsters seated in the dark recessfs of our Self.
I shall therefore retain the name of faculty/ &c.

On the necessity of admitting a faculty of perceiving the Infinite I
have treated more folly in my ' Lectures on the Science of Language/
voL ii pp. 635-632. The subject is ably discussed by Niootra Sangia-
wmo, in IS In/into di Masc-Mitiler, Oatama, i8Sa,

LECJTTOE I. IT

i latter, which has to explain the<nditions
under which religion, whether in its'higjiest or its
lowest form, is possible, is callecfr Theoretic Theoltyy.

We skall at present Jiave to*deal with the Jfopner
only; nay it will be my object to show that the
problems which chieiy occupy .theoretic theology,
ought not to be*taken up till all the evidence, that
can possibly be gained from a comparative sfoidy of
the religions of the world has been fully collected,
classified, and analysed. I feel certain that the time
will come when all that is now written on theology,
whether from an ecclesiastical or philosophical point
of view, will seem as antiquated, as strange, as un-
accountable as the" works of Vossius, Hemsterhuys,
Valckenaer, and Lqpnep, by the side of Bopp's Com-
parative Grfftnmar.

It fhay seem strange that while theoretical theology,
or the analysis of the inward and outward conditions
under which faith is possible, has occupied so many
thinkers, the study of comparative theology has never
as yet been seriously taken in hand, But the expla-
nation is very simple. The materials en which alone
a comparative study of the religions of mankind could
have been founded were not acceSsible in former days,
while in our own days they have come to light in
such profusion that it is almost impossible for any
individual to master them all.

It is well known that the Emperor Akbar (1543-*
1605)* had a passion for the study of religions, a&cl
that he invited to his court Jews, Christians. Moham-
medans, Brahmans, and Zoroastrians, and had as many
of their sacred books as he could get access to, trans-

*SeeNoteA,QnAkbar,

18 LEOTUBT3S ON THE SarEJSTOE'OF RELIGION.

lated for fcfe own study *. Yet, how small was $e col-
lection offered books that even an Emperor of India
could command not more than 300 years sigo, com-
parejfl to what may now be {ound in the library of
any poor scholar ! We have the original text of the
Veda, which neithgr the bribes nor the threats of
Akb^r could extort from the Brnhmnns. The trans-
lation f the Veda which he is said to have obtained,
was a translation of the so-called AtHarva-veda, and
comprised most likely the Upanishads only, ai^tic
and philosophical treatises, very interesting, very im-
portant in themselves, but as far removed from the
ancient poetry of the Veda as the Talmud is from the
Old Testament, as Sufiism is frofh. the Koran. We
have the Zendavesta, the sacred jmtings of the so-
called fire-worshippers, and we possess translations of
it, far more complete and far more correct thafl any
that the Emperor Akbar obtained from Ardsher, a
wise Zoroastrian whom he invited from Kirman to
India 2 . The religion of Buddha, certainly in many
respects more important than either Brahmanism, or
Zoroastrianisnr, or Mohammedanism, is never men-
tioned in the religious discussions that took place every
Thursday evening 3 at the imperial court of Delhi.
Abulfazl, it is said, the minister of AJ&ar, could find<
no one to assist him in his inquiries respecting Buddh-
ism. We possess the whole sacred canon of the
Buddhists in various languages, in Pali, Burmese, and
Siamese, in Sanskrit, Tibetan, Mongolian, and Chinese,

1 mpiinstone's History of India,' e< CWell, book ix. cap. 3.
a See 'Journal of tiie Asiatic Society of Bengal/ 1868, p. 14.
8 See 'Ami Atbari/ transl. by Blochnmam, p. i/j, note 3.

LEOTUBE I. 19

and i is our fault entirely, if as yet tbfere is no
complete translation in any European 1 tojigue of this
important collection of sacred" books. The arfeient
religion* of China again, that of Confucius and^fhat
of Laotse, may now be studie in excellent transla-
tions of their sacred feooks by anybody interested in
the ancient faitl of ^mankind.

But this is not all. We owe to missionaries par-
ticularly, care&l accounts of the religious belief and
wofship among tribes far lower in the scale of civilisa-
tion than the poets of the Vedic hymns, or the fol-
lowers of Confucius. Though the belief of African
and Melanesian savages is more recent in point of
time, it may or may not represent an earlier and far
more primitive phase in point of growth, and is there-
fore as instructive to the student of religion as the
study* of uncultivated dialects hae proved to the
student of language 1 .

Lastly, and this, I believe, is the most important
advantage which we enjoy as students of the history
of religion, we have been taught the rules of critical
scholarship. No one would venture, flow-a-days, to
quote from any book, whether sacred or profane,
without having asked these simple and yet moment-
ous questions : w hen was it written ? "Where ? and by
whom? Was the author an eye-witness, or does he
only relate what he has heard from others? And if
the latter, were his authorities at least contemporane-
ous with fiie events which Jbhey relate, and were

1 See Tiele, ' De Plaats van de Godsdienflten der Nairarvolken in de
GodsdienstgesoluedeniB/ Aixurterdam, 1873.
Keview,' *866, p. 71.

o a

LECTURES ON THE SCIENCE 'OS 1 BELIGUON.

under the* sway of party feeling or any other disturb-
ing influence? Was the whole book written at once,
or ddes it contain portions of an earlier date ; and if
so, 2^ it possible for us to separate tiisse earlier docu-
ments from the body of the bock ?

A study of the original documents on wfiich the
principal religions of the world profeis to be founded,
carriedon in this spirit, has enabled some of our best
living scholars to distinguish in each religion between
what is really ancient and what is comparatively fiao-
dern; between what was the doctrine of the founders
and their immediate disciples, and what were the
afterthoughts and, generally, the corruptions of later
ages. A study of these later developments, of these
later corruptions, or, it may be, improvements, is not
without its own peculiar charm, and is full of practical
lessons ; yet, as it is essential that we should 'know
the most ancient forms of every language, before we
proceed to any comparisons, it is indispensable also
that we should have a clear conception of the most
primitive form of every religion, before we proceed to
determine its 1 * own value, and to compare it with
other forms of religious faith. Many an orthodox Mo-
hammedan, for instance, will relate miracles wrought
by Mohammed; but in the Koran MTohammed say%
distinctly, that he is a man like other men. He dis-
dains to work miracles, and appeals to the great
works of Allah, the rising and setting of the sun, the
rain that fructifies the eyth, the plants that grow,
and the Jiving souls that are born into the world
who can tell whence? as the leal signs and wonders
in the eyes of a true believer. * I am only a warner, 1
ne says; <I cannot show you a sign a miracle

LECTURE I. 21

except what ye see every day and night,, Signs are
withtk>dV

The Buddhist legends teem with miserable miracles
attributed to Buddha and his disciples miracles w^ieh
in wonderfulness certainly surpass the miracles 8 any
other religion : yet in^their own sacred canon a saying
of Buddha's is jecoi;ded, prohibiting his disciples from
working miracles, though challenged to do so foy the
multitudes, wtio required a sign that they might be-
lieve. And what is 'the miracle that Buddha com-
mands his disciples to perform? 'Hide your good
deeds/ he says, ' and confess before the world the sins
you have committed/ That is the true miracle of
Buddha.

Modern Hinduism rests on the system of caste as
on a rock which no arguments can shake : but in the
Veda, the highest authority of the religious belief of
the Hindus, no mention occurs of the complicated
system of castes, such as we find it in Manu: nay, in
one place, where the ordinary classes of the Indian,
or any other society, are alluded to, viz. the priests,
the warriors, the citizens, and the slaves, all are re-
presented as sprung alike from Brahman, the source
of all being.

It would b too much to say that the critical sifting
of the authorities for a study of each religion has been
already fully carried out. There is work enough still
to be done. But a beginning, and a very successful
beginning, has been made, and the results thus brought
to light will serve as a wholesome caution, to every*
body who is engagejjL in religious researcSes. Thus,

1 'The Speeches and Table-talk of the Prophet Mohammad/ by
Stanley Lane-Poole, 1882, InirocL p, juuvi and xtt.

82 LEOTUBES ON THE SpIENCE Otf RELIGION.

if we stuj the primitive religion of the Veda, we
ha?e to d^tingijish most carefully, not only beween
the h^rnms 'of the KSg-veda on one side, and the
hyinns collected in th S&ma-veda, Ya#ur-ve$a, and
Athafv#-veda on the other, bu^ critical scholars dis-
tinguish with equal cate betwqpn the more*ancient
and the more modefn hymns of Jthe Jlig-veda itself,
so far "as even the faintest indications of language, of
grammar, or metre enable them to do sot

In order to gain a clear insight into the motives
and impulses of the founder of the worship of Ahu-
ramazda, we must chiefly, if not entirely, depend on
thos-e portions of the Zendavesta which are written in
the GatM dialect, a more primitive dialect than that
of the rest of the sacred code of the Zoroastrians,

In order to do justice to Buddha,"we must not mix
the practical portions of the Tripifaka, the Dharma,
with the metaphysical portions, the Abhidharma.
Both, it is true, belong to the sacred canon of the
Buddhists ; but their original sources He in very dif-
ferent latitudes of religious thought.

We have in Jhe history of Buddhism an excellent
opportunity for watching the process by which a
canon of saored books is called into existence. We
see here, as elsewhere, that during the Hetime of the
teacher, no record of events, no sacred code containing
the sayings of the master was wanted. His presence
was ^ enough, and thoughts of the future, and more
particularly, of future greatness, seldom entered the
minds of those who followed him. It was only after

wuw it vrxavL, ujjfuv -MUjKt VLJLBuJLUlGQ CbUUVjill UuUU

to recall the sayings and doings of their departed Mend
and master. At that time everything that seemed to

,LECTTIRB I. 23

redound to the glory of Buddha, however extraordi-
nary afcd incredible, -was eagerly ^elcojned 'while -wit-
nesses who would have ventured to criticise or reject
unsupported statements, or to .detract in any Vay
from the holy cfiaractef of Buddha, had no chanoe" of
even beig listened to 1 . Andwhen, in spite of all
this, differences of opinion arose, they were not brought
to the test by a careful weighing of evidence, birt the
names of 'unbeliever ' and 'heretic' (n&stika, p&fihamfo)
werp quickly invented in Injdia as elsewhere, and
bandied backwards and forwards between contending
parties, till at last, when the doctors disagreed, the
help of the secular power had to be invoked, $nd
kings and emperor^ assembled councils for the sup-
pression of schism, for the settlement of an orthodox
creed, and f<jr the completion of a sacred canon. We
kno-v^ of King Asoka, the contemporary of Seleucus,
sending his royal missive to the assembled elders, and
telling them what to do, and what to avoid, warning
them also in his own name of the apocryphal or he-
retical character of certain books which, as he thinks,
ought not to be admitted into the sacred canon 2 .

1 'Mahavansa,' p. 12, TX&nnebi tatha vatftabbam ita, 'it cannot be
allowed to other priests to be present.'

3 The following is Professor Kern's translation of the Second Bairat
Book Inscription, Containing the rescript which Ajoka addressed to
the Council of Magadha; 'King Priyadarsin of Magadha greets the
Assembly (of denes) and wishes them welfare and happiness. Ye
know, Sirs, now great is our reverence and affection for the Triad which
is called JBuddha (the Master), Fmth, and Ass&nlly. All that oar
Lord BudcUp has spoken, my Lords, is well spoken. "Wfcerefor*, Sirs,
it must indeed be regarded as hiring indisputable authority, se the
true faith shall last long. Thus, my Lords, I honour in Jhft first place
these religious works : Summary of the Discipline, T&e Supernatural
Powers of the Master (or of the Masters), The Terrors of the Future,
The Song of the Hermit, The Sutra on Asceticism, The Question of
Upatishya, and the Admonition of Mania concerning Falsehood,

24 LECTTJBES ON THE SOIENC^ OF BELIQ-ION.

We here learn a lesson, which is confirmed .by the
Study of *other jeligions, that canonical books, though
they furmsti in most cases the most ancientoand most
authentic information within the reach of the. student
of religion, are not to be trusfted implicitly, nay, that
they must be submitted to a more searchingr>criticism
and to more stringent tests than any other historical
books. For that purpose the Science of Language
has proved in many cases a most valuable auxiliary.
It is not easy to imitate ancient language so 9$ to
deceive the practised eye of the grammarian, even if
it were possible to imitate ancient thought that should
not betray to the historian its modern origin. A
forged book, like the Ezour-ve^, which deceived
even Voltaire, and was published by him as 'the
most precious gift for which the West wag indebted to
the East,' could hardly impose again on any Sanskrit
scholar of the present day. This most precious gift
from the East to the West, is about the silliest book
that can be read by the student of religion, and all
one can say in its defence is that the original writer
never meant it as a forgery, never intended it for the
purpose for wfiich it was used by Voltaire.

I may add that a J3ook which has lately attracted
considerable attention, La Bible dan** FInde, by M,
Jacolliot, belongs to the same class of books. Though
the passages from the sacred 'books of the Brahmans

uttered by our Lord Buddha. These religions works, Sirs, I wish that
the monks and nuns, for the advancement of their good name, should
uninterruptedly study and remember, as also the laics of the male and
female sex. 'For this end, my Lords, I cause this to be written, and
have made my -wish evident,' See Indiai Antiquary, vol. v, p. 257 ;
Cunningham, 'Corpus lasoript. India,' p. 133; Oldenberg. 'Yinaynr
pitaka,* voL L, Xntrod.p,xL

' LECTUBB I. 85

are ndt given in the original, but only in a v B eigr poetical
French translation, no Sanskrit scholar woujd hesitate
for one tnoment to say that they are forgeries^ and
that MdTacollio&Ihe President ef the Court of Justice
at Chandernagore, hag been deceived by his* ri&tive
teacher. * We find man.y childish and foolish things in
the Veda, but vtfien .we read the following line, as an
extract from the Veda :

'La famine c'egt TAme de 1'htunajait^, -

it is not difficult to see that this is the folly of the
nineteenth century, and not of the childhood of the
human race. M. Jacolliot's conclusions and theories
are such as might be expected from his materials 1 .

With all the genuine documents for studying the
history of the religions of mankind that have lately
been "brought to light, and with the great facilities
which a more extensive study of Oriental languages
has afforded to scholars at large for investigating the
deepest springs of religious thought all over the
world, a comparative study of religions has become
a necessity. If we were to shrink *irom it, other
nations and other creeds would take up the work. A
lecture was lately delivered at Calcutta, by the
> minister of tttfc Adi-Samaj (i.e. the Old Church), *0n
the Superiority of Hinduism to every other existing
Religion.' The lecturer held that Hinduism was
superior to all other religions, 'because it owed its
name to^io man; because it acknowledged no Bae-
diator between God and* man; because the Hindu
worships God, in tha intensely devotiomf sense, as
the soul of the soul ; because the Hindu alone caa

1 See Selected Essays, roL Si., p. 468 sq.

26 LECTUBES ON THE SCIENCE. OF RELIGION.

worship God at all times, in business and pleasure,
and everything; because, -while other Scriptures in-
culca^te the practice oi;piety and virtue for the sake of
eternal happiness, th Hindu Scriptures alon# main-
tain*that God should be worshipped for the sake of
God alone, and virtue J>ractised^for the sake*bf virtue
alone ; because HMduism inculqates ijniversal bene-
volerfce. while other faiths merely refer to man;
because Hinduism is non-sectarian (believing that all
faiths are good if the men whfl hold them are good),
non-proselytizing, pre-eminently tolerant, devotional
to an entire abstraction of the mind from time and
sense, and the concentration of it on the Divine ; of
an antiquity running back to tiie infancy of the
human race, and from that time till now influencing
in all particulars the greatest affairs of the State and
the most minute affairs of domestic life 1 .*

A Science of Religion, based on an impartial and
truly scientific comparison of all, or at all events, of
the most important, religions of mankind, is now only
a question of time. It is demanded by those whose
voice cannot be disregarded. Its title, though imply-
ing as yet a promise rather than a fulfilment, has
become more or lese familiar in Germany, France,
and America ; its great problems hava attracted the
eyes of many inquirers, and its results have been
anticipated either with fear or with delight, It be-
comes therefore the duty of those who have devoted
their life to the study of the principal religions of the
world in their original documents, and who value
religion atd reverence it in whatever form it may pre-
sent itself, to take possession of this new territory in

1 See 'limes, 1 Oct. 27, 1872.

LECTURE I. 7

the name of true science, and thus to jmjtect- its
sacred precincts from the inroads of those who think
that they have a right to speak on* the ancieitt religions
of mankind, whejbter those of the Brahmans, the Zp-
roastrians, or Buddhist^, or those of the Jews ftnd
Christian^ -without ev^r having'taken. the trouble of
learning the languages in which their sacred books
are written. What should we think of philosophers
writing on the religion of Homer, without knowing
Greek, or on the religion of Mpses, without knowing
Hebrew '<

I do not wonder at Mr. Matthew Arnold 1 speaking
scornfully of La Science des Religions, and I fully
agree with him that such statements as he quotes
would take away the breath of a mere man of letters.
But are these statements supported by the authority
of any* scholars? Has anybody who can read either
the Vedas or the Old and New Testaments in the
original ever maintained that c the sacred theory of
the Aryas passed into Palestine from Persia and India,
and got possession of the founder of Christianity and
of his greatest apostles, St. Paul and St. John ; be-
coming more perfect, and returning more and more to
its true character of a " transcenAent metaphysic," as
the doctors of* the Christian Church developed it$'
lias Colebrooke, or Lassen, or Bournouf, ever sug-
gested ' that we Christians, who are Aryas, may have
the satisfaction of thinking that the religion of Christ
has not came to us from the Semites, and that it is
in the hymns of the Veda^ind not in the Bible thafc
we are to look for the primordial source of any re-
ligion ; that the theory of Christ is the theory of the

i ' literature and Dogma,' p. 117.

28 LECTURES ON THE SCIENCE OP RELIGUON,

Vedic Agni, or fire\ that the Incarnation represents
%he Ved^c solemnity of the*production of fire, symbol
of re of every ksnd, of all movement,* life, and
thought; that the Trinity o Fatfier, Son, and Spirit
is the* Vedic Trinity of Sur^ Fire, and Wind; and
God finally a cosmic unity*' Mr. Arnold quotes
indeed the name of Burnouf, but ke ought to have
knowp. that Eugene Burnouf has left no son and no
successor.

Those who would use a comparative study Sf re-
ligions as a means for lowering Christianity by exalt-
ing the other religions of mankind, are to my mind as
dangerous allies as those who think it necessary to
lower all other religions in order to exalt Christianity.
Science wants no partisans. I make no secret that true
Christianity, I mean the religion of Christ, seems to me
to become more and more exalted the more w8 know
and the more we appreciate the treasures of truth
hidden in the despised religions of the world. But
no one can honestly arrive at that conviction, unless
he uses honestly the same measure for all religions.
It would be fetal for any religion to claim an excep-
tional treatment, most of all for Christianity. Chris-
tianity enjoyed no privileges and claimed no immuni-
ties when it boldly confronted and Confounded thj
most ancient and the most powerful religions of the
world. Even at present it craves no mercy, and it
receives no mercy from those whom our missionaries
have to meet face to face in every part of the world.
Unless Christianity has ceased to be what it was, its
defenders should not shrink from this new trial of
strength, but should encourage rather than depreciate
the study of comparative theology.

I. 29

And -let me remark this, in the very beginning, that
no other religion, with th exception, pojchaps. of early
Buddhism*, would have favoured the idea*of an^ im-
partial qpmparisotf of the principal religions of the
world would ever hav^ tolerated our science. Ne&rly
every reHgion seems Jp adopt *the language of the
Pharisee rather ijian that of the Publican. It is Chris-
tianity alone which, as the religion of humanity, as
the religion of* no caste, of no chosen people, has
taught us to study tife history of mankind, as our
own, to discover the traces of a divine wisdom and
love in the development of all the races of the world,
and to recognise, if possible, even in the lowest and
crudest forms of religious belief, not the work of the
devil, but something that indicates a divine guidance,
something that makes us perceive, with St. Peter,
' that God. is no respecter of persons, but that in every
nation he that feareth him and worketh righteousness
is accepted with him/

In no religion was there a soil so well prepared for
the cultivation of Comparative Theology as in our
own. The position which Christianity Jfrim the very
beginning took up with regard to Judaism, served as
the first lesson in comparative tieology, and directed
Jhe attention wen of the unlearned to a comparison of
two religions, differing in their conception of the Deity,
in their estimate of humanity, in their motives of
morality, and in their hope of immortality, yet shar-*
ing so much in common that there are but few of the
psalms and prayers in thP01d Testament in which a
Christian cannot heartily join even now, anil but few
rules of morality wliiich he ought not even now to
obey. If we have once learnt to see in the exclusive

80 LTECTTJSES ON THE SCIENCE OF BELIGION.

religion *of the Jews a preparation of what was "to be
ifoe all-embracing religion df humanity, we shall feel
muck less*difficulty in recognising in the mazes of
other religions a hidden purpose; wanderiag in the
desert? it may be, but a preparation also for the land
of promise.

A study of these two religions, th% Jewish and the
Chrfstjp, such as it has long been carried on by some
of our moat learned divines, simultaneously with the
study of Greek and Boman mythology, has, in fact,
served as a most useful preparation for wider in-
quiries* Even the mistakes that have been committed
by earlier scholars have proved useful to those who
followed after; and, once corrected? they are not likely
to be committed again. The opinion, for instance, that
the pagan religions were mere corruption* of the reli-
gion of the Old Testament, once supported by men of
high authority and great learning, is now as com-
pletely surrendered as the attempts of explaining
Greek and Latin as corruptions of Hebrew l .

The theory again, that there was a primeval pre-
ternatural revelation granted to the fathers of the
human race, and that the grains of truth which catch
our eye when exploring the temples of heathen idols,
are the scattered fragments of that sacred heirloom,
the seeds that fell by the wayside or upon stony
places would find but few supporters at present ; no
more, in fact, than the theory that there was in the
beginning one complete and perfect primevaWanguagej

1 Tertolliqp, 'Apolog.* xtoii: 'Undo liaeo, oro voa, philosophis aut
poetistam oonflimilia* Nonnisi de aostri| sacrameutis : si do nostris
sacramentie, nt de prioribus, ergo fideliora aunt nostra magisque cre-
deada, quomm imagines quoqne fidem inveninnV See Hardwiok, 'Christ
and other Masters/ vol. i. p. 17.

LECTUBE I. 31

broker* up in later times into the numberless^nguages
of the world.

Some dther principles, too, hg,ve been Established
within tiis limit^d'sphere by a comparison of Judaism
and Christianity with 'the religions of Grfceca %nd
Borne, wffich will provf extremely useful in guiding
us in our own researches. It haS been proved, for
instance, that the language of antiquity is not like
the language of our own times ; that the language of
the East is not like th% language of the West; and
that, unless we make allowance for this, we cannot
but misinterpret the utterances of the most ancient
teachers and poets of the human race. The same
words do not meaa the same thing in Anglo-Saxon
and English, in Latin and French: much less can we
expect that tke words of any modern language should
be th^ exact equivalents of words belonging to an
ancient Semitic language, such as the Hebrew of the
Old Testament.

Ancient words and ancient thoughts, for both go
together, have in the Old Testament not yet arrived
at that stage of abstraction in which,, for instance,
active powers, whether natural or supernatural, can
be represented in any but a personal and more or
teas human form. When we speak of a temptation
from within or from without, it was more natural for
the ancients to speak of a tempter, whether in a
human or in an animal form ; when we speak <>f the
ever-presemt help of God, they call the Lord fteir
rock, and their fortress, their buckler, and their s big&
tower. They even sp^ak of 'the Rock tfc|& begat
them* (Deut. yinrii. 18), though in a very different
sense from that in which Homer speaks of the rock

32 LECTUBES ON TEE SCIENOm OF RELIGION.

from whence man has sprung. What with us' is a
heavenly message, or a godsend, was to them a winged
messenger? what wecall divine guidance, they speak
of.as a pillar of a cloud, to lead thsm the w$y, and a
pill&r -of light to give them %ht ; a refuge from the
storm, and a shadow'from the. heat. Whafr is really
meant is no doubt the same, and the ^ault is ours, not
their* s, if we wilfully misinterpret the language of ancient
prophets, if we persist in understanding their words in
their outward and material asjfect only, and forgetathat
before language had sanctioned a distinction between
the concrete and the abstract, between the purely spi-
rikial as opposed to the coarsely material, the inten-
tion of the speakers comprehended both the concrete
and tiie abstract, both the material and the spiritual
in a manner which has become "quite sirange to us s
though it lives on in the language of every trua poet.
Unless we make allowance for this mental parallax,
all our readings in the ancient skies will be, and must
be, erroneous. Nay, I believe it can be proved that
more than half of the difficulties in the history of
religion owe heir origin to this constant misinterpre-
tation of ancient language by modern language, of
ancient thought by modern thought, particularly when-
ever the word has become more sacrednthan the spirit.
That much of what seems to us, and seemed to the
best among the ancients, irrational and irreverent in
the mythologies of India, Greece, and Italy can thus
be removed, and that many of their childish fables
can thus be read again 9x their original child-like
sense, h&s been proved by the researches of Compa-
rative Mythologists. The phase of language which
gives rise, inevitably, we may say, to these misunder-

LEOTUEE L 33

standings, is earlier than the earliest literacy docu-
ments.' Its work in 'that Aryan languages was dona
before the time of the Veda, befqre the time of Homer,
though Jts influence continues io be felt to a much
later period.

Is it Mkely that the Semitic* languages, .and, more
particularly, Hejbrew, should, as *by a miracle, have
escaped altogether the influence of a process which is-
inherent in the very nature and growth of lafiguage,
and* which, in fact, may rightly be called an infantine
disease, against which no precautions can be of any
avail?

I hold indeed that the Semitic languages, for reasons
which I explained on a former occasion, have suffered
less from mythology than the Aryan languages ; yet
we have only to read the first chapters of Genesis in
order*to convince ourselves, that we shall never un-
derstand its ancient language rightly, unless we make
allowance for the influence of ancient language on
ancient thought* If we read, for instance, that after
the first man was created, one of his ribs was taken
out, and that rib made into a woman, every student of
ancient language sees at once that this" account must
not be taken in its bare, literal #ense. We need not
dwell on the &ct that in the first chapter of Genesis
'a far less startling account of the creation of man and
woman had been given. What could be simpler, and
therefore truer, than; 'So God created man in his ow$
image, injihe image of God created he him ; male an4
female created he them. And God blessed them, *&}
God eaid unto them, Be fruitful, and muH%>Iy, and
replenish th$ earth, and subdue it?' The question
then is, bow, after this account of the creation of

34 IECTXJBES OK THE SCIENCE* Off BELIQION.

man an4 woman, could there be a second
of the creation *)f man, of hislone estate in the garden
of Egen, aifll of the rgmoval of one of his ribs, which
wqp to be made into a help meet foshim?

TQose who are familiar witSi the genius of ancient
Hebrew, can hardly hesitate as to the original in-
tention of such traditions. Let us remember that
whefi we, in our modern languages, speak of the self-
same thing, the Hebrews speak of the bone (DSEP), the
Arabs of the eye of a*thing. "This is a well knt>wn
Semitic idiom, and it is not without analogies in other
languages. 'Bone' seemed a telling expression for
whfot we should call the innermost essence; 'eye* for
what we should call the soul or Self of a thing. In
the ancient hymns of the Veda v too, a poet asks :
( Who has seen the first-born, when he who had no
bones, i. e. no form, bore him that had bones ? ' i e.*when
that which was formless assumed form, or, it may be,
when that which had no essence, received an essence?
And he goes on to ask: * Where was the life, the
blood, the soul of the world? Who sent to ask this
from any thaihknew it?' In the ancient language of
the Veda, bone, blood, breath, are all meant to convey
more than what we sRould call their material meaning ;
but in course of time, the Sanskrit dtman, meaning
originally breath, dwindled away into a mere pro-
noun, and came to mean self. The same applies to
the Hebrew 'etzem. Originally meaning bone, it came
to be used at last as a mere pronominal adjective, in
the sense A of self or same.

After these preliminary catenations, we can well
tmderstand that, while if speaking and JvhiTiTdng ^ a
modern language Adam might have been made to say

%EOTURB I. 85

to Eve,;' Thou art the same as I am,' such a thought
would in ancient Hebrew be expressed by: 'Thou art*
bone of m^ bone, and flesh of my flesh.' Let sucb an
expression be rep&ted Jfor a feV generations only,
and a literal, that is to flay, a material and deceptive
interpretation, would so$n spring'uj^ and people would
at last bring themselves to believe that the first woman
was formed from the bone of the first man, or %om a
rib, for the simple reason, it may be, because it could
better be spared than any other bone. Such a mis-
understanding, once established, retained its place on
account of its very strangeness, for a taste for the
unintelligible springs up at a very early time, arid
threatens to destroy among ancient nations the power
of appreciating whatever is simple, natural, and whole-
some. Thus o&ly can it be explained that the account
pf the creation of the woman obtained its place in
the second chapter, though in dear opposition to what
had been said in the first chapter of Genesis \

It is not always possible to solve these ancient
riddles, nor are the interpretations which have been
attempted by various scholars always Bright. The
only principle I stand up for is this, that mis-
understandings of this kind are iaevitable in ancient
languages, and tkat we must be prepared to meet with
tfiem in the religions of the Semitic as well as of the
Aryan nations.

Let us take another Semitic religion, the ancient
religion of JBabylon, as described to us in the frag-
ments of Berosus. The similarities between thai re-
ligion and the religion^ of the Jews are noJ to be
mistaken, but such is the contrast between the sim-

i See 'Selected Essaya,' vol. ii. p. 45<*.

36 LECTURES ON THli BOIESOa OF RELIQIOtf.

plicdty <rf the Bible language sad the wild; estra-
iragance0f tha Babylonian fheogonies, that it requires
soxoe courage to guess at the original outlines behind
tbe distorted featured of a hideous caricature*.

We* have no reason to doubt the accuracy of
Berosus in describing the religion of the Babylonians,
at least for the time in which he lived. He' was a
Baby^nian by birih, a priest of the temple of Belus,
a contemporary of Alexander the Great. He wrote
the History of the Ghaldseans, in Greek, evidently
intending it to be read by the Greek conquerors,
and he states in his first book that he composed it
frta the registers, astronomical and chronological,
which wete preserved at Babylon, and which com-
prised a period of 200,000 yearj (150,000, according
to the Syncellus). The history of Beroeus is lost.
Extacte from it had been made by Alexand* Poly-
histor, in the first eeatury before our era-, but his
work too is lost, Ife still existed, however, at the
&ne when Eusebius {1*70-340) wrote his Chrtmicon,
Mid wa& used by him in describiBg the ancient history
of Babylon, * But the Chronicle of Eusebius, too, is
lotj at least ia Greek, and it is only in an Armenian
trat&h&oii of Eus%bittg that many of the passages
have beea preserved to us> which reffir to the bisto^
of Babylon, a& originally described by Berosns. This
Armenian translation was published in 1818, and its
importance was first pointed out by Niebuhr 2 , As
we possess large extraejs from usebitt$ preserved

1 Bnn SOT ,-EgypViT.> 3 64.

8 Eusebii Pwaphili OaesMitte Eptacopi Ghronfoott Bto^tekXL.
jxtmo ynsam ex Armemaoo textu in Latinum conversmn, opera P. Jo.
BAwjfcer Vena

LEOTUKE I. 87

by Geergius the Syneellus, i. e, the coneellanens, or
cell-companion, the Vice^patriarch of Constantinople,
who wrdte a Chronography about 800 "A. p., it is
possible* in several places to compare the original
Greek text "with the Armenian, and thus to establish
the trustworthiness of $ie Arm&dan translation.

Ber&sus thus describes the Babylonian traditions of
the creation * :

* There was a time in which all was darkness and
water, and in these were generated monstrous orear
tures, having mixed forms ; men were born with two
and some with four wings, with two faces, having one
body, but two heads, a man's and a woman's, and
bearing the marks* of male and female nature; and
other men with the legs and horns of goats, or with
horses' feet, *and having the hind quarters of horses,
but ttie fore part of men, being in fact like Hip-
pocentaurs. Bulls also were produced having human
heads, and dogs with four bodies, having fishes' tails
springing from their hinder parts; and horses with
dogs 1 heads, and men and other creatures, having
heads and bodies of horses, but tails ,,of fishes ; and
other creatures having the shape of all sorts of beasts.
Besides these, fishes, and reptHes, and snakes and
^many other wonderful and strange beings, one having
the appearance of the other, the images of which are
to be seen in the temple of Belus. At the head of all
was a woman, called Qmorka* (Armen, Mwca$a)> -which

* Eusebii duonioan, voL 1. p, 29* 'Pwgmentft mtia&#wa*? Vt*. *t

P- 497- , V

According to Lenaraaitf (' Deluge,* p, 30) BotH TTn*TTwtk In
moeEerm Armenian, Ana-iurg* is said to mean teotor.e*rth P Prof.
!Dietrf<&e^ii^ttewOT4w^ See
Bnnaen's * Egypt,' fr. p. 150.

38 LEOTUBES ON THE SOIENCJB OF BELIGTOff.

is said to be Thalatih 1 in Chaldean, and translated
in Greelj;, Thalassa (or serf). When all these were
thus togetBer, Belus eame and cut the wonufn in two :
and one half of her he made the e&ih, and the other
half the sky; and he destroyed all the creatures that
were in her. But thiS account* of nature i&Tx) be un-
derstood aUegoricafty. For when allr was stilt moist,
and "creatures were born in it, then the god (Belus)
cut off his own head, and the gods mixed the blood
that flowed from it with the earth, and formed men ;
wherefore men are rational, and participate in the
divine intelligence/

*And Belus, whom they explain as Zeus (and the
Armenians as Aramazd), cut the darkness in two, and
separated earth and heaven from each other, and
ordered the world. And animals which could not
bear the power of the light, perished. And <33elus,
when he saw the desert and fertile land, commanded
one of the gods to cut off his head, to mix the earth
with the blood flowing from it, and to form men and
beasts that could bear the air. And Belus established
also the stars^and the sun, and the moon, and the five
planets.'

1 Mr. Sayce writes to mtf: 'Perhaps Lenonnant is right in correcting
(when compared with the Toi>0* or Tavftjaof Damascins) into
that is, the Assyrian T&amtu or Tamtu, the sea, ihe Hetf
In this case the correspondence of ihe Babylonian account
with Genesis i. 2 will be even greater ' Bunsen explained Tal&deth
from the Hebrew yalad, as meaning 'laying eggs.' Bunsen's 'Egypt,'
vol. iv p. 150, Dr, Haupt ('Die SumeriBohe^kkadis^he Spraohe,'
p. 276) points out ifcat m in Sumei^Accadian dwindled down to v, and
that the same change may be observed in Assyrian also. Thus the
Assyria^ Tdmdu, sea (- tahmatu, or ti 'amdu, ti'tontu, stat. oonstr.
t' ftmat; cf Hebrew tehom) is represented as Tavfll by Damascius,
'Qsestaones de primis principiis/ ed. Eopp. p. 384), and Damkina, the

LECTTOE I. 89

Nothing can be at first sight more senseless and
confused than this Babylonian version* of ttye genesis
of the earth and of man ; yet, ifr we examine it more
carefully, we can stjjl distinguish the following
elements :

i. In file beginning tthere waS darkness and water.

In Hebrew: Darkness was upon the face of the
deep,

a. The heaven was divided from the earth.

Ift Hebrew : Let there be aftrmament in the midst
of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the

waters And God called the firmament Heaven ;

and God called the dry land Earth.

3. The stars were made, and the sun and the moon,
and the five planets.

In Hebrew : And God made two great lights ; the
greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to
rule the night ; he made the stars also.

4. Animals of various kinds were created.

5. Men were created.

It is in the creation of animals in particular that
the extravagant imagination of the Babylonians finds
its widest scope. It is said that the images of these
creatures are to be seen in the temple of Belus, and as
their description certainly agrees with some of the
figures of gods and heroes that may now be seen in
the British Museum, it is not unlikely that the Baby-
lonian story of the creation of these monsters may
have arisen from the contemplation of the a&efc&t
idols in the temples of BaBylon. But this waM still
leave the original conception of such moj&$ere unex-
plained.

The most important point, however, is this, that

40 LEOTUBES OK THE SOIENOEf OF RELIGION.

*

the Babylonians represented man as participating in
divine intelligence. The syntbolical language in which
they* express this ida is no doubt horrible* and dis-
gusting, but let us recollect tfeat tlie JIebrewsymbol,
too,*' that God breathed into n>an's nostrils the breath
of life/ is after all but another weak attempt at ex-
pressing the same idea, an idea so exalted tnat no
language can ever express it without loss or injury,

In order to guess with some hope of success at the
original meaning of ancient traditions, it is absolutely
necessary that we should be familiar with the genius
of the language in which such traditions took their
origin. Languages, for instance, which do not denote
grammatical gender, will be free from many mytho-
logical stories which in Sanskrifc, Greek, and Latin
are inevitable. Dr. Bleek, the indefatigable student
of African languages, has frequently dwelt oft this
fact. In the Preface to his Comparative Grammar
of the South- African Languages, published in 1863,
he says :

' The forms of a language may be said to constitute
in some degree the skeleton frame of the human mind
whose thoughts they express .... How dependent,
for example, the higl&st products of the human mind,
the religious ideas and conceptions d? even highly
civilized nations, may be upon this manner of speak-
ing has been shown by Max-Muller, in his essay on
Comparative Mythology (Oxford Essays, I855) 1 .
This will become still more evident from otfr African
researches. The primary cause of the ancestor wor-
ship of the one race (Kafirs, Degrees, and Polyne-
sians), and of the sidereal worship, or of those forms
1 'Chips from a German Workshop,' vol. ii. pp. 1-146.

LEOTUBE I* 4rl

of religion which have sprung from the veneration of
heavenly bodies, of th<J other (Hottentots, North-
African, Semitic, and Aryan nations), is Supplied "by
the ve^p- forms, W their languages. The nations
speaking Sex-denoting languages are distinguished
by a higher poetical^ conception, by which human
agencj- is transferred to other beirfgs, and even to in-
animate things, in consequence of which iheir* per-
sonification takes place, forming the origin of*almost
all mythological legends. This faculty is not de-
veloped in the Kafir mind, because not suggested by
the form of their language, in which the nouns of
persons are not (as in the Sex-denoting languages)
thrown together with those of inanimate beings into
the same classes or genders, but are in separate classes,
without anj* grammatical distinction of sex 1 /

If ttierefore, without* possessing a knowledge of the
Zulu language, I venture on an interpretation of an
account of creation that has sprung up in the thought
and language of the Zulus, I do so with great hesita-
tion, and only in order to show, by one instance at
least, that the religions of savages, too, will have to

1 See also his Preface to the second volume of the Comparative
Grammar, published 1869. Mr. E. B.* Tylor has some valuable
yremarka on the satne subject, in his article on the Beligion of Savages,
in the Fortnightly Review, 1866, p. 80. Looked at from a higher poiftt
of view, it la, of couse, not language, as such, which dominate* &*
mjnd, but thought and language are only two manifestations of the same
energy, mutually determining each other. Failing to jtewarw ifc& *&
haa to take efnge, like ^ylor, with the oM ao-aOU* atf '" '

as the apparent source of all mythology. Bat
tautological, not a genetic explanation of my$i
important difference betwee^the inevitable nd 4fe*
of the genius of language. The deepest ecruroe of mjCfce&gy lies in tho
former, and must be carefully dm$pgraBhed from the later sporadic
diseases of language.

42 LECTUBES ON THE SCIENCE OF EELIGION.

submit hereafter to the same treatment whidi we
apply to the sacred traditions of the Semite and
Axypn nations. I should not be at all surprised if
tile tentative interpretation whidf J venturgi to pro-
pos$, -were proved to be untenable by those who
have studied the ZuJu dialec^p, but I shalFbe much
more ready to surrender my interpretation, fehan to
lose*the conviction that there is no solid foundation
for the study of the religions of savages except the
study of their languages.

How impossible it is to arrive at anything like a
correct understanding of the religious sentiments of
savage tribes without an accurate and scholarlike
knowledge of their dialects, is best shown by the old
controversy whether there are any tribes of human
beings entirely devoid of religious sentiments or no.
Those who, for some reason or other, hold that re-
ligious sentiments are not essential to human nature,
find little difficulty in collectijjg statements of tra-
vellers and missionaries in support of their theory.
Those who hold the opposite opinion find no more
difficulty in rebutting such statements 1 . Now the
real point to settle before we adopt the one or the
other view is, what feind of authority can be claimed
by those whose opinions we quote; did they really
know the language, and did they know it, not onljT
sufficiently well to converse on ordinary subjects, but
to enter into a friendly and unreserved conversation
on topics on which even highly educated people are
so apt to misunderstand %ach other? We want in-
formant^, in fact, like Dr. Callaway, Dr. Bleek, men

1 See Schelling, Werke, vol. i p 72 ; and Mr. B. B. Tyler's reply to
Sir John Lubbock, 'Primitive Culture,' vol. i p. 381.

LEOTUBE I. 43

who are both scholars and philosophers. Savages
are shy and silent in th3 presence of white ^itien, and
they have a superstitious reluctance against mention-
ing evott the naifies of their gods and heroes. Not
many years ago it wae^supposed, on what would 'seem
to be gold authority, Jthat the Zulus had no religious
ideas tit all ; at* present our very* Bishops have been
silenced by their theological inquiries.

Captain Gardiner, in his Narrative of a Journey to
theZoolu Country undertaken in 1835, gives the
following dialogue:

'Have you any knowledge of the power by whom
the world was made? When you see the sun rising
and setting, and tbe trees growing, do you know who
made them and who governs them 2'

TPAI, a Zlu (af^er a little pause, apparently deep
in thought), 'No ; we see them, but cannot tell how
they come; we suppose that they come of them-
selves/

A. ' To whom then do you attribute your success
or failure in war ? '

TPAI. 'When we are not suceessfu], and do not
take cattle, we think our father (Itango) has not
looked upon us.'

A. 'Do yoa think your father's spirits (Amatongo)
'made the world ? '

TPAI. 'No.'

A. 'Where do you suppose the spirit of man goes
after it leaves the body 1 ?*

TPAI, 'We cannot tell/

A. 'Do you think it lives for ever?'

TPAI. 'That we cannot tell; we believe that the
spirit of our forefathers looks upon us when we go

44 LECTURES ON THE SOIEKOB OF BELIQION.

to war ; but we do not think about it at any "other
time. 3

A* *T?oft admit that you cannot control &e suu or
th moon, or even make a hair of J^ur head J/o grow.
Eafeyou no idea of any fiower capable of doing
this?'

TPAJ *No; we*know of none: ^ know tbat we
camfot do these things, and we suppose that they
come of themselves.'

It may seem difficult to find a deeper shade of
religious darkness than is pictured in this dialogue.
But now let us hear the account which the Eev, Dr.
Callaway 1 gives of the fundamental religious notions
which he, after a long residence among the various clans
of the Zulus, after acquiring an intimate knowledge of
their language, and, what is still luvu-e jB^portant, after
gaining their confidence, was able to extract from their
old men and women. They all believe, first of all,
in an ancestor of each particular family and clan, and
also in a common ancestor of the whole race of man.
That ancestor is generally called the Unkulunkulu,
which means^ the great-great-grand&ther 2 When

1 Dr. Callaway, 'TTnfculimkulu,' p. 54

9 Ibid, p. 48. UAfalufi&ufa, the word by which God is rendered fn
Zulu, is derived, according to Bleek, by reduplicatton of a (nasalised^
form of the 9th class from the adjective stem -kulu (great, large, oldf
n-ku-kula, to grow, etc.), and seems to mean originally a great-great-
grandfather, or the first ancestor of a family or tribe, though perhaps
the unnaBalised form v-kuluJcuTto is at present more usual in this signi-
fication. Then it was applied by metapnor to that being from whom
everything was derived, who ae*>rding to the Zulu tradition has
created airmen, animals, and other things to whom life and death
are due, &c. In Inhambane the word for God, derived from the same
root is Mvfa&ffufa; in Ki-hiztu, Ki-kamba, and Kinika it is JKW^^w;
in Ej-suiJheli, Mhagu; in Makua, Muhngo or MuMo; in Sofala,
m Tette, Murwiffo or Mornngo ; in the Ku-suaTieli dialect

LECTURE I. 45

pressejL as to the father of this great-great-grandfather,
the general answer of tfie Zulus seems to 1$& that he
'branched off fronj a reed/ or ihat he 'c&me from a
bed of *eeds.'

Here, I cannot help* suspecting that languag has
been at Vork spinning mytholbgy. In Sanskrit the
word ^parvan) which means originally a knot or joint
in a cane, comes to mean a link, a member;* and,
transferred to a family, it expresses the different shoots
and* scions that spring from the original stem. The
name for stem or race and lineage in Sanskrit is
vajrc&a, which originally means a reed, a bamboo-cane.
In the Zulu language a reed is called uthlanga, strktly
speaking a reed which is capable of throwing out off*
shoots 1 . It comes thus metaphorically to mean a
source of besng. & father is the uthlanga of his chil-
dren* who are supposed to have branched off from
him. Whatever notions at the present day the ignor-
ant among the natives may have of the meaning
of this tradition, so much seems to be generally
admitted, even among Zulus, that originally Ifc
could not have been intended to t$aeh that men
sprang from a real reed 2 . c lt cannot be doubted/
T)r. Callaway writes, 'that the*word alone has come
down to the people, whilst the meaning has been

108k*

of Mombas, Mtingu; in the Ki-pofeomo, JfvA^o; in Otyi-Hererd,
Afiubcn* ; see Bleek, ' Comparative Grammar,' 389-394,
taU Jftftett IB our fatter Muter* ; eee Eolbe^
Dictionary,' s. T.God. O

1 Dr. Callaway, ' TTnknlunbalu,' p. a, note,

1 In Herero, ' tna memnjsi Mtzkurtt 9 meaas, ^ ^fe'l^wa oreftted,
i.e. broken trat of the omiinoboromtKjng* (<a**fck-kde) 1n Herero
fashion by Hukuru ; see Kolbs'e ' English-Heraro rfiatianary,* s v.
God.

46 LECTUBES ON THE SCIENCE OF BELIGUOff.

The interpretation which I venture to progose of
this Zulu myth is this: The Zulus may have said
originally that they T*ere all offshoots of a re6d, using
reed in the same sense in which vawfeq, is usedIn San-
skrit? and meaning therefore no jnore than that they all
were children of one father, members of one ft,ce. As
the word uthlanga, Much came to meaji race, retained
also its original meaning, viz. reed, people, unaccus-
tomed 6> metaphorical language and thought, would
soon say that men camja from A reed, or were fetched
from a bed of reeds, while others would take Uthlanga
for a proper name and make him the ancestor of the
human race. Among some Zulu tribes we actually
find that while TJnkulunkulu is the first man, Uth-
langa is represented as the first woman 1 . Among
other tribes where Unkulunkulu was the first man,
Uthlanga became the first woman (p. 58).

Every nation, every clan, every family requires
sooner or later an ancestor. Even in comparatively
modern times the Britons, or the inhabitants of Great
Britain, were persuaded that it was not good to be
without an ancestor, and they were assured by Geof-
frey of Monmouth that they might claim descent from
Brutus. In the same manner the Hellenes, or the
ancient inhabitants of Hellas, claimed descent from
Hellen. The name of Hellenes, originally restricted
to a tribe living in Thessaly 2 , became in time the
name of the whole nation 8 , and hence it was but
natural that ^Jolos, the ancestor of the Eolians,

1 Dr. Galloway, 'Unkulunknln,' p. 58. According to tlie Popol Voh
the first woman was created from the xnarrW of a reed see 'Selected
Essays/ ii. p. 394-

* Horn. E. a. 684. i Hmcyd, i. 3.

LECTURE I, 47

ijhe ancestor of the Dorians, and Xuthos, the
father of Achseos and lorQ should all be represented
as the sons of Hellen. So far aft is intelligible, if,we
will onlyrxemembQr*that this is the technical language
of the heraldic office of ancient Greece.

But very soon the question "arose, who was the
father o Hellen^the ancestor of the Greeks, or, ac-
cording to the intellectual horizon of the ancient
Greeks, of the whole human race? If he was the
ancestor of the whole Human race, or the first man,
he could only be the son of Zeus, the supreme god,
and thus we find that Hellen is by some authorities
actually called the son of Zeus. Others, however,
give a different account. There was in Greece, as in
many countries, the tradition of a general deluge by
which every living being had been destroyed, except
a few ^ho escaped in a boat, and who, after the flood
had subsided, repeopled the earth, The person thus
saved, according to Greek traditions, was called Deu-
kahon, the ruler of Thessaly, the son *of Prome-
theus. Prometheus had told him to build a ship and
furnish it with provisions, and when ths flood came,
he and his wife Pyrrha were the only people who
escaped.

Thus it will be seen that the Greeks had really two
ancestors of the human race, Hellen and Deukalion,
and in order to remove this difficulty, nothing re-
mained but to make Hellen the son of Deukalion.
All this is perfectly natural and intelligible* if
only we will learn to s|>eak, and not otofy $o
speak, but also to think the language of tte*aii@&Lt
world.

The story then goes on to explain how Deukalion

48 LECTUBES ON THE SOIENOS OF RELIG-IOff.

became the father of all the people on earth; .that he
and his^ffife Pyrrha were t6ld to throw stones (or the
bones of &e earth) backward behind thenf, and that
tfeese stones became men and woin^n. No^ here we
have "clearly a myth or a joiracle, a miracle, too,
without any justification, for jf Pyrrha was the wife
of Deukalion, wh should not Eellen be thear son?
Alll)e.jsomes clear, if we look at the language in which
the story is told. Pyrrha means the Red, and was
originally a name for the red Dearth. As the Hellenes
claimed to be indigenous or autochthonic, born of the
earth where they lived, Pyrrha, the red Earth, was
naturally called their mother, and being the mother
of the Hellenes, she must needs be made the wife of
Deukalion, the father of the Hellenes. Originally,
however, Deukalion, like Manu In India, was repre-
sented as haying alone escaped from the deluge, and
hence the new problem how, without a wife, he could
have become the father of the people ? It was in this per-
plexity, no doubt, that the myth arose of his throwing
stones behind him, and these stones becoming the new
population o| the earth. The Greek word for people
WB Xiwfe, that for stones A ; hence what could be
more natural, whei* children asked, whence the Acwfe
or the people of Deukalion came a tban to say that
they came from XSes or stones l ?

I might give many more instances of the same
kind, all showing that there was a meaning in the

1 The IJortii American Indians told Roger Williams, that 'they hud
it from their fathers, that Kautantowwtf made one man and woman
of a stone, which disliking, he broke thfim in pieoes, and made Another
man and woman of a tree, which were the fountain of all mankind.'
* Publications of Narraganaett Club/ voL i. p. 158.

LEOTUBE I. 49

most t&aaningless traditions of antiquity, all show-
ing, what is still more important, that these tradi-
tions, many of them in their present sttffee* absurd
and repqjlsive, regaftn a simple, intelligible, and even
beautiful character if ^e divest them of the -cflist
which language in its inevitable decay has formed
around "them.

We never lose, we always gain, when we discover
the most ancient intention of sacred traditions, instead
of beong satisfied with 'their l$ter aspect, and their
modern misinterpretations. Have we lost anything
if, while reading the story of Hephsestos splitting open
with his axe the head of Zeus, and Athene springing
from it, full armed** we perceive behind this savage
imagery, Zeus as the bright Sky, his forehead as
the East, Hephsestos"as the young, not yet risen Sun,
and Athene as the Dawn, the daughter of the Sky,
stepping forth from the fountain-head of light

r\av/c7rw, with eyes like an owl (and beautiful they
are);

UapO&os, pure as a virgin;

Xptf tro the golden ;

'Ajcpfa, lighting up the tops of the mountains, and
her own glorious Parthenon in he$own favourite town
of Athens ;

JIoXAeiy, whirling the shafts of light;

'AX^o, the genial warmth of the morning;

Uptpaxos, the foremost champion in the battle
between night and day;

H(iz;o7rXos, in full armour* in her panoply, of Bgit,
driving away the darlpiess of night, and r &a$ng men
to a bright life, to bright thoughts, to bright endea-
vours?

60 LEorraEs ON THE SCIENCE OF BELIGHON.

Would the Greek gods lose in our eyes i instead
of believing that Apollon tnd Artemis murcfered the
twelve children of.Niobe, we perceived feat Niobe
was, in a former period of language, a nam^ of snow
and innter, and that no nft>re was intended by the
ancient poet than tfeat Apolfon and Artemis, the ver-
nal deities, must ftlay every year wi|h their darts the
briHiant and beautiful, but doomed children of the
Sno\^? Is it not something worth knowing, worth
knowing even to us^ after the lapse of four qr five
thousand years, that before the separation of the
Aryan race, before the existence of Sanskrit, Greek,
or, Latin, before the gods of the Veda had been wor-
shipped, and before there was % sanctuary of Zeus
among the sacred oaks of Dodona, one supreme Deity
had been found, had been namdfl, had .been invoked
by the ancestors of our race, and had been mvofced
by a name which has never been excelled by any
other name, Dyaus, Zeus, Jupiter, Tyr, all meaning
originally light and brightness, a concept which on
one side became materialized as sky, morning, and
day, while on the other it developed into a name of
the bright and heavenly beings, the Devas, as one of
the first expression^ of the Divine?

No, if a critical examination of the ancient language
of our own religion leads to no worse results thaJh
those which have followed from a careful interpreta-
tion of the petrified language of ancient India and
Greece, we need not fear; we shall be gjiineors, not
losers. Like an old previous metal, the ancient reli-
gion, after the rust of ages has been removed, will
come out in all its purity an*d brightness: and the
image which it discloses will be the image of the

LECTURE I. 51

Father,' the Father of all the nations upon earth ;
and the "superscription, when we can read it again,
will be, not in Judaea only, but i$ the languages fl of
all the rjces of thfc world, the Word of God, re;
vealedj where alone it cafi. be revealed, revealed n
the heart 06 man.

SECOND LECTURE.

DELIVEBEp AT THE ROYAL INSTITUTION^
FEBBUABY 36, 1870.

flpHERE is no lack of materials for the student of
JL the Science of "Religion. It is true tha, com-
pared with the number of languages which the com-
parative philologist has to deal with, the number of
religions is small. In a comparative study of lan-
guages, however, we find most of our materials ready
for use ; we possess grammars and dictionaries, while
it is difficult to 'say, where we are fc> look for the
grammars and dictionaries of the principal religions
of the world. Not in the catechisms, or the articles,
not even in the so-called creeds 1 or confessions of faith
which, if they do not give us an actual misrepresen-
tation of the doctrines which they profess to epitomise,
give us always the shadow only, and never the soul
and substance of a religion. But how seldom do we
find even such helJ>sJ

Among Eastern nations it is not unusual to distin-
guish between religions that are founded on a book,
and others that have no such vouchers to produce.

1 'What are creeds? Skeletons, freezing abstractly metaphysical
expressions of unintelligible dogmas; and these I am to regard as the
expositions of the fresh, living, infinite truth which came from Jesus !
I aught with equal propriety be required to hear and receive the
lispings of infancy as the expressions of wisdom, Creeds are to the
Scriptures, what rushlights are to the sun.* Dr. Charming, 'On
Creeds/

LECTURE II. 53

The former are considered more respectable, and,
though they may contain* false doctrine, th#y are
looked upon as a kind of aristocracy among the
vulgar and nondescript crjpwd of bookless or illiterate
reKgions 1 .

To the student of religion canonical books are, no
doubt, of the utmost importance, but he ought never
to forget that canonical books too give the reflgofed
image only of the real doctrines of the founder of a
new religion, an image always Wurred and distorted
by the medium through which it had to pass. And
how few are the religions which possess a sacred canon!
how small is the aristocracy of real book-religions in
the history of the world 1

Let us look at the. two races that have been the
principal actors in that great drama which we call
the history of the world, the Aryan and the Semitic^
and we shall find that two members only of each race
can claim the possession of a sacred code. Among
the Aryans, the Hindus and the Persians; among the
Shemites, the Hebrews and the Arabs. In the Aryan
family the Hindus, in the Semitic family the Hebrews,
have each produced two book-religions; the Hindus
have given rise to Brahmanism aad Buddhism; the
I^pbrews to Mtf&aism and Christianity, Nay, it is
important to observe that in each family the third
book-religion can hardly lay daim to an independent.
origin, but is only a weaker repetition of ike firsi,
Zoroastrianism has its sources in the aams

1 Even before Mohammed, % people in posaeo&mrf fc{
ktt&Owerein Ajabio distiiigiiififad from the mnsaiynn, ttofeatihea.
The aama ahl i klttfb W9*> howler, property restricted to
t 868 Jfate A*

54 LECTTOES ON THE SCIENCE OP BELIGUON,

which fed the deeper and broader stream X>f Vedie
religion ^Mohammedanism springs, as far^fts its most
vital doctrines are" concerned, frgm the ancient foun-
tain-head of the religion o Abraham, the Worshipper
andlhe friend of the one tnre God.

If you keep befofe your mind the following simple
outline, you can see at one glance tile river-system in
which the religious thought of the Aryan and the
Semitic nations has been running for centuries of
those, at least, who "are in possession of sacrdd and
canonical books.

ARYAN FAMILY.
Veda

SEMITIC FAMILY,
Old Testament

Zend-Avesta
ZoroastaanJBm

Ttjpirfaka
Buddhism

New Testament

Christianity

AKYAN-

Koran

While Buddhism is the direct offspring, and, at the
same time, the antagonist of Erahmanism, Z/oroas-
trianism is rather a deviation from the straight course
of ancient Vedic fedth, though it likewise contains a
protest against some of the doctrines of the earliest
worshippers of the Vedic gods. The same, or nearly
the same relationship holds together the three prin-

LEOTUBE II. 55

cipal religions of the Semitic stock, only that, chrono-
logically, ]ohanimedanism is later than Christianity,
while Zoroastrianism is earlier than. Buddhisin.

Observe also another, and, as we shall see, by no
means accidental coincidence in the parallel ramifica-
tions of these two religious stems?

BuddMsm, which is the offspring of, but at the
same time marks a reaction against, the ancient frah-
manism of Eadia, withered away after a time on the
soil from which it had sprung, And assumed its real
importance only after it had been transplanted from
India, and struck root among Turanian nations in the
very centre of the Asiatic continent. Buddhism,
being at its birth an* Aryan religion, ended by becom-
ing the principal religion of the Turanian world.

The same transference took place in the second
stem. * Christianity, being the offspring of Mosaism,
was rejected by the Jews as Buddhism was by the
Brahmans. It failed to fulfil its purpose as a mere
reform of the ancient Jewish faith, and not till it
had been transferred from Semitic to Aryan ground,
from the Jews to the Gentiles, did it devjelope its real
nature and assume its world-wide importance. Having
been at its birth a Semitic religion, it became the
jrincipal religion of the Aryan world.

There is one other nation only, outside the pale of
the Aryan and Semitic families, which can claim one,
or even two book-religions as its own. China is the
mother ofr two religions, each founded on a &&3R&
code the religion of Conrucius, (Kung Fu-tee, i e.
Rung, the Master,) and the religion of Lacntee, the
former resting on the ^Tive King and the Four Shu,
the latter on the Tao-te-king.

56 LECTURES ON THE SCIENCE OF BELIGUON.

With these eight religions the library of th^ Sacred
Books of the whole humarf race is complete, and an
acqirate Study of these eight codes, written in San-
s^rit, P&li, and Zend, in Eebrew^Cfcreek, and Arabic,
lastly in Chinese s might in itself not seem too formid-
able an undertaking d or a single scholar. Yet, let us
begin at home, atfd look at the enormous literature
devoted to the interpretation of the Old Testament,
and the number of books published every year on
controverted points i^ the dtfctrine or the history of
the Gospels, and you may then form an idea of what
a theological library would be that should contain
tbe necessary materials for an accurate and scholar-
like interpretation of the eight sacred codes. The
Tao-te-king, the canonical book of the followers of
Lao-tse, contains only about 5,320 woids, the com-
mentaries written to explain its meaning are endless 1 .
Even in so modern, and, in the beginning, at least, so
illiterate a religion as that of Mohammed, the sources
that have to be consulted for the history of the faith
during the early centuries of its growth are so abund-
ant, that few critical scholars could master them in
their completeness 2 .

If we turn our eyes to the Aryan religions, the

1 Julian, ' Tao-te-king,* p. xrsv; see infra, p. 62.

1 Sprengsr, ' Das Leben des Mohammed, 1 vol. i. p. 9 : 'Bie Quellen,
die ich benutzt babe, sind 90 zallreich, trad der Zustand der Gelehr-
samkeit war unter den Moalimen in ihrer Urzeit von dera unHrigen so
verscMeden, dasa die Materialien, die ioh fiber die Quelfen geaammelt
tabe, ein ziemlich beleibtes Banchhen bilden werden, Es 1st in der
Th%t nothwesdig, die Literatnigesohiohte dee Islam der ersten zwei
Jabrhunderte am. schreiben, mn den Les^f in. den Stand m setzen, den
tier gesammelten kritisohen Apparat zn bemitzen. Ioh gedenke die
Eesoltate meiner Foreohungen ala eins separates Werkohen iwwh der
PtopheteoibiograpMe horauszngeben.^

LEOTtTBB II. 67

sacred ^writings of the Brahmans, in the narrowest
acceptation of the word?, might seem within easy
grasp. The hymns of the Big-*reda, whiBh are the
real bible of the-ancient faith of the Vedic Bishis, $re
only 1,028 in number consisting of about scQjSo
verses 1 . ^The commentary, however, on these hymns,
of which I ha?we published six * good-sized quarto
volumes, is estimated at 100,000 lines consisting of
32 syllables each, that is at 3,200,000 syllables 2 .
There are, besides, the three minor Vedas, the Ya#ur-
veda, the S&ma-veda, the Afcharva-veda, which, though
of less importance for religious doctrines, are indis-
pensable for a right appreciation of the sacrifioial
and ceremonial system of the worshippers of the
ancient Vedic gods.

To each ef these" four Vedas belong collections of
so-called Br&hmanas, scholastic treatises of a later
time, it is true, but nevertheless written in archaic
Sanskrit, and reckoned by every orthodox Hindu as
part of his revealed literature. Their bulk is much
larger than that of the ancient Vedic hymn-books.

And all this constitutes the text only for number-
less treatises, essays, manuals, glosses, &c., forming an
uninterrupted chain of theological literature, extend-
ing over mor^than three thousand years, and receiv-
ing new links even at the present time. There are,
besides, the inevitable parasites of theological litera-
ture, the controversial writings of different scboofe of
thought and faith, all claiming to be orthodox, yefe
differing from each other *Hke day and uigfetj od
lastly, the compositions of writers, pcofefeedly at

1 Max Muller, 'History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature,' p. aao.
SeeffoteB.

58 LEOTUBES ON THE SCIENCE OF BELIGION.

variance with the opinions of the majority, declared
enemies ef the Brahmanic taith and the B^ahmanic
priesthood, wnose accusations and insinuations, whose
sledge-hammer arguments, and whose*poisone<f arrows

of theological warfare In any other country.

Nor can we exclude the sacred latf-books, nor the
ancieni^ epic poems, the Mah&bh&rata and K&m&yana,
nor the more modern, yet sacred literature of India,
the Pur&was and Tantras, if we'wish to gain an insight
into the religious belief of millions of human beings,
who, though they all acknowledge the Veda as their
supreme authority in matters of faith, are yet unable
to understand one single line of it," and in their daily
life depend entirely for spiritual food on the teaching
conveyed to them by these more receiffc and more
popular books.

And even then our eye would not have reached
many of the sacred recesses in which the Hindu
mind has taken refuge, either to meditate on the
great problems of life, or to free itself from the
temptations and fetters of worldly existence by
penances and mortifications of the most exquisite
cruelty. India has *always been teeming with re-
ligious sects, and as far as we can lo r ok back into**
the history of that marvellous country, its religious
life has been broken up into countless local centres
which it required all the ingenuity and perseverance
of a priestly caste to hold^ together with a Semblance
of dogmatic uniformity. Some of these sects may
almost claim the title of independent religions, as,
for instance, the once famous sect of the Sikhs,
possessing their own sacred code and their own

LECTURE II, 59

priesthood, and threatening for a time to become a
formidable rival of Brahmanism and Mohammedanism
in India. Political circumstances gave to" the sect of
Mnaknts historical prominence and more lasting
fame. To the student of religion it is but 0n out
of many sects which took theirnorigin in the fifteenth
and s&teenth centuries, and attempted to replace the
corruptions of Hinduism and Mohammedanism n by a
purer and more spiritual worship. The Granth, i.e.
the Volume, the sacred book of the Sikhs, though
tedious as a whole, contains here and there treasures
of really deep and poetical thought: and we may
soon hope to have a complete translation of iir by
Dr. Trumpp 1 . But there are other collections of
religious poetry, mgre ancient and more original than
the stanzas*of N&nak ; nay, many of the most beau-
tiful 1 verses of the Granth were borrowed from these
earlier authorities, particularly from Kabir, the pupil
of R&m&nand. Here there is enough to occupy the
students of religion : an intellectual flora of greater
variety and profuseness than even the natural flora of
that fertile country.

And yet we have not said a word as yet of the
second book-religion of Indian of the religion of
Buddha, originally one only out of numberless sects,
but possessing a vitality which has made its branches
to overshadow the largest portion of the inhabited
globe. Who can say I do not speak of European
scholars* only, but of the most learned members of
the Buddhist fraternities who can say that he has

1 This translation has since been published* * The Adi Gr*nth, or the
Holy Scriptures of the Sikhs,' translated from the original Guraukhi
by Dr. E. Trumpp, London, 1877.

60 LECITUBES ON THE SCIENCE OP BELIGION.

read the whole of the canonical books of the BuiL&hist
Church, if say nothing of th&r commentaries, or later
treatises ?

According to a tradition preserved Jby the Buddhist
scho8ls' of the South and of the North, the sacred
canon comprised originally 80,000 or 84,000 tracts,
but most of them were lost, so that 4ihere remained
only 5 s ooo \ According to a statement in the Saddhar-
m&laikara, the text and commentary of the Buddhist
canon contain together, 39,368*000 letters, while the
English translation of the Bible is said to contain
3,567,180 letters, vowels being here counted as sepa-
rate.from the consonants.

At present there exist two sacred canons of Bud-
dhist writings, that of the South, in P&li, and that of
the North, in Sapskrit. The Budihist canon in P&li
has been estimated as twice as large as the Bible,
though in an English translation it would probably
be four times as large 2 . Spence Hardy gave the
number of stanzas as 375,350 for the P&li canon, and
as 361,550 for its Commentary, and by stanza he meant
a line of 33 syjjables.

The Buddhist canon in Sanskrit consists of what
is called the "Nine Dkormas V In its Tibetan trans-
lation that canon, divided into two collections, tbe Kan-
jurandTanjur, numbers 335 volumes folio, each weigh-*
ing in the Pekin edition from four to five pounds.

Besides these two canons, there is another collate-
ral branch, the canon of the ffainas. The ffaihas trace

1 See Burnouf, 'Introduction &, rhistojre du BuddLJfome indien,*
p 37. 'Selected Essays,' ii. p. 170,
' Selected Essays, 1 ii. p. 170.
8 Ibid. p. jSa.

LEOTUBE H. 61

the origin of their religion back to Mah&vira, who was
believed, however, to halve been preceded bv 23 Tir-
thakara?the 33rd being P&rsva. (2,50 before HaMyira).
Mahavfra is ca^LetL also tffl&taputra 1 or OT&tnputra
or ^tiputra by both 91 ffadnas and Eauddha&(lfSta-
putta itf P&li, N&yaputta in ^aina Prakrit), and is
reported by both sects to have died at P&pft. The date
of his death, as given by the <?ainas, 527 :BUC,, would
make him older than Buddha. The true relation,
however, of the #ainao to the r Bauddhas, or followers
of S&kyamuni, remains still to be determined. Their
sacred books are written in a Prakrit dialect, com-*
monly called Ardhamagadh!, while the dialect o the
Fall scriptures is .called Magadhi. According to the
SiddhUnta-dharma-sara these #aina scriptures are col-
lectively c%Ued Sutras or Siddhantas 9 and classed,
first? under two heads of Kalpa-siltra and Agama,
five works coming under the former, and forty-five
under the latter head; and secondly, under eight dif-
ferent heads, viz. i, eleven Afigas; 2, twelve Upaiigas,
3, four MMa-sutras ; 4, five Kalpa-sutras ; 5, six &edas ;
6, ten Payannas; 7, Nandi-sutra; 8, Anuyogadvara-
sutra. The total extent of these fifty works together
with their commentaries is, according to 6tadna belief,
600,000 tflokas 2 * In the form in which we now
possess them, the <?ainas Sutras are not older than
the fifth century A.IX (See * Indian Antiquary,' ix.
p. 161.)

Withfc a smaller compass lies the sacred literature
of the third of the Aryan4>ook-religioDS, the so-called

1 See BQhlec, 'Indian ^tiquaiy,' m p. 143; HJaoobi, Chi
MaMvlra and his predecessors,* Indian Antiquary, is. 158; also bis
preface to the Ejtlpftsdtara of KisdrabAliti, 1879*

* EajendriUla, Mitra, 'Noticce of Swakrit MSS.' vol. iii. p. 67.

62 LEOTUBES ON THE SCIENCE Ofl RELIGION.

Zend-Avesta. But here the very scantiness of the
ancient texts increases the difficulty of its successful
interpretation, and th$ absence of native commentaries
has thro-wn nearly the whole burdetf of deciphjring.on
the patience and ingenuity of European scholars.

If lastly we turn to !hina, we find that th religion
of Confucius is founded on the Five t King apd the
Four*Shu books in themselves of considerable extent,
and su$*ounded by voluminous commentaries, without
which even the most learned scholars would not ven-
ture to fathom the depth of their sacred canon 1 .

Lao-tse, the contemporary, or rather the senior, of
Confucius, is reported to have written a large number
of books 2 : no less than 930 on different questions of
faith, morality, and worship, and 70 on magic. His
principal work, however, the TadHe-king, which re-
presents the real scripture of his followers, theJTao-
sse, consists only of about 5,000 words 3 , and fills no
more than thirty pages. But here again we find that
fqr that very reason the text is unintelligible without
copious commentaries, so that M. Julien had to consult
more than sixty commentators for the purpose of his
translation, the earliest going back as far as the year
163 B.C.

There is a third established religion yi China, that
of Fo; but Fo is only the Chinese corruption of

1 'The Chinese Classics, with a Translation, Notes, Prolegomena,
and Indexes/ By James Legge, D.D. 7 vols. See also 'Sacred
Books of the East,' vols. iii, xvi, *

* Stan. JuKen, ' Tao-te-king,' p. rmi.

8 Ibid, pp? xaod. xxxv. The texts vary from 5,610, 5,630, 5,688 to
5,722 words. The text published by M. Stan. Julien consists of 5,320
words. A new translation of the ' Tao-te-king ' has been published at
Leipzig by Dr. Victor von Strauss, 1870.

LECTUEB XL 63

Buddha, and though, the religion of Buddha, as trans-
ferred Irom India to China, has assumed a peculiar
character*and produced an enormous literature of its
own, yet Chinese Buddhism cannot be called an inde-
pendent religion. We ftiust distinguish betwegntne
Buddhism of Ceylon, Burmah, and Slam, on one side,
and thjrfi of Nepal, Tibet, Mongolia, China, Corea,
and Japan on the other. In China, however, although
the prevailing form of Buddhism is that of tlS San-
skrit canon, commonly, called the Northern canon,
some of the books belonging to* the P&li or Southern
canon have been translated and are held in reverence
by certain schools.

But even after we have collected this enormous
library of the sacred books of the world, with their
indispensable commentaries, we are by no means in
possession of* all the requisite materials for studying
the growth and decay of the religious convictions of
mankind at large. The largest portion of mankind,
ay, and some of the most valiant champions in the
religious and intellectual struggles of the world, would
still be unrepresented in our theological library. Think
only of the Greeks and the Romans 1 think of the
Teutonic, the Celtic, and Slavonic nations I Where
fire we to gain jn insight into what we may call their
jfcal religious convictions, previous to the compara-
tively recent period when their ancient temples were
levelled to the ground to make room for new cathe-
drals, and Jheir sacred oaks were felled to be changed
into crosses, planted along -every mountain pass stid
forest lane ? Homer and Hesiod do not tell $ what
was the religion, the refcl hearir-religion, of the Greeks,
nor were their own poems ever considered as sacred,

64 LECTUBES ON THE SCIENCE OF BELKHON.

or e-ven as authoritative and binding, by the Hghest
intellects among the Greeks In Rome we have not
even an IHad or Odyssey ; and when we as*k for the
religious worship of the Teutonic? the Celtjp, or the
SldJVoctic tribes, the very names of many of the deities
in whom they believed are forgotten and lost for ever,
and the scattered* notices of their feith ha^ to be
picked up and put together like the small stones of a
broken mosaic that once formed the pavement in the
ruined temples of Rome.

The same gaps, the same want of representative
authorities, which we witness among the Aryan, we
meet again among the Semitic nations, as soon as we
step out of the circle of their took-religions. The
Babylonians, Assyrians, the Phenicians and Cartha-
ginians, the Arabs before their c&nversign to Moham-
medanism, all are without canonical books, and a
knowledge of their religion has to be gathered, as
well as may be, from monuments, inscriptions, tra-
ditions, from proper names, from proverbs, from curses,
and other stray notices which require the greatest
care before they can be properly sifted and success-
fully fitted together 1 .

But now let us <go on further. The two beds in
which the stream of Aryan and Semitic thought has
been rolling on for centuries from south-east to nortB-

1 It has been pointed out by Professor Noldeke that not only the
great religions, but mere sects also are sometimes in possession of Sacred
Books. Suoh are the Mandseans (representing the Aramsean nation-
ality), the Druses, the Yezidis, Jttfosairis, and, it may DO, some more
half-pagaji. sects under a Muslim garb. Even some of the Manich&an
writings, of which fragments exist, might be added to this class, and
would throw much light on the independent growth of gnosticism,
which can be by no means fully explained as a mere mixture of Christian
and Iranian ideas.

LEdTUBE II, 65

west, from the Indus to the Thames, from the Eu-
phrates "to the Jordan, and the Mediterranean, cover
but a narrow tract of country Compared *mth the
vastness $f our gljbb. As we rise higher, our horizon
expands on every side, aftd wherever there are traCes
of human Mfe, there are traces als|p of religion. Along
the shoi$s of the, ancient Nile we see still standing
the Pyramids, and the ruins of temples and labyrinths,
their walls covered with hieroglyphic inscriptions,
and with the strange pietures of gods and goddesses.
On rolls of papyrus, which have defied the ravages of
time, we have even fragments of what may be in a
certain sense called the sacred books of the Egyptians.
Yet, though much hq,s been deciphered in the ancient
records of that mysterious race, the main spring of
the religion of Egypff and the original intention of its
cerem(iial worship are far, as yet, from being fully
disclosed to us.

As we follow the sacred stream to its distant sources,
the whole continent of Africa opens before us, and
wherever we see kraals and cattle-pens, depend upon,
it there was to be seen once, or there is to be seen
even now, the smoke of sacrifices rising up from earth
to heaven. The relics of the ancient African faith are
rapidly disappearing ; but what has been preserved is
fffll of interest to the student of religion with its
strange worship of snakes and ancestors, its vague
hope of a future life, and its not altogether faded re-
miniscence^of a Supreme God, the Father of the black
as well as of the white man 1 *.

1 Dr. Oallaway, ' UDkulunktlu, 1 p. 45: 'It is as though we sprang
from Utblanga ; we do not know where we were made. We black men
h*d the somei origin as yon, white men. 1

66 LECTURES ON THE SOIEffOE OF BELICUON.

From the eastern coast of AMca our eye i& tarried
across ihe sea where, from - Madagascar to Hawaii,
island after island stands out like so many pillars of
8* sunken bridge that once spannea the Indian and
Pacific oceans. Everywheia, whether among the
dark Papuan or th yellowish Malay, or the brown
Polynesian races* scattered -on these islands, even
among the lowest of the low in the scale of hu-
manity, there are, if we will but listen, whisperings
about divine beings imagrnings of a future life;
there are prayers and sacrifices which, even in their
most degraded and degrading form, still bear witness
to that old and ineradicable faith that everywhere
there is a God to hear our prayers, if we will but
call on Him, and to accept our offerings, whether
they are offered as a ransom for sin, 01 as a token of
a grateful heart.

Still farther east the double continent of America
becomes visible, and in spite of the unchristian van-
dalism of its first discoverers and conquerors, there,
too, we find materials for the study of an ancient,
and, it woul^L seem, independent faith. Unfortunately,
the religious and mythological traditions collected by
the first European* who came in contact with the
natives of America, reach back but ft short distance
beyond the time when they were written down, and
they seem in several cases to reflect the thoughts of
the Spanish listeners as much as those of the native
narrators. The quaint hieroglyphic manuscripts of
Mexico and Guatemala hltve as yet told us very little,
and the accounts written by 'natives in, their native
Janguage have to be used with great caution, Still
the ancient religion of .the Aztecs of Mexico and of

II. 6?

the Irioas of Peru is full of interesting problems. As
we advance towards tta north and its red^skinned
inhabitants, our information becomes more meagre
still, an<! after what happened some years ago, mo
Livre des Sauvages is likely to come to our assistance
again. "?et there are wild and home-grown speci-
mens oftreligioua faith to be studied even now among
the receding and gradually perishing tribes $f*the
Bed Indians, and, in their languages as well as in
their religions, traces may possibly still be found,
before it is too late, of pre-historic migrations of men
from the primitive Asiatic to the American continent,
either across the stepping-stones of the Aleutic bridge
in the north, or low^r south by drifting with favour-
able winds from island to island, till the hardy canoe
was landed or wrecked on the American coast, never
to retilrn again to the Asiatic home from which it had
started.

Ajad when in our religious survey we finally come
back again to the Asiatic continent, we find here too,
although nearly the whole of its area is now occupied
by one or the other of the eight book-religions, by
Mosaisra, Christianity, and Mohammedanism, by
Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Zoreadtrianism, and in
China by the "religions of Confucius and Lao-tse,
that nevertheless partly below the surface, and in
some places still on the surface too, more primitive
forms of worship have maintained themselves. I
mean the Shamanism of the Mongolian race, and the
beautiful half-Homeric mythology of the Fimajsh and
Esthonian tribes.

And now that I have displayed this world-wide
panorama before your eyes, you will share, I think,

68 LECTTTBES ON THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION",

the feeling of dismay with which the studeq&bf the
science <pf religion looks around, and aslsp himself
whsre to fiegin and tiow to proceed* That there are
materials in abundance, capable of scientific treatment,
no on& would venture to deny. But how are they to
be held together? How are wo to discovdr what all
these religions share in common? How they differ?
How they rise and how they decline ? What they arc
and what they mean ?

Let us tako the old saying, Divide et impera, and
translate it somewhat freely by * Classify and un-
derstand/ and I believe wo shall then lay hold of
tfv9 old thread of Ariadne which has led the students
of many a science through darker labyrinths even
than the labyrinth of the religions of tho world. All
real science rests on classification, and oily in case wo
cannot succeed in classifying tho various diaftcts of
faith, shall we have to confess that a science of re-
ligion is really an impossibility,, If the ground before
us has once been properly surveyed and carefully par-
colled out, each ncholar may then cultivate his own
glebe, without wasting hi energies, and without losing
sight of the general purposes to which all special re-
searches must be subservient*

How, then, is the vast domain of religion to ha
parcelled out? How are religions to be classified, or,
we ought rather to ask first, how have they been
classified before now? The simplest classification, and
one which wo find adopted in almost evftry country,
is thafcjnto true and/0/se religions. It is very much
like tho first classification of languages into one's own
language and the languages of the rest of the world ;
as the Greeks would say, into the languages of the

LECTURE II. 69

the Barbarians ; or, as the Jews would
say, into the languages of the Jews and th j Sentiles ;
or, as the Hindus would say, in to* the languages of 1 the
Aryas aftd Mleftfc&as ; oy, as the Chinese would $y,
into the languages of tbe Middle Empire and t*hat of
the Outer* Barbarians. I need tfot^say why that sort
of classification fe useless for scientific purposes.

There is another classification, apparently of A more
scientific character, but if examined more closely,
equally worthless to the* student of religion* I mean
the well-known division into revealed and natural
religions.

I have first to say a few words on the meaning
attached to natural Religion. That word is constantly
used in very different acceptations. It is applied by
several writers to certain historical forms of religion,
whiclf are looked upon as not resting on the authority
of revelation, in whatever sense that word may be
hereafter interpreted. Thus Buddhism would be &
natural religion in the eyes of the Brahmans, Brah-
manism would be a natural religion in the eyes of
the Mohammedans. With us, all religions except
Christianity and, though in a lesser degree, Mosaism,
would be classed as merely natural; and though
natural does not imply false, yet it distinctly implies
the absence of any sanction beyond the sense of truth,
or the voice of conscience that is within us.

But Natural Beligion is also used in a very dif-
ferent senlo, particularly by the philosophers of the
last century* When people began to subject the
principal historical religions to & critical analysis,
they found that after removing what was peculiar
to each, there remained certain principles which they

70 LECTOTES ON THE SCIENCE OF EELIGIOtf,

all shared in common. These were suppose>i*to be
the principles of Natural Religion.

Again, when everything that seemed supernatural,
mi^culous, and irrational, bad been removed from
the p^ges of the New Testament, there still remained
a kind of skeleton ofrreligion, and this too was passed
off under the name of Natural Religicm.

DuMg the last century, philosophers who were
opposing the spread of scepticism and infidelity,
thought that this kin4 of natural, or, as it was also
called, rational religion, might serve an a breakwater
against utter unbelief; but their endeavours loci to
no* result. When Diderot said that all revealed re-
ligions were tho heresies of Natural Religion, ho
meant by Natural Eeligion a Jbody of truths im-
planted in human nature, to bo discovered by the
eye of reason alone, and independent of an^ such
historical or local influences as give to each roligion
its peculiar character and individual aapuct, Tho
existence of a dotty, the nature of MB attributes,
Buch as Omnipotences Onminek'nco, Omnipresence,
Eternity, Htdf-exiskmec, Spirituality, tho Goodness
also of the Deity, and, connected with it, the ad-
mission of an absolwto distinction between Good and
Evil, between Virtue and Vice, all thisT and according
to some writers, tho Unity and PorHonality also of the
Deity, were included in the? domain of Natural Re-
ligion. Tho scientific treatment of this so-called
Natural Religion received^ the name of NafUraJ Theo-
logy, a, title rendered famous in tho beginning of our
century by tho much praincd $uid much abused work
of Paloy,

Natural Eeligion corresponds in the science of

LECTUKE II. 71

religiof^o what in the science of language used to
be called Grammaire generate, a collection o funda-
mental rules which were supposed to be seff-evidant,
and indispensable in every grammar, but whicb,
strange to say, never e2yst in their purity and* com-
pleteness to any language that -is or ever has been
spoken tf>y human beings. It iS the same with
religion. There never has been any real rejigfion,
consisting exclusively of the pure and simple tenets
of Natural Religion, thcfagh thgre have been certain
philosophers who brought themselves to believe that
their religion was entirely rational, was, in fact, pure
and simple Deism.

If we speak, therefore, of a classification of all
historical religions into revealed and natural, what
is meant by*naturat is simply the negation of re-
vealed? and if we tried to carry out the classification
practically, we should find the same result as before.
We should have on one side Christianity alone, or,
according to some theologians, Christianity and Ju-
daism ; on the other, all the remaining religions of the
world.

This classification, therefore, whatever may be its
practical value, is perfectly usele^ for scientific pur-
poses* A mor extended study shows us very soon
that the claim of revelation is sot up by the founders,
or if not by them, at all events by the later preachers
and advocates of most religions ; and would therefore
be decline* by all but ourselves as a distinguishing
feature of Christianity and Uudaism, We shall 000,
in fact, that the claims to a revealed authority are
urged far more stronger and elaborately by the be-
lievers in the Veda, than by the apologetical theolo*

72 LECTURES ON THE SCIENCE OF EELIGIOK.

gians among Jews and Christians, Even /ifuddha,
originally the most thoroughly human and self-de-
pendent among ttfe founders of religion, is by a
sfcpange kind of inconsistency represented? in later
controversial writings, as in possession of revealed
truth 1 . He himself could not, like Numa or Zoro-
aster, or Mohammed 3 , claim communication with
higher spirits; still less could he, like the poets of
the Veda, speak of divine inspirations and god-given
utterances: for according lo him there was none
among the spirits greater or wiser than himself, and
the gods of the Veda had become his servants and
worshippers. Buddha himself appoaln only to whafc
we should call the inner light 3 / When he delivered
for the first time the four fundamental doctrines of
his system, he said, * Mendicants, for i&6 attainment
of these previously unknown doctrines, the ^o, the
knowledge, the wisdom, the clear perception, the light
were developed within me/ He wan called Sarva///?a
or omniflciont by his earlioBt pupils ; but when in later
times, it was soen that on several points Buddha had
but spokea-4ho language of his age, and had shared
the errors current among his contemporaries with
regard to the shapa of the earth and the movement
of the heavenly bodies, an important" concession w$s
made by Buddhist theologians* They limited the
meaning of the word 'omniscient,' as applied to
Buddha, to a knowledge of the principal doctrines
of his system, and concerning these, but*these only,

1 'History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature,* by Max MUllw, p. 83.
* Sprenger, ' Mohammad/ vol. ii, p. 496,
9 Gogerly, 'The Evidences And Pootrioti of Christian
Colombo, x 86a, Parti

LECTURE II. 73

they cltqlared him to have been infallible. This may
seem to Ije a late, and almost modern view, but whe-
ther modern or ancient, it certainly reflects "great Cre-
dit on the Buddhist ^heologians. In the Milin$a
Prasna, however, whicl* is a canonical book, we see
that the same idea was already rising in the mind of
the grett Nagasena. Being asked by King Milinda
whether Buddha is omniscient, he replies : * Yes, Great
King, the blessed Buddha is omniscient. But JBuddha
does not at all times Sxercis^, his omniscience. By
meditation ho knows all things ; meditating he knows
everything he desires to know/ In this reply a dis-
tinction is evidently intended between subjects that
may bo known by Sense and reason, and subjects that
can be known by meditation only. Within the do-
main of sense and reason, "N&gaHena does not claim
omniSeieneo or infallibility for Buddha, but ho claims
for him both omniscience and infallibility hi all that
is to be perceived by meditation only, or, as wo should
say, in matters of faith.

I shall have to explain to you hereafter the extra-
ordinary contrivances by which tho Brajimans endea*
voured to eliminate every human element from the
hymns of tho Voda, and to establish, not only the
^revealed, but*tho pro-historic or oven ante-mundane
character of their scriptures. No apologetic writers
have ever carried the theory of revelation to greater
extremes,

In the present stage of our inquiries! all that I wish
to point out is this, that when the founders or de*
fenders of nearly all Jjbe religions of the world appeal
to some kind of revelation in support of the truth of
their doctrines, it could answer no useful purpose were

74 LECTURES ON THE SCIENCE OF RELIOION.

we to attempt any classification on such
ground.^ Whether the claim of a natural or preter-
natpral revelation, put forward by nearly all reli-
gions, is well founded or not, is not the question at
preSent. It falls to the pro^nce of Theoretic Theo-
logy to explain the trjjie meaning of revelaticfa, for few
words have been Used so vaguely and in H* many
different senses. It falls to its province to explain,
not only how the veil was withdrawn that intercepted
for a time the rays of divine truth, but, what is a far
more difficult problem, how there could ever have
been a veil between truth and the seeker of truth,
between the adoring heart and the object of the
highest adoration, between the Father and his chil-
dren.

In Comparative Theology our task is different: wo
have simply to deal with tho facts such as w# find
them. If people regard their religion aa revealed, it
IB to them a revealed religion, and hu& to bo treated
aa such by every impartial hmtorian.

But thin principle of dnHificafcion into revoalwl and
natural roligionB appuarn atili more faulty, wht*n wo
Jook at it from another point of view. Kvon if wo
granted that all religipiiH, except Christianity and Mo-
saiara, derived their origin from those faculties of th&
mind only which, according to Paley, arc sufficient by
themselves for calling into life tha fundamental toneU
of what wo explained before as natural religion, the
clarification of Christianity and Judaism on one ido
as rpw.<x??J t and of the other religions as natural,
would slJlll l>o ddfoctivo, for tho simple reason that no
religion, though founded on revelation, can over be
entirely separated from natural religion. Tho tenets

LECTUKE II, 75

of natural religion, though they never constituted by
themselveg a real historical religion, supply the only
ground on which even revealed religions can stand,
the only. soil where they can strike root, and from
which they can receive nourishment and life. If Ve
took awa$ that soil, or if we supposed that it, too,
had to b$ supplied hy revelation', wo should not only
run counter to the letter and spirit of the Old andthe
New Testament, but we should degrade revealed reli-
gion by changing it into a mere formula, to be ac-
cepted by a recipient incapable of questioning, weigh-*
ing, and appreciating ita truth ; we should indeed have
the germ, but we should have thrown away the con-
genial soil in which alone the germs of revealed truth
can live and grow.

Christianity, addressing itself not only to the Jews,
but ateo to the Gentiles, not only to the ignorant, but
also to the learned, not only to the believer, but, in
the first instance, to the unbeliever, prenupposed in all
of them the elements of natural religion, and with
them the power of choosing between truth and un-
truth* Thus only could St. Paul say: * Prove all
things, hold fast that which is good/ ( i Ttheas, v, at.)

The same is true with regard tj the Old Testament.
There, too, thoboliof in a Doity, and in Homo at least
of its indefeasible attributes, is taken for granted, and
tho prophets who call the wayward Jews back to the
worship of Jehovah, appeal to them as competent by
the truth-testing power that is within them, to choose
between Jehovah and the gods of the Gentiles, be-
tween truth and untruth. Thus Joshua gathered all
the tribes of Israel to Shechem, and called for the
elders of Israel, and for their heads, and for their

76 LECTURES ON THE SCIENCE OF BELIGION,

judges, and for their officers; and they
themselves before God.

'.And Joshua said unto all the^people : Thus saith
the Lord God of Israel: Y$ur fathers dweit on the
other* side of the flood in old time, even Terah, the
father of Abraham, *ind the father of Nachor: and
they served other "gods.'

jn$ then, after reminding them of all that God has
done for them, he concludes by saying:

'Now, therefore, fear the *Lorci, and serve him in
sincerity and in truth ; and put away the gods which
your fathers served on the other side of the ilood, and
inJEgypt, and serve ye the Lord.

'And if it seem ovil unto you* to servo the Lord,
choose ymi this 'day whom ye wiy nerve; whether the
gods which your fathers served that *wero on tho
other side of the flood, or tho gods of the AmorTtes in
whose lands ye dwell ; but as for mo and my house,
wo will servo tho Lord/

In order to choose between different gods anjj dif-
ferent forms of faith, a man must possess the faculty of
choosing, theanstrurnents of testing truth and untruth,
whether revealed or not : ho must know that certain
fundamental tenets cannot be absent in any true reli-
gion, and thut thero are doctrines agrflnat which hfc
rational or moral conscience revolts as incompatible
with truth. In short, there must be the foundation of
religion, there must bo tho solid rock, before it is pos-
sible to erect an altar, a temple, or a chufth : and if
we call r that foundation natural religion, it is clear
that no revealed religion can bethought of which does
not rest more or less firmly on natural religion.

These difficulties have been felt distinctly by some

LECTUEE II. 77

of outmost learned divines, who have attempted
various Classifications of religions from their own
point of view. New definitions* of natural religion
have therefore beefi proposed in order to avoid the
overlapping of the two definitions of natural and Re-
vealed religion 1 . Natural religion has, for instance,
been explained as the religion of/hature before revela-
tion, such as may be supposed to have existed ann>ng
the patriarchs, or to exist still among primitive people
who have not yet been^ enlightened by Christianity
or debased by idolatry*

According to this view we should have to distin-
guish not two, but three classes of religion : the pri*
mitive or natural, the debased or idolatrous, and the
revealed. But, as pointed oiit before, the first, the
so-called priinitivo tfr natural religion, exists in the
mindfibof modern philosophers rather than of ancient
poets and prophets. History never tollw us of any
race with whom tho simple feeling of reverence for
l^gher powers was not hidden under mythological
disguliisr Nor would it be possible even thus to
separate the three classes of religion by sharp and
definite lines of demarcation, because botfi the debased
or idolatrous and tho purified or revealed religions
would of necessity include within themselves tho
Cements of natural religion.

Nor do we diminish these difficulties in tho classifi-
catory stage of our science if, in tho place of this
simple natural religion, we admit with other theolo-
gians and philosophers, a universal primeval revela-
tion. This universal primeval revelation Is only
another name for naftiral religion, and it rests on

1 8de Profeisor Jowett's * Eswiy oa Natural Religion,* p. 458*

78 LECTUBES ON THE SCIENCE OF BELIGION.

no authority but the. speculations of philosophers.
The same class of philosophers, considering^hat Ian-
gujige wfi,s too wonderful an achievement for the
human mind, insisted on the necessity of admitting a
universal primeval language, revealed directly by
God to men, or rather to niute beings; while the
more thoughtful toS the more reverent among the
Fathers of the Church, and among the founders of
modern philosophy also pointed out that it was more
consonant with the general* working of an all- wise
and all-powerful Creator, that he should have en-
dowed human nature with the essential conditions of
speech, instead of presenting mute beings with gram-
mars and dictionaries ready-mad*. Is an infant less
wonderful than a man 1 ? an acorn less wonderful than
an oak tree? a cell, including potentially within itself
all that it has to become hereafter, less wonderful than
all the moving creatures that have life? The same
applies to religion. A. universal primeval religion re-
vealed direct by God to man, or rather to a crowd of
atheists, may, to our human wisdom, seem the best
solution of rt all difficulties : but a higher wisdom
speaks to us from out the realities of history, and
teaches us, if we -vyjll but learn, that 'we have all to
feeek the Lord, if haply we may feel <after him, and
find him, though he be not far from every one of us.**
Of the hypothesis of a universal primeval reve-
lation and all its self-created difficulties we shall have
to speak again : for the present it must aaffice if we
have shown that the problem of a scientific classifica-
tion of "religions is not brought nearer to its solution
by the additional assumption of another purely hypo*
class of religions.

XEOTUBE II. 79

Another apparently mote scientific classification id
that wifrnational and individual religions, the former
comprehending religions the founders of Winch .are
unknown to us as fcey were to those who believed px
them; the latter comprehending religious systlma
which bear the names of those by whom they were
Buppose<J to have been originally planned or esta-
blished. To the former class, speaking only of the
religions with which we are most familiar, \"ould
belong those of the ancient Brahmans, the Greeks,
Eomans, Teutons, Slaves, and* Celts; to the latter
those of Moses, Zoroaster, Buddha, Confucius, Lao-tse,
Christ, and Mohammed.

This division, however, though easily applied in a
general way, and useful for certain purposes, fails us
as soon as w$ attempt to apply it in a more critical
spirit* It is quite true that neither a Brahman, nor a
Greek, nor a Roman would have known what to
answer when asked, who was the founder of his re-*
ligion, who first declared the existence of Indra, Zeus,
or Jupiter; but the student of antiquity can still dis-
cover in the various forms which the ancient Aryan
worship has assumed in India, Greece, and Italy, the
influence of individual minds orj&chools. If, on the
other hand, we ask the founders of so-called indi-
vidual religions, whether their doctrine is a new one,
-whether they preach a new God, we almost always
receive a negative answer. Confucius emphatically
asserts th%b he was a transmitter, not & maker;
Buddha delights in representing himself #s * w&t&
link in a long chain of enlightened teacheraf Christ
declares that he came to fulfil, not to destroy the L$w
or the Prophets; and even Mohammed insisted on

80 LEOTTTEES ON THE SOIEKOE OF BELHHOST.

tracing his faith back to Ibr&hym, i.e. Abrahgim, the
friend of God, whom he called a Moslim, afod not a
Jew or Christian, (Koran iii. 60,) and who, He main*
tained, had founded the temple at Mekka *. To de-
teiflnine how much is peculiar to the supposed founder
of a religion, how much he received from 4u's prede-
cessors, and how mu8h was added by his disciples, is
almost impossible; nay, it is perfectly true that no
religicJn has ever struck root and lived, unless it found
a congenial soil from which to draw its real strength
and support. If they find such a soil, individual re-
ligions have a tendency to develope into universal
religions, while national creeds remain more exclusive,
and in many cases are even opposed to all missionary
propaganda 2 .

We have not finished yet. very important and,
for certain purposes, very useful classification has
been that into polytheistic, dualistic, and monotheistic
religions. If religion rests chiefly on a belief in a
Higher Power 9 then the nature of that Higher Power
would seem to supply the most characteristic feature
by which to classify the religions of the world. Nor
do I deny Siat for certain, purposes such a classifica-
tion has proved useful: all I maintain is that we
should thus have to class togetherreligions most
heterogeneous in other respects, though agreeing In
the number of their deities- Besides, it would cer-
tainly be necessary to add two other classes the
henothewtic and the atheistic. Henotheistic religions
differ from polytheistic because, although they recog-

1 Sprenger, 'Mohammad,' vol. iii. ppf 49, 489.
a See 'Hibbert Lectures/ by Professor Kuenen, 1882. 'National
[Religions and Universal Religions.'

LEOTUBE II. 81

nise th^ existence of various deities, or names of
deities, they represent each deity as independent of
all the rest, as the only deity present in the* mind of
the worshipper at thfc time of his worship and prayer.
This character is most prominent in the religion of tfte
Vedic poeti. Although *many gods are invoked in
different hymns, sometimes alsofcufche same hymn,
yet there'is no rule of precedence established among
them ; and, according to the varying aspects of nftturej
and the varying cravings of the human heart, it is
sometimes Indra, the god of the*blue sky, sometimes
Agni, the god of fire, sometimes Varuna, the ancient
god of the firmament, that are praised as supreme
without any suspicion of rivalry, or any idea of
subordination. This peculiar phase of religion, this
worship of single gods, forms probably everywhere
the firji stage in the growth of polytheism, and de-
serves therefore a separate name \

As to atheistic religions, they might seem to be per-
fectly impossible ; and yet the fact cannot be disputed
away that the religion of Buddha was from the be-
ginning purely atheistic. The idea of the Godhead,
after it had been degraded by endless mythological
absurdities which struck and repelled the heart of
Buddha, was, fop a time at least, entirely expelled
fro*m the sanctuary of the human mind : and the
highest morality that was ever taught before the rise
of Christianity was taught by men with whom the
gods had b^some mere phantoms, without any aitais,
not even an altar to the Unknown God.

It will be the object of my next lecture tc^sfeow

1 ' Hiatory of Ajooieut Sanskrit literature ' by Max MUUer, second
edition, p, 532. ' Hibbert Lectures/ p. 236.

a

82 LECTURES ON THSj SCIENCE OF BELIGION.

that the only scientific and truly genetic classification
of religions is tliB same as the classification of Ian- 1
guages, and that, particularly in the early Instory of
the human intellect, there exisft the most intimate
relationship between language, religion, and nation-
alitya relationship quite independent ofrthose phy-
sical elements, thelblood, the skull, or the hair, on
wMch ethnologists have attempted to found their
classification of the human race.

THIRD EECTURE.

DEIgVEBED AT THE BOYAL INSTITUTION,
MABOH 5, iS/O.

IF we approached the religions f mankind without
any prejudices or predilections, in that frame of
mind in which the lover of truth or the man of
science ought to approach every subject, I believe w6
should not be long before recognising the natural
lines of demarcation which divide the whole religious
world injo sevefal great continents. I am speaking,
of course, of ancient religions only, or of the earliest
period in tiie history of religious thought. In that
primitive period which might be {sailed, if act prehi0-
toxic, at least jmnely ethnic, because what we ko&tr
of it -consists only in the general movements of na-
tions, and not in the acts of individuals, of parties, or
of states in that primitive period, I say, nations
have been called languages; and ifl our best works
ozt the ancient history of mankind, a map of lan-
guages now takes the place of a map of nations.
But during the same primitive period nations mighrti
with equal right be called religions ; for there is *fc
that time the same, nay, an even more intimate,
lationship between Teligion and JiationaMty
.between language and nationality.

In order clearly to explain my meaning, I shall
have to rrfei; as shortly AS possible, to the specular

a %

84 LECTUBES ON THE SCIENCE Off RELIGION.

tions of some German philosophers on the true rela-
tion 4q|;ween language, religion, and nationality
speculations whicfi. have as yet Deceived less attention
n the part of modem ethnologists than they seem to
me to deserve.

It was Scheming, one of the proloundest thinkers
of Germany, who first asked the question, What
makes an ethnosl What is the true origin of a
people? How did human beings become a people?
And the answer which he gave, though it sounded
startling to me when, in 1845, 1 listened, at Berlin, to
the lectures of the old philosopher, has been confirmed
^nore and more by subsequent researches into the
history of language and religion.

To say that man is a gregarious animal, and that,
like swarms of bees, or herds of wilft elephants, men
keep together instinctively, and thus form themselves
into a people, is saying very little. It might explain
the agglomeration of one large flock of human beings,
but it would never explain the formation of peoples
possessing the consciousness of their national indivi-
duality.

Nor should we advance much towards a solution of
our problem, if we were told that men break up into
peoples as bees break up into swarms, by following
different queens, by owing allegiance to different go-
vernments^ Allegiance to the same government, par-
ticularly in ancient times, is the result rather than
the cause of nationality; while in historical times,
suet has been the confusion produced by extraneous
influences, by brute force, ar .dynastic ambition, that
the natural development of peoples has been entirely
Arrested, and we frequently find one and the same

LECTURE III. 89

people divided by different governments, and different
peoples united under the same ruler.

Our question, What makes a people? ha** <x> be
considered in reference to the most ancient times,
How did men form themselves into a people bafoft,
there were 'kings or shepherds of men? Was it
through community of blood? doubt it. Com-
munity of blood produces families, clans, possibly
races, but it does not produce that higher and pSrely
moral feeling which binds men together and makes
them a people.

It is language and religion that make a people, but
religion is even a more powerful agent than language.
The languages of maay of the aboriginal inhabitants
of Northern America are but dialectic varieties of one
type, but thos^ who spoke these dialects seem never
to have*coalesced into a people. They remained mere
clans or wandering tribes, and even their antagonism
to foreign invaders did not call out the sense of a
national coherence and unity among them, because
they were without that higher sense of unity which
is called forth, or, at all events, strengtiiened, by
worshipping the same god or gods. The Greeks 1 ,
on the contrary, though speakigg their strongly
marked, and I doubt whether mutually intelligible
dialects, the MQ&G, the Doric, the Ionic s felt them-
selves at all times, even when ruled by different
tyrants, or broken up into numerous republics, *&
one great Hellenic people. What was it, tbe$

viil 144 ASri^ rl

6Sw topSfurrt. r mt >

t'Atopaiew <&*&*&$%<*. See ' Bdiab. BeviOTT,* 1874,

P- 433-

86 LEGTUB1S Off THE SOIENOE OF BELIGHON.

preserved in their hearts, in spite of dialects/bi spite
of dynasties, in spite even of the feuds of tribes and
the jealdusies of states, the deep^ feeling of that ideal
jonity which constitutes^ jeople? It was their pri-
mitwe religion ; it was a. dim recollection of the
common allegiance they owed from time Immemorial
to the great fafoef* of gods and men; it^was their
beiief in the old Zeus of Dodona, the Panhellenie
Zeus.

Perhaps the most signal-confirmation of this view
that it is religion even more than language which
supplies the foundation of nationality, is to be found
in the history of the Jews, the chosen people of God.
The language of the Jews differed from that of the
Phenicians, the Moabites, and other neighbouring
tribes much less than the <Jreek dialects differed
from each other. But the worship of Jehovdh made
the Jews a peculiar people, the people of Jehovah,
separated by their God, though not ty their Ian*
guage, from the people of Chemosh (the Moabites 1 )
and from the worshippers of Baal and Ashtoreth.
It was their faith in Jehovah that changed the
wandering tribes of Israel into a nation.

C A people/ as Spelling says, 'exists only when it
has determined itself with regard to it& mythology.
This mythology, therefore, cannot take its origin
after a national separation has taken place, after.
a people has become a people: nor could it spring
up while a people was still contained as*an invisible
part in the whole of humanity; but its origin must
be referred to that very period of transition before

Numb, ro. 29 ; Jeremiah xlviii. 7 : ' And Ohemoah shall go forth
Into captivity, with his priests and his princes together.'

LECJTUBE in. 87

a peoplfe has assumed its definite existence, and when
it is on th^ point of separating and constituting itself.
The same applies to the language of a people; it
becomes definite at the same time that a people be?
comes definite 1 .'

Hegel, tBe great rival of Schelling, arrived at the
same contusion. In his Philoi&pKy of History he
says : c The idea of God constitutes the general founda-
tion of a people. Whatever is the form of a religion,
the same is the form of la state,, and its constitution:
it springs from religion, so much so that the Athenian
and the Eoman states were possible only with the
peculiar heathendom of those peoples, and that ev#n
now a Eoman Catholic state has a different genius
and a different constitution from a Protestant state.
The genius of *a people is a definite, individual genius
which^becomes conscious of its individuality in dif-
ferent spheres : in the character of its moral life, its
political constitution, its art, religion and science 2 /

But this is not an idea of philosophers only. His-
torians, and, more particularly, the students of the
history of law, have arrived at very mu$i the same
conclusion. Though to many of them law seems
naturally to be the foundation *>f society, and the

1 ' Vorlesungen uber Philosophic der Mythologie/ vol, i. p. 107 seq.

* Though these words of Hegel's were published long before
Schelling's lectures, they seem to me to breathe the spirit of Sohelling
rather than of Hegel, and it is but fair therefore to state that Schelling's
lectures, though not published, were printed and circulated among
friends twenty years before they were delivered at Berlin. 1&&
question of priority may seem of little importance m Baatto* tfu&b a*
these, but there is nevertheless much truth in. Schema **^ tfe*
philosophy advances not so ttoch by the aagwes* gtvea to difficult
problems, as by the starting of new problems, and by asking questions
which no one else would think of asking.

88 LECTUBES ON THE SCIENCE OF BELIGION.

bond that binds a nation together, those wrfo look
below ihe surface have quickly perceived^ that law
itself, at least ancfent law, derives its authority, its
foj;ce, its very life, from religion. Sir H. Maine is no
doubt right when, in the case of the so-called Laws
of Manu, he rejects the idea of the Deity dictating an
entire code or body of law, as an idea of a Decidedly
modem origin. Yet the belief that the law-giver
enjoyed some closer intimacy with the Deity than
ordinary mortals, pervades the ancient traditions of
many nations. Thus Diodorus Siculus (1. i. c. 94),
tells us that the Egyptians believed their laws to
have been communicated to Mnevis by Hermes ; the
Cretans held that Minos receivecT his laws from Zeus,
the Lacedaemonians that Lykurgos received his laws
from Apollon. According to the Ariafts, their law-
giver, Zathraustes, had received his laws from the
Good Spirit; according to the Getse, Zamolxis re-
ceived his laws from the goddess Hestia; and, ac-
cording to the Jews, Moses received his laws from the
god lao.

No one has pointed out more forcibly than Sir H.
Maine that in ancient times religion as a divine
influence was underlying and supporting every re-
lation of life and every social institution. ' A super-
natural presidency,' he writes, 'is supposed to con-
secrate and keep together all the cardinal institutions
of those early times, the state, the race, and the family*
(p. 6). 'The elementary group is the family; the
aggregation of families forms the gens or the house.
The aggregation of houses makes the tribe. The
aggregation of tribes constitutes the commonwealth'
(p. ia8). Now the family is held together by the

LECTURE HI. 89

familyWcra (p, 191), and so were the gens, the tribe,
and the bommonwealth ; and strangers could~only be
admitted to these Brotherhoods tfy being admitted to
their aawa (p. 13 1) 1 . &t >& later time, law breaks
away from religion (p. 193), but even then many
traces remain to sh&w that the hearth was the first
altar, thft father the first elder, 4is 'wife and children
and slaves the first congregation gathered together
round the sacred fire the Hestia, the goddess of the
house, and in the end the goddess of the people. To
the present day, marriage, one of the most important
of civil acts, the very foundation of civilised life, has
retained something of the religious character which* it
had from the very beginning of history.

Let us see now ^yhat religion really is in those
early ages of ' v which we are here speaking : I do not
mean religion as a silent power^ working in the heart
of man; I mean religion in its outward appearance,
religion as something outspoken, tangible, and de-
finite, that can be described and communicated to
others. We shall find that in that sense religion
lies within a very small compass. A^few words,
recognised as names of the deity; a few epithets that
have been raised from their material meaning to a
higher and mSre spiritual stage, I mean words
which expressed originally bodily strength, or bright-
ness, or purity, and which gradually had come to
mean greatness, goodness, and holiness ; lastly, some

1 A very different opinion is held by Varro. 'Varro propterea m
prius de rebus humanis, de divinis autem postea scripsiase ifcestatur,
quod prius extiterint civitatee, deinde ab eis haso institute aint . , . .
sicut prior eat, inquit, pietor quam tabula picta, prior &ber quam
fcdifioium: ita priores emit oivitates quam ea qua a oivitatibus
inatituta sunt. 1 (August. ' Civ. Dei,' 6. 4).

90 MOTTOES ON THE SCIENCE OF EELIGION.

more or leas technical terms expressive of suclf ideas
as sacrifice, altar, prayer, possibly virtue ^and sin,
body and Spirit this is what constitutes the outward
framework of the incipient religions of antiquity. If
we look at these simple manifestations of religion, we
see at once why religion, during *those earfy ages of
which we are here* speaking, may really and^bruly be
calle r d g sacred dialect of human speech ; how at all
events early religion and early language are most
intimately connected, ^religioii depending entirely for
its outward expression on the more or less adequate
resources of language.

And if this dependence of early religion on language
is once clearly understood, it follows, as a matter of
course, that whatever classification has "been found
most useful in, the Science of Language ought to
prove equally useful in the Science of Beligidn. If
there is a truly genetic relationship of languages, the
same relationship ought to hold together the religions
of the world, at least the most ancient religions

Before we proceed therefore to consider the proper
classification of religions, it will be necessary to say
it few words on the present state of our knowledge
viih regard to the genetic relationship of languages.

If we confine ourselves to the Asiatic continent
with its ijnportant peninsula of Europe, we find that
in the vast desert of drifting human speech three, and
only three, oases have been formed in which, before
the beginning of all history, language became per-
manen^ and traditional, assumed in fact a new
character, a character totally 4iSerent from the ori-
ginal character of the floating and constantly varying
speech of human beings. These three oases of Ian-

LEOTUBU m. 91

are known by the name of Turanian, Semitic,
and Artywi. . In these three centres, more particularly
in the Aryan and Semitic, language ce&sed to be
natural; its growth, was . arrested, and it became
permanent, solid, petrified, or, if you like, historical
speech. *I have always maintained that this cen-
tralisati^n and traditional conservation of language
could only have been the result of religious* and
political influences, and I now intend to show that
we really have dear eVidence t of three independent
settlements of religion, the Turanian, the Semitic, and
the Aryan, concomitantly with the three great settle-
ments of language.

Taking Chinese for what it can hardly any longer
be doubted that it is, viz. the earliest representative
of Turanian* speech, we find in China an ancient
colouf less and unpoetical religion, a religion we might
almost venture to call monosyllabic, consisting of the
worship of a host of single spirits, representing the
sky, the sun, storms and lightning, mountains aad
rivers, one standing by the side of the other without
any mutual attraction, without any higher principle
to hold them together. In addition to this, we like-
wise meet in China with the worship of ancestral
spirits, the spirits of the departed, who &re supposed
to retain, some cognisance of human affairs, and to
possess peculiar powers which they exercise for good
or for evil. This double worship of hmawn aad of
natural sjSrits constitutes the old popular r$Hgi$ of
China* aad it has lived on to the preset d*y^ftfc &aet
in the lower ranks q sxxsiefey, though, ifeee twers
above it a more elevated range of hall religious and
half philosophical faith, $ baUaf ia two higher Powers

92 LECTUBES ON THE SCIENCE OF BELIG-TON.

which, in the language of philosophy,
and Matter, in the language of Ethics* Qkod and
JW/j but which in the original language of religion
andjnythology are represented as Heaven and Earth.

It is'true that we know the ancient popular religion
of China from the works of Confttcius onl/, or from
even more modern sources. But Confucius,* though
he is*c^led the founder of a new religion, was really
but the new preacher of an old religion. He was
emphatically a transmitter, not a maker 1 . He says of
himself, c I only hand on ; I cannot create new things.
I believe in the ancients, and therefore I love them 2 /

"We find, secondly, the ancient worship of the Se-
mitic races, clearly marked by a rtumber of names of
the Deity, which appear in the pplytheistic religions
of the Babylonians, the Phenicians, and Carthaginians,
as well as in the monotheistic creeds of Jews, (Chris-
tians, and Mohammedans. It is almost impossible to
characterise the religion of people so different from
each other in language, in literature, and general
civilisation, so different also from themselves at dif-
ferent periods of their history ; but if I ventured to
characterise the worship of all the Semitic nations by
one word, I should say it was pre-eminently a wor-
ship of God in History, of God as affecting the des^
tinies of individuals and races and nations rather than
of God as wielding the powers of nature. The names
of the Semitic deities are mostly words expressive of
moral qualities ; they mean the Strong, the Exalted a
the Lor<J, the King ; and they grow but seldom into
divine personalities, definite in tfceir outward appear-

1 See Dr. Legge, f Life of Confucius,' p. 96.

8 liun-yu ( i. a) ; Schott, 'Chiaeaiscta Literatur,' p. jr.

IB. 68

&nceV>r easily to be recognised by strongly marked
features\of f> real dramatic character. Hence many
of the ancient Semitic gods have a tendency to run
together, and a transition ^from the worship of single
gods to the worship 5? o'ne God required ng great
effort. In the monotonous desert, more particularly,
the worship of single gods glidf d away almost imper-
ceptibly into the worship of one God. If I wre to
add, as a distinguishing mark, that the Semitic reli-
gions excluded the feminine gender in their names
of the Deity, or that all their female deities were only
representatives of the active energies of older and
sexless gods, this would be true of some only, not of
all ; and it would* require nearly as many limitations
as the statement of M. Kenan, that the Semitic re-
ligions wer$ instinctively monotheistic 1 ,

"We find lastly the ancient worship of the Aryan
race carried to the most distant corners of the earth
by its adventurous sons, and easily recognised, whether
in the valleys of India or in the forests of Germany,
by the common names of the Deity, all originally ex-
pressive of natural powers. Their worship is not, as
has been so often said, a worship of nature. But if it
had to be characterised by one yord, I should venture
to call it a worship of God in Nature, of God as ap-
pearing behind the gorgeous veil of Nature, rather
than as hidden behind the veil of the sanctuary of
the human heart. The gods of the Aryan pantheon
assume an individuality so strongly marked and peer*
manent, that with the Aryans, a transition* to mono-
theism required a powerful struggle, and selclom took

1 See my essay on * Semitic Monotheism,' in ' Chips from a Gorman
Workshop, ' vol. i. pp. 342 380.

94 LECrClTRES ON THE SCttEffOE OF RELIGION.

effect without iconoclastic revolutions or philosophical
despair.

These 'three classes of religion are not to be mis-
taken, as little as the three classes of language, the
Turanian, the Semitic, and tlje Aryan. They mark
three events in the most ancient history of iftie world,
events which have* deiermined the whole fatg of the
human race, and of which we ourselves still feel the
consequences in our language, in our thoughts, and in
our religion.

But the chaos which these three leaders in language,
thought, and religion, the Turanian, the Semitic, and
the Aryan, left behind, was not altogether a chaos.
The 'stream of language from whick these three chan-
nels had separated, rolled on; the sacred fire of re-
ligion from which these three altars had been lighted
was not extinguished, though hidden in smoke* and
ashes. There was language and there was religion
everywhere in the world, but it was natural and wild*
growing language and religion; it had no history, it
left no history, and it is therefore incapable of that
peculiar scientific treatment which has been found
applicable to a study of the languages and the religions
of the Chinese, the Semitic, and the Aryan nations.

People wonder why the students of language have
not succeeded in establishing more than three families
of speech or rather two, for the Turanian can hardly
be called a family, in the strict sense of that word,
until it has been fully proved that Chinese forms tiro
centre of the two Turanian branches, the North Tura-
nian on one side, and the South Turanian on the
other, that Chinese 1 forms, in fact, the earliest settle-
1 See my 'Lecture on the Stratification of Language/ p. 4.

LEOTUBB HI. 95

ment\>f that unsettled mass of speech, which, at a
later stage, became more fixed and traditional,
in the north*, in Tungusic, Mongolia, TaAaric, and
Mnnic, and in thtf south, in Taic, Malaic, Bhotiya*
and Tainulic.

The reason why scholars have discovered no more
than these two or three great^fanailies of speech is
very sirSple. There were no more, and we caanot
make more. Families of languages are very jfeculiar
formations ; they are, and they must be, the excep-
tion, not the rule, in the growth of language. There
was always the possibility, but there never was, as
far as I can judge, any necessity for human speech
leaving its primitive stage of wild growth and mid
decay. If it had not been for what I consider a
purely spontaneous act on the part of the ancestors of
the Samitic, Aryan, and Turanian races, all languages
might for ever have remained ephemeral, answering
the purposes of every generation that comes and goes,
struggling on, now gaining, now losing, sometimes
acquiring a certain permanence, but after a season
breaking up again, and carried away like blocks of
ice by the waters that rise underneath the surface.
Our very idea of language would then have been
something totally different from what it is now.

For what are we doing 1

"We first form our idea of what language* ought to
be from those exceptional languages which were
arrested in* their natural growth by social, religious,
political, or at all events by extraneous influences,
and we then turn round and wonder why a*U Ian*
guages are not like tnese two or three exceptional
channels of speech. "We might as well wonder why

96 LECTURES OK THE SCIENCE OF BELIGION.

all animals are not domesticated, or why, besides the
garden anemone, there should be endless varieties of
the same aower growing wild on the meadow and in
the woods.

li the Turanian class, i& tfhich the original concen-
tration was never so powerful as in the Aryan and
Semitic families, we $an still catch a glimpse of the
natural growth of language, though confinefl within
eertairf limits. The different settlements of this great
floating mass of homogeneous speech do not show
such definite marks t>f relationship as Hebrew and
Arabic, Greek and Sanskrit, but only such sporadic
coincidences and general structural similarities as can
be 'explained by the admission of,a primitive concen-
tration, followed by a new period of independent
growth. It would be wilful blindness noi to recog-
nise the definite and characteristic features which
pervade the North Turanian languages : it would be
impossible to explain the coincidences between Hun-
garian, Lapponian, Esthonian, and Finnish, except on
the supposition that there was a very early concen-
tration of speech from which these dialects branched
off* We see uiis less clearly in the South Turanian
group, though I confess my surprise even here has
always been, not that there should be go few, but that
there should be even these few relics, attesting a
former c8mmunity of these divergent streams of lan-
guage. The point in which the South Turanian and
North Turanian languages meet goes back as far as
Chinese ; for that Chinese is at the root of Mandshu
and Mongolian as well as of Siamese and Tibetan
becomes daily more apparent through the researches
of Mr* Edkins and other Chinese scholars.

LEOTUBE III. 97

I rea5ily admit that there is no hurry for pronouno
ing definitely qn these problems, and I am welljaware
of what may be said against these wide generalisations
affecting the 'origin of species' in language. My chief
object in publishing, mor>*than twenty years ago, my
Letter to Brflasen ' On the Turanian Languages/ in which
these views were first put forward, w&s to counteract
the dangerous dogmatic scepticism which at that time
threatened to stop all freedom of research, ana all
progress in the Science of Language. No method was
then considered legitimate for a comparative analysis
of languages except that which was, no doubt, the only
legitimate method in treating, forinstance s the Romance
languages, but was ot therefore the only possible
method for a scientific treatment of all other lan-
guages. No prpofs of relationship were then admitted
even fof languages outside the pale of the Aryan and
Semitic families, except those which had been found
applicable for establishing the relationship between
the various members of these two great families of
speech. My object was to show that, during an earlier
phase in the development of language, no such proofe
ought ever to be demanded, because, from the nature
of the case, they could not exisj>, while yet their
absence would m no way justify us in denying the
possibility of a more distant relationship. At present
a complete change has taken place in the Science of
Language, as in other branches of natural science.
Owiog chiefly to the influence of the ideas which
Darwin, has brought again into the foreground of aJl
natural philosophy, students are now directfaag^thOT
attention everywhere to the general rather than to
the special. Every kind of change, under ihe name
H

98 LUOTUBES ON THE SCIENCE OF BELKHON.

of development, seems now conceivable and/ admis-
sible, and when all races of men have been traced
back to one common source, and even beyond the
level of humanity^ no difficulty Is felt any longer as
ttf ijie possibility of a 'refationship between any of
the so-called Turanian languages, nay, oA a common
beginning for ail -varieties of human speech. This
phase of thought in its extreme form wilf no doubt
pass* 1 away like the former, but these oscillations
should teach us at least .this one lesson that no
dictatorial authorit/'should ever stop the progress of
science, and that nothing is so dangerous as a belief
in our own infallibility.

^If we turn away from the Asiatic continent, the
original home of the Aryan, the Semitic, and the
Turanian languages, we find that in a Africa, too, a
comparative study of dialects has clearly pioved a
concentration of African speech, the results of which
may be seen in the uniform B&ntu dialects, (Kafir,
Setchuna, Damara, Otyiherero, Angola, Kongo, Ki-
suah&i, etc.), spoken from the equator to the Keis-
kamma \ North of this body of B&ntu or Kafir speech,
we have an independent settlement of Semitic speech
in the Berber and the Galla dialects ; south of it we
have only the Hot? entot and Bushm^i tongues, which
are now declared by Dr. Th. Hahn to be closely allied
to each t>ther. Whether there is any real linguistic re-
lationship between these languages in the South of
Africa and the Nubian, and even the aacient Egyp-
tian, and whether these languages were separated

1 Bleek, ' Comparative Grammar ofrth South African Languages/
p. a. See also Dr. Bleek's 'Report concerning his Researches into the
Bushman Language/ published in 1873.

LBCTUEE III. 99

from each other by the intrusion of the Kafir tribes
is a problem, the solution of which must be. left to
the future. So much only is certain that tHe ancient
Egyptian represents to us an independent primeval
concentration of intellectual work in the country
of the Ntte, independent, so far as we know at
present, of the ancient .Aryan and Semitic concentra-
tion of language and religion.

But while the spoken languages of the African
continent enable us to perceive in a general way the
original articulation of the primitive population of
Africa for there is a continuity in language which
nothing can destroy we know, and can know, but
little of the growth and decay of African religion.
In many places Mohammedanism and Christianity
have swept ^way every recollection of the ancient
gods ; find even when attempts have been made by
missionaries or travellers to describe the religious
status of Zulus or Hottentots, they could only see the
most recent forms of African faith, and these were
but too often depicted in their ridiculous rather than
in their serious character. It is here where_the theory
of a primitive fetishism has done most mischief in
blinding the eyes even of accurate observers as to
anything that aiight lie beyond tne growth of fetish
worship .

The only African religion of which we possess
ancient literary records is the religion of Egypt
which has i*ng been a riddle to us, as it was to the
Greeks and Romans, At last, however, the HgH is
beginning to dawn on the darkest chambers Sf the
ancient temples of Bgy^fc, and on the deepest recesses
of the human heart, from which sprang both the belief
H 3

100 LECTURES ON THE SOIENOE OF BELIGUON.

and the worship of the ancient gods. At first sight
nothing seems more confused, perplexing; and un-
promising than the religion of Egypt, exhibiting at
one time a grovelling worship of animals, at another
the highest flights of a mysterious wisdom. It can
hardly be said that even now, after the decipherment
of the ancient latfguage of Egypt, this strange contrast
ha^ b^een entirely accounted for. Still no one can
rise from the perusal of M. Le Page Renouf s excellent
'Hibbert Lectures' without feeling convinced that there
is reason in the religion of Egypt also, nay, that the
growth of religious ideas there is wonderfully alike
thp growth of religious ideas amongthe Aryan nations.

The religion of the Egyptians was not from the first
a mere worship of brutes, Egyptian zoolatry belonged
to a period of decay, and was based upen symbols de-
rived from mythology. Egyptian, like Aryan, tnytho-
logy dealt originally with those phenomena of nature
which are conspicuously the result of law, such as the
rising and setting of the sun, the moon, and the
stars : and a recognition of law and order as existing
throughout the universe, underlies the whole system
of Egyptian religion. Like the Sanskrit A'ta, the
Egyptian "Ma&t, Derived from merely sensuous im-
pressions, became in the end the nam8 for moral order
and righteousness.

But besides the several powers recognised in their
mythology, most of which have now been traced back
to a solar origin, the Egyptians from tne very first
spoke of the One Power also, by whom the whole
physical and moral government of the universe is
directed, upon whom each individual depends, and to
whom it is responsible. And lastly they paid honour

LECTUBE III. 101

to the departed, because death was considered as the
beginning of a new life, a life that will never and.

With all this, mythology, as an inevitable disease
of language, was terribly Aggravated in Egypt by
the early development of art and the forms which it
assumed. *The Power which the Egyptians recogniseS
without a^y mythological adjundb, to whom no temple
was ever raised (as little as there was in India a, sanc-
tuary dedicated to Para-Brahman, the Highest Brah-
man), 'who was not graven on^stone/ 'whose shrine
was never found with painted figures/ 'who had
neither ministrants nor offerings,' and 'whose abode
was unknown/ must practically have been forgotten
by the worshippers* of the magnificent temples of
Memphis, Heliopolis, Abydos, Thebes, or Dendera,
where quite ether deities received the homage of
prayer^ and praise, and sacrifice. Efforts, however,
are visible, in Egypt as in India, to cling to the notion
of the unity of God The 'self-existent, or self-
becoming One, the One, the One of One, the One
without a second' (as in Sanskrit, svayambhu, Ekam
advitiyam), ' the Beginner of becoming, from the first,
who made all things, but was not made/ are expres-
sions constantly met with in the religious texts, and
applied to this t>r that god (henotheistically), each in
his turn being considered as the supreme Go4of gods,
the Maker and Creator of all things. Thus Ba, origi-
nally the sun, proceeding from Nu, 'the father of.tbp
gods/ and limself the father of Shu (air)
(dew), was worshipped as the supreme cele

Osiris, the eldest of the five children of Seb

and Nut (heaven), 'greater than his father, more

powerful than his mother/ the husband of lais, the

102 LECTUBES ON THE SCIENCE OF BELIGION.

father of Horus, was another representation of the
sun, conceived chiefly in his character- of conqueror
of darkness (Set). B&, we read, e r is the soul of Osiris,
anj. Osiris the soul of B&/, Horus again is a name
of the sun, originally of the morning sun, 'whose eyes
are restored at the dawn of da^/ Thoth i-epresente
the moon, ' the measurer of the earth/ ' the distributor
of time/ and, at last, the inventor of letters and arts.
Truly does M. Le Page Renouf remark : e Sanskrit
scholars who do not r know a word of Egyptian, and
Egyptologists who do not know a word of Sanskrit,
will give different names to these personages. But the
comparative mythologist will hardly hesitate about
assigning his real name to eadh of them, whether
Aryan or Egyptian/

We may sum up in the words of Mariette: 'On
the summit of the Egyptian pantheon hovers* a sole
God, immortal, uncreate, invisible, and hidden in the
inaccessible depths of his own essence. He is the
creator of heaven and earth ; he made all that exists,
and nothing was made without him. This is the God,
the knowledge of whom was reserved for the initiated,
in the sanctuaries. But the Egyptian mind could not,
or would not, remain at this sublime altitude. It
considered the world, its formation^ the principles
which govern it, man and his earthly destiny, as an
immense drama in which the one Being is the only
actor. All proceeds from him, and all returns to him.
But he has agents who are his own personified attri-
butes who become deities in visible forms, limited in
their activity, yet partaking of his own powers aad
qualities V

* In this account of the Egyptian religion I have cHefly followed M.

LECTURE III* 108

If we turn from Africa to America, we find there in
the North numerous languages as witnesses of ancient
migrations, but of Ancient religion we have hardly
anything. In the South^we know of two linguistic
and political centres; and there, in Mexico and Peru,
we meet with curious,* though not always trustworthy,
traditions, of an ancient and welt-established system
of religious faith and worship.

Lastly, as it is possible to reconstruct an original
Polynesian language from* what is common to the dia-
lects of the islands reaching from America to Africa
(Madagascar), fragments of an original Polynesian
religion also are gradually brought to light, which
would amply repay <he labours of a new Humboldt.

The Science of Religion has this advantage over the
Science of Lamguage, if advantage it may be called,
that in* several cases where the latter has materials
sufficient to raise problems of the highest importance,
but not sufficient for their satisfactory solution, the
former has no materials at all that would justify even
a mere hypothesis. In many parts of the world where
dialects, however degenerate, still allow jas a dark
glimpse of a distant past, the old temples have com-
pletely vanished, and the very n%mes of the ancient
deities are cleaSi forgotten. We know nothing, we
must be satisfied with knowing nothing, and^the true
scholar leaves the field which proves all the more
attractive to the dabblers in a priori theories.

But even* if it were otherwise, the students of reli-
gion would, I think, do well to follow tie eximiple of

Le PageBenoufs 'Hibbert Lectures' of 1879, < Lectares c* the Origin
and Growth of Beligion, as illustrated by the Beligion of Ancieni
Egypt; 1 also Be BOUJ& <Sixr 1* Beligion des anciens gyptteoB,* ia
' Annales de Philoeophie Cfe&iean^ 1 NOT. 1869.

104 LEOTUBES ON THE SCIENCE OF BELIGUON.

the students of language, and to serve their first ap-
prentiqpship in a comparative study of $he Aryan and
Semitic feligions. If it can be proved that the reli-
gions of the Aryan nationis are united by the same
bonds of a real relationship -grhich have enabled us to
treat their languages as so many* varieties 8f the same
type, and if th same fact can be established with
reference to the Semitic world, the field thus opened
is vast enough, and its careful clearing and cultivation
will occupy several generations of scholars. And this
original relationship, 1 believe, can be proved. Names
of the principal deities, words also expressive of the
most essential elements of religion, such as prayer,
sacrifice, altar, spirit, law, and faith, have been pre-
served among the Aryan and among the Semitic
nations, and these relics admit of one explanation
only. After that, a comparative study of tfte Tu-
ranian religions may be approached with better hope
of success \ for that there was not only a primitive
Aryan and a primitive Semitic religion, but likewise
a primitive Turanian religion, before each of these
primeval j$ces was broken up and became separated
in language, worship, and national sentiment, admits,
I believe, of little dgubt at present.

Let us begin with our own ancestors, the Aryans.
In a lecture which I delivered in this place some years
ago, I drew a sketch of what the life of the Aryans
must have been before their first separation, that is,
before the time when Sanskrit was spok&i in India,
or Greek in Asia Minor and Europe. The outline of
that sketch and the colours with which it was filled
were simply taken from language. We argued that
it would be possible, if we took all the words which

LECTtJBB III.

exist in the same form in French, Italian, i

ish, to show what words, and therefore wha^

must have been known to the people who aid notTas
yet speak French, Italiai^ apd Spanish, but who spoke
that language which preceded these Romance dialects.
We happSn to know that language: it was Latin;
but if w^ did not know a worck of 'Latin or a single
chapter of Roman history, we should still be ablf, by
using the evidence of the words which are common to
all the Romance languages, to draw some kind of pic-
ture of what the principal thougnts and occupations
of those people must have been who lived in Italy a
thousand years at least before the time of Charle-
magne. We could* easily prove that those people
must have had kings and laws, temples and palaces,
ships and cawiages, high roads and bridges, and nearly
all th$ ingredients of a highly civilised life. We could
prove this, as I said, by simply taking the names of
all these things as they occur in French, Spanish, and
Italian, and by showing that as Spanish did not bor-
row them from French, or Italian from Spanish, they
must have existed in that previous stratum of lan-
guage from which these three modern Romance dia-
lects took their origin.

Exactly the^same kind of argument enabled us to
put together a kind of mosaic picture of the earliest
civilisation of the Aryan people before the time of
their separation. As we find in Greek, LS&B, e&A
Sanskrit, also in Slavonic, Celtic, and TeoteaSfc, Ai
same word for house, we are fully justified is <3jp$te&*
ing that before any of these languages had susanmed a
Separate existence, a thousand years at least before
kgamemnon and before Manu, the ancestors of the

106 LECTURES ON THE SdlEffCIE OF BELIGION.

Aryan, races were no longer dwellers in tents, but
builders of permanent houses l . As we find the name
for town the same in Sanskrit and Greek 2 , we can
conclude with equal certainty that, if not towns, in
ouf sense of the word, ai aU events strongholds or
camps were known to the Aryaas before reek and
before Sanskrit was^poken. As we find the name
for king the same in Sanskrit, Latin, Teutonic, and
Celtic r , we know again that some kind of kingly
government was established* and recognised by the
Aryans during the sarfle pre-historic period.

I must not allow myself to be tempted to draw the
whole of that picture of primeval civilisation over
again*. I only wish to call back*to your recollection
the fact that in exploring together the ancient archives
of language, we found that the highest. God had re-
ceived the same name in the ancient mythology of
India, Greece, Italy, and Germany, and had retained
that name, whe&er worshipped on the Himalayan
mountains, or among the oaks of Dodona, on the
Capitol, or in the forests of Germany. I pointed out
that his name was Dyaus in Sanskrit, Zeus in Greek,
Joui-8 in Latin, Tiu in German; but I hardly dwelt
with sufficient strength on the startling nature of this
discovery. These names are not merft names : they
are historical facts, ay, facts more immediate, more
trustworthy, than many facts of medieval history.
These words are not mere words, but they bring
before us, with all the vividness of an e^ent which

1 Sk. dama MIMS, damns, Goth, timrjan, 'to build,' SI. dom; Sk.
vew, o7ffosy vicus, Goth, veih-s.

* Sk. pur, pur!, or puri, Gk. mJA; Sfc. vftstu, ' house,'

* Sk. Bty, rtyan, rex, Goth, reika, IP. riogh.
4 See 'Selected Essays,' vol. 1. p. 317 se$.

LECTURE III. 107

we witnessed ourselves but yesterday, the ancestors
of the whole Aryan race, thousands of years Jit may
be before Homer and the Veda, worshipping an unseea
Being, under the selfsame pame, the best, the most
exalted name which they could find in their voeafiu-
lary undSr the name of Light and Sky.

And Iqjj us not turn away, awl day that this was,
after all, but nature-worship and idolatry. Ho,j.t Vas
not meant for that, though it may have been degraded
into that in later times. Dyaus did not mean the blue
sky, nor was it simply the sky personified: it was
meant for something else. We have in the Veda the
invocations Dyaus pitar^ the Greek ZeiJ irdtap, the
Latin Jupiter; and'that means in all the three lan-
guages what it meant before these three languages were
torn asunder-it means Heaven-Father 1 These two
words* are not mere words; they are to my mind the
oldest poem, the oldest prayer of mankind, or at least
of that pure branch of it to which we belong and I
am as firmly convinced that this prayer was uttered,
that this name was given to the unknown God before
Sanskrit was Sanskrit and Greek was Gr^pk, as, when
I see the Lord's Prayer in the languages of Polynesia
and Melanesia, I feel certain thaj it was first uttered
in the languagS of Jerusalem. We little thought when
we heard for the first time the name of Jijpiter, de-
graded it may be by Homer or Ovid into & scolding
husband or a faithless lover, what sacred records toy
enshrined *Sn tiiat unholy name. We stall fctfw Af
learn the same lesson again and again in &e Setenee
of Religion, viz. that the place whereon wo sknd is
holy ground. Thousands of years bave passed since
the Aryan nations separated to travel to the North

108 LECTTOE3 ON THE SCIENCE OF BELIGUON.

and the South, the West and the East. They nave
each formed their languages, they have, each founded
empires and philosophies, they have each built temples
and razed them to the ground ; they have all grown
older, and it may be wiser aqd better; but when they
search for a name for what is most exalted and yet
most near and ciear t to every one of us, when they
wist to express both awe and love, the infinite and
the fhfite, they can but do what their old fathers did
when gazing up to the eternal sky, and feeling the
presence of a Being ds far as far and as near as near
can be, they can but combine the selfsame words, and
utter once more the primeval Aryan prayer, Heaven-
Father, in that form which will endure for ever, c Our
Father, which art in heaven.'

Let us now turn to the early region of the
Semitic nations. The Semitic languages, it is well
known, are even more closely connected together
than the Aryan languages, so much so that a com-
parative grammar of the Semitic languages seems to
have but few of the attractions possessed by a
comparative study of Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin.
Semitic scholars complain that there is no work
worth doing in comparing the grammars of Hebrew,
Syriac, Arabic, and JEthiopic, for they lave only to be
placed side by side 1 in order to show their close
relationsHip, I do not think this is quite true, and
I still hope that M. Kenan will carry out his original
design, and, by including not only the literary
branches of the Semitic family, but also the ancient
dialect^ of Phoenicia, Arabia, Babylon, and Nineveh,
produce a comparative grammar of the Semitic lan-

1 See Bunsen's 'Christianity and Mankind; 1 vol. iii. p. 246 *?,

LECTURE TU. 109

guage that may hold its place by the side of Bopp's
great work on the Comparative Grammar f the
Aryan Languages.

But what is still faore surprising to me is that no
Semitic scholar should have" followed the example e of
the Arya scholars, and collected from the different
Semitic dialects those common^ wards which must
have existed before Hebrew was Hebrew, before Syriac
was Syriac, and before Arabic was Arabic, an<f from
which some kind of ideamight be formed as to what
were the principal thoughts arid occupations of the
Semitic race in its earliest undivided state. The
materials seem much larger and much more easily
accessible 1 . And though there may be some difficulty
arising from the close contact which continued to
exist between^several branches of the Semitic family,
it would surely be possible, by means of phonetic
rules, to distinguish between common Semitic words,
and words borrowed, it may be, by the Arabs from
Aramsean sources. The principal degrees of rela-
tionship, for instance, have common names $mong
the Semitic as among the Aryan nations, and if it
was important to show that the Aryans had named
and recognised not only the natural members of a
family, such as*father and mother, son and daughter,
brother and sister, but also the more distant members,
the father and mother-in-law, the son and laughter-
in-law, the brother and sister-in-law, would it not b
of equal interest to show that the Semitic na^#* fcact
reached the same degree of civilisation long bSftroifa*
time of the laws of Moses?

1 See Bnnsen's ' Christianity and Mankind,' vol. ift. p. 246, iv.
P- 345-

110 LECTURES ON THE SCIENCE OF BELIGUON.

Confining ourselves to the more immediate 'object
of our researches, we see "without difficulty, that the
Semitic, like the Aryan languages, possess a number
of names of the Deity in common, which must have
esSstgd before the Soutf&nf or Arabic, the Northern
or Aramaic, the Middle or jffebr.aic branckes became
permanently separated, and which, therefore, allow us
an insight into the religious conceptions of* the once
united! Semitic race long before Jehovah was wor-
shipped by Abraham, or Baal was invoked in Phoenicia,
or El in Babylon.

It is true, as I pointed out before, that the meaning
of many of these names is more general than the
original meaning of the names .of the Aryan gods.
Many of them signify Powerful, Venerable, Exalted,
King> Lord, and they might seem, therefore, like
honorific titles, to have been given independently by
the different branches of the Semitic family to the
gods whom they worshipped each in their own sanc-
tuaries. But if we consider how many words there
were in the Semitic languages to express greatness,
strength, or lordship, the fact that the same ap-
pellatives occur as the proper names of the deity in
Syria, in Carthage, in Babylon, and in Palestine,
admits of one historical explanation only. There
must have been a time for the Semitic as well as
for the Aryan races, when they fixed the names of
their deities, and that time must have preceded the
formation of their separate languages and separate
religions.

On5 of the oldest names of the deity among the
ancestors of the Semitic nations was EL It meant
Strong. It occurs in the Babylonian inscriptions as

LEOTTOE III. HI

Hu, God x , and in the very name of Bab-il, &e gate or
temple of II. In Hebrew it occurs both in its^general
sense of strong or hero, and as a name of God. We
have it in Beth-el? the house of God, and in many
other names. If used ^th* the article as ha-Sl, the
Strong Ome s or the. God, it always is meant in the
Old Testament for Jehovah, th^ tnte God. E1 3 how-
ever, always retained its appellative power, anA we
find it applied therefore, in parts of tite Old Testament,
to the gods of the gentiles also.

The same El was worshiped at Byblus by the
Phoenicians, and he was called there the son of Heaven
and Earth 2 . His father was the son of Eliun, the
most high God, who* had been killed by wild animals.
The son of Eliun, who succeeded him, was dethroned,
and at last slain by his own son El> whom Philo iden-
tifies *rith the Greek Kronos, and represents as the
presiding deity of the planet Saturn 8 . In the Eimy-
aritic inscriptions, too, the name of El has been
discovered 4 , and more lately in many Arab proper
names 6 , but as a deity El was forgotten among the
Arabs from the very earliest times.

1 Scihrader, in the 'Zeitsohrift der Degtsdhen Morgenlandischen
Gesellschaft, 1 vol. xii. p. 350 ; xxvi. p. 180.
8 Bunaen, 'Egypt/ iv. 187. 'Eragmenta Hist. Grac.' YoL iii.

P- 567-

8 'Fragmenta Hist. Grac.' vol. iii. pp. 567-571. That M is tie
presiding deity of the planet Saturn according to the CMLdfflans is also
confirmed by JDiodorus Sioulus, ii pp. 30-33. See also Euaebins,
'Praep. evang/ L o. x. p. 90, ed G-aisfbrd, K/w^os Tolvw t fa of *o&wrw
*EXov irpocrayopctiavfft, and Bernays' notes, ' Zn SanohonxAihon, ' in Khais.
Mns. 1864, p. 632, who corrects *H\ov into*&\.

4 Oaiander, 'Zeitsotoift der Beutschen. Mor^enUndisdie
achaft/ roL x. p, 61.

8 Noldeke, 'Monatsberiolite der BerL Akademie/ 1880, p. 768.

112 LEOTUfcES ON THE SOIENOE OF BELKHON".

With the name of El, PMlo connected the name of
MoMm, the plural of Eloah. In the battle between
M and tii father, the allies of El, he says, were called
JSloeim, as those who were with Kronos were called
JTrOntpt 1 . This is, no dfcuBt, a very tempting ety-
mology of Elodh; but as the bgst Semitic scholars,
and particularly .Professor Fleischer, have declared
against it, we shall have, however reluctantly, to
surrender it.

Eloah is the same word a the Arabic, Hdh, God,
In the singular, Eloah is used in the Bible synonym-
ously with El; in the plural it may mean gods in
general, or false gods, but it becomes in the Old Tes-
tament the recognised name of the true God, plural
in form, but singular in meaning. In Arabic, Ildh,
without the article, means a God in general: with
the article Al-Ilah, or Allah 3 , becomes the name of
the God of Mohammed, as it was the name of the
God of Abraham and of Moses.

The origin of Eloah or Ildfi has been frequently dis-
cussed by European as well as by native scholars.
The K&nius says that there were twenty, Mohammad
El Fas! that there were thirty, opinions about it.

Professor Fleischer 3 , whose judgment in such matters
c

1 ' Fragmenta Hist. Greo. 1 vol. iii. p. 568, 1 8 : $ fe fffypax 01 *K**v
rov Kp6vov "EXoeJju ^vtie^Orjaav, els hv TS-p&vioi oSroi Tfffav of kerfjuvoi
lirl Kp6vov. * The plural of El, i.e. EHm, gods, occurs in Phoenician}
Noldeke, L c, p. 775.

2 Jf, &!*, *S%\, *SL On the original meaning of this AllAh see
Sprenger, f Moluuninad,' i. p. 286.

3 See a note by Professor Fleiaclier in Delitzsch, ' Commentar fiber
die Genesis/ 3rd ed. f 1860, p. 64; also 'Zeitschriffc der Deutsohen
Morgenlandischen GesellschafV vol. x, p. 60; and * Sitzungsberichte
der konigl. SdchsiBchen. Gesellschaft der Wiasenschaften, Phalosoph.
Hist. ClaBse,' vol. rviii (1866), pp. 390-392. Dr. W. Wright adopts

LECTUBE III. 113

we may trust implicitly, traces El, the strong one,
back to a roo^c^ (with middle vav, aval), to ba thick
and dense, to be fleshy and strong 1 . But Tie takes
JEloak or Ildh for an absjrapt noun, in the sense ^of
fear 2 , derived from a totally different root, viz. ulah,
to be agitfted, confotmded, perplexed. From mean-
ing fear, JEloah came to mean the object of fear or
reverence, and thus rose to be a name of God. ^Uie
same way we find packad, which means fear, used in
the sense of God ; Gen. xlxi. 43 6 Except the God of
my father, the God of Abraham, and the fear of Isaac
had been with me.' And again, v. 54 'And Jacob
sware by the fear of his father Isaac/ In Aramaic,
dachld, fear, is the recognised name for God or for an
idolj while in Sanskrit also, Brahman is called c a
great fear 8 .'

The^ame ancient name appears also in its feminine
form as Alldt*. Her famous temple at Taif, in Arabia,
was second only in importance to the sanctuary at
Mekkah, and was destroyed at the command of Mo-
hammed. The worship of Alldt, however, was not
confined to this one place ; and there can be no doubt
that the Arabian goddess Alilat, mentioned by He-
rodotus 5 , is the same as the All&t$$ the Koran,

Professor Heischer's derivation; likewise Professor Knenen in his
work, ' Be Godsdienst van Israel,' p. 45.

1 Professor Noldeke, L o. p. 774, assigns to ibis root the meaning of
being in front, leading.

* Kuenen, 'Religion of Israel,' i. p. 41, Eloah is only aged by poets,
and its primitive meaning is ' fear,' hence, ' that which is fcacftd.*

* Ka2&a-upanishad, vi. 2, monad bhayam vagrant mlystaw yaA.*

* Osfonder, Zeitschrift der Deutsohen MorgenlandJB&

scharV vii. 479-482, ^UJ* Allat, goddess, is otetraetod from
Al-H&liat.

* Herod, iii. 8 : 'Oo/iC<tfi (oi *A/H^toi) rk & Aitowrov 'Oporto,

I

114 LBOTUBES ON THE SCIENCE OF BELIGHOJST.

Another famous name of the deity, traces of which
can be^ found among most of the Semitic nations, is
Baal, of Bel The Assyrians and Babylonians 1 , the
Phoenicians and Carthaginians, the Moabites and
Pfiilistines, and, we mus actd, the Jews also, all knew
of Bel or Baal as a great, or even as the supreme
God. Baal cantar<Jlybe considered as a strange and
foreign god in the eyes of the Jewish people, who, in
spite of the protests of the Hebrew prophets, wor-
shipped him so constantly i the groves of Jerusalem 2 .
He was felt by them Almost as a home deity, or at all
events, as a Semitic deity, and among the gods whom
the fathers served on the other side of the flood, Baal or
Bel held most likely a very prominent place. Though
originally one 3 , Baal became divided into many divine
personalities through the influence of Jocal worship.
We hear of a Baal-tsur, Baal-tsidon, Baal-tars,origin-
ally the Baal of Tyre, of Sidon, and Tarsus. On two
candelabra found in the island of Malta we read the
Phoenician dedication to * Melkarth, the Baal of Tyre. 1

TJ)P fa Qipcnrbpr *AAiX<r. In Herod i. 131, 138, this name is corrupted
to'AAirra. See Osiander, ' Zeiteohnft der Deutachen Morgenlandischen
Gesellsehaft,' vol. ii pp ^.82, 483. Sprenger, 'Mohammad,* i p. 292,
says, ' I hesitate to identify the Alilat of Herodotus with the al-Lft t of
T&ytf, for even if it could be proved that this goddess had been worshipped
in his time* he (Herodotus) would not have heard of her. Arabia and
its worship extended at that time far to the North, and one should
compare the importance of Palmyra with that of T&yif. Secondly, the
form L&t is purer Arabic and older than H4t, alwayg supposing that
the root is l&h, and not alh.' See also his ' Remarks on Arabian idols/
1. c, p. 361. Orotal has been explained as 'light* or 'fire' of El.
Kuenen, 'Religion of Israel, 1 vol i. p. 228

1 ' Fragmenta Hist Gweo.' vol. ii, p. 498, a,

a Ibid. vol. iii p 568, 21.

8 M, de Vogue^ 'Journal Asiatiqne/ 1867, p. 135.

LEG-TUBE III, 115

At Shechem Baal was worshipped as Baal-berith 1 , sup-
posed to mean, the god of treaties; at Ekron the
Philistines worshipped him as Baal-zebub*, the lord
of flies, while the Moabiteg, ajid the Jews too, knew
him also by the name of Baal-peor*. On Phoenician
coins Baal ft called Bftal-Shltmayim, on Palmyrenian
inscriptions (de Vogue*, No. 73^ B&al-sham&a, the
Baal of heaven, which is the BeelsamSn of Philo, iddh-
tified by him with the sun 4 . * When the heat became
oppressive, the ancient rafees of Phoenicia,' he says,
' lifted their hand heavenward to the sun. For him
they considered the only God, the lord of heaven,
calling him Beel-sam6n 6 , which with the Phoenicianj3
is lord of heaven, and with the Greeks Zeus/ We
likewise hear of Baattm, or many Baals or gods.
And in the same way as by the side of the male Ildh
or MWJI we found a female Alldt, we also find by the
side of the male Baal, a female deity Baalt, the Biltu
of the Assyrians 6 , the Baaltis of the Phoenicians. It
may be that the original conception of female deities
differs among Semitic and Aryan nations, and that
these feminine forms of All&h and Baal were at first
intended only to express the energy or activity, or the

1 Judges viii. 33 ; i 4. a a Kings i. 2, $? 16.

8 Numbers zrv. 3.

* 'Fragmenta Hist. Grssc ' vol. iii. p. 565, 5. It is impossible to
change ijXwv to %\ov, because El or Kronos is mentioned afterwards.

8 Is this the S&U18 as T^p.-rpft-mnp^ montdoned. by MJoses of OlM^ne
(His. Arm. TO! ip. 13) as a deified hero worshipped by the Syiwjs f
Or is Barsamus the Son of Heaven 1 See Bawtoon, 'Anoimt
Monarchies/ voL i. p. 116. ^

8 See Sohrader, 'Zeitsohrifb der Deutschen Horgenl. G*BaIIsdbaft,'
zxvi. p. 193, Professor Noldeke is inclined to treaft 'Abraham and
Sarah/ 'the High Father and the Princess/ as a sifiuLar originally
di-vine pair.

116 LBOTUEES ON THE SCIENCE 07 RELIGION.

collective powers of the deity, not a separate being,
least ^all a wife. This opinion 1 i& certainly con-
firmed when we see that in m$ny Carthaginian in-
Bflriptions the goddess Tgmfc is called the face of Baal*,
and* that in the inscription of Eshmunazar, the Sido-
triim Astarte is called the nam$ of Saal^ In course
of time, however, this abstract idea was jaupplanted
by that of a female power, and even a wife, and as
such we find Baaltis worshipped by Phoenicians 4 ,
Babylonians, and Assyrians 6 , for the name of Mylitta
in Herodotus 6 is, according to Dr. Oppert, a mere cor-
ruption of Baaltis.

Another female goddess is Ashtoreth or Ashtaroth
(plural), a name which presupposes a masculine deity,
Asktar. Traces of this god or goddess have been dis-
covered in the Ishtar of the Babylonian inscriptions,
where Ishtar is always feminine, the Queen of heaven
and earth 7 . A Palmyrene inscription also, according
to some authorities, and the Moabite stone speak of
the same deity. In her case, however, the female
character became preponderant, and as such she was
worshipped, not only by Carthaginians, Phoenicians,
and Philistines, but likewise by the Jews 8 when they
forsook the Lord^ and served Baal and Ashtaroth 9 .
The Syrians called her 'Atharathah* the Atargatis of
Straboi . The Phoenicians called her Astarte, and by

1 De Vogue*, 'Journal Asiatique,' 1867, p. 138.

* 'Eragmenta Hist. Grac.* vol. iii. p. 569, 25.

8 Ibid. vol. iv p 283, 9. fl Herod, i. 131, 199.

7 See Sohrader, ?. d. D. M. G. ncvi. p. 169.

* i Kings xi. 5 ; also Genesis xiv. 5. Judges ii. 13.

J0 See Noldeke, '2. d. D. M, G. 1 zriv. 92, 109; Sfrabo, p, 667, 43;
636,48.

LECTURE Itl, 117

that otfinous name she became known to Greeks and
Eomans. She may have been a moon-goddess, as
Kuenen supposes ('Religion of Israel, 1 vol. i. p-^o), and
she was originally a fiumen virginale before her service
degenerated into wild excesses! When Jeremiah sp$a&s
of the Quean of Heaven 1 , this is probably meant for
Astarte, or Baaltis. Even in Southern Arabia there
are traces' jf the worship of this ancient goddess,
For in San&, the ancient capital of the Himjtoitic
kingdom, there was a magnificent palace and temple
dedicated to Venus (Bait Ghumofc&n), and the name of
Athtar has been read in the Himyaritic inscriptions :
nay, it is preceded in one place by the verb in the
masculine gender 2 .

Another word meaning originally king, which
must have beqn fixed upon as a name of the Deity
in pre-Mstoric times, is the Hebrew Meleck. We find
it in Moloch, who was worshipped, not only in
Carthage, in the Islands of Crete and Rhodes, but
likewise in the valley of Hinnom. We find the same
word in Milcom, the god of the Ammonites, who had
a sanctuary in Mount Olivet 3 ; and the gods Adram-
melech and Anammelech, to whom the Sepharvites
burnt their children in the fire 4 , seem again but local
varieties of the same ancient Semitic idol.

1 Jar. TO! 18,

9 Osionder, * Zeiteehrift der Deutschen Morgenlandischen GeseU-
sohaft.' vii. p. 472 ; Gildemeister, 'Zeitsch. der D. M, G.' vol. aodv.
pp. 1 80, 181; Jjenormant, 'Coznptee-rendus des stances de 1'Acad.
dea Inscriptions et Belles-lettres del'tfonle 1867;' I^evy, 'Zeitechiift
der D. M. G-.' vol. zziv. p. 189.

8 a Kings inmi. 13.

* a Sings xvii. 31. There was also an Assyrian god Adar, see
Sobradeor, Z. d. D. M. G, xxvi. pp. 140, 149, and another god A&u, see
Schrader, Lap. 141.

118 LECTURES ON THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION.

i) which in Hebrew means my lord, and in
the OJd Testament is used exclusively of Jehovah,
appears *in Phoenicia as the name of the Supreme
Deity, and after undergoing manifold mythological
transformations, the same name has become familiar
to us through the Greek tales about te beautiful
young Adonis, foved by Aphrodite, and killed by the
wiid _boar of Ares.

Elydn, which in Hebrew means the Highest, is used
in the Old Testament as a predicate of God. It occurs
also by itself as a nfime of Jehovah, Melchizedek is
called emphatically the priest of El Elydn, the priest
of the most high God.

But this name again is not restricted to Hebrew.
It occurs in the Phoenician cosmogony as Miun, the
highest God, the Father of Heaven, who was the
father of El Dr. Oppert has identified this Eliun
with the Jlinus mentioned by Damascius.

Another word used in the Bible, sometimes in
combination with El, and more frequently alone, as
a name of the supreme deity, is Shaddai \ the violent
or powerful. It has been derived from a kindred root
to that which has yielded the substantive Shdd,
meaning demon i% Syriac and in the language of
the Talmud, and the plural JShedim^ name for false
gods or idols in the Old Testament, M, de Vogue* 2

4. J. ---- ~ --- ---

hieroglyphic inscriptions. It occurs there as the name
of a god introduced by the Shepherds, "and having
Baal^as one of his epithets. Lepsius 3 , however, is op-

1 >Tfli or '? to Journal Asiatique,' 1867, p. 160.

Lepsius, 'Der erste Aeg, Ootterkrefe,' p. 48. See also Noldeke,

LECTURE III. 119

posed t!o this identification. The same deity Shaddai,
the Powerful, ^ has, by a clever conjecture, begn dis-
covered as one of the deities worshipped by the
ancient Phoenicians 1 .

While these names of the Deity and some more
are shared? in common by all, or by the most im-
portant branches of the Semitif family, and must
therefore liave existed previous to the first Semitic
separation, there are others which are generally sup-
posed to be peculiar to one or the other branch. They
either started into existence after the first Semitic
Separation, or at all events they became in after times
the peculiar gods of their own peculiar people, such
as Chemosh of the Moabites, Milcom of the Am-
monites, Ashtaroth of the Sidonians 2 .

Thus the name of Jehovah, or Jahveh*, as it seems
originally to have been pronounced 4 , has generally
been supposed to be a divine name peculiar to the
Jews. It is true that in a well-known passage of
Lydus, IAO 6 is said to have been the name of God
among the Chaldseans. But granting that IAO was
the same word as Jahveh or Jehovah or Jah (as in

'Ztir Kritik des A. T.' p. 160, note ; and Cheyne, in the Academy, 1875,
P. 653.

1 Bunsen, 'EgyjrtJ 1 iv. 221 ; De Vogue*, 'Melanges d'Aicheologie,'
p. 77. See also Noldeke, 1. o p. 775.

fl i Kings xi, 5, 7 ; 2 Kings xxii. 13 ; Judges si. 23, 24. n

8 Theodoret 'Quaest. xv. ad Exodum' (420 A,D.): Aou SJofirA
Sa/utpcfrat IABE, 'lovSeuot 5i IAH. Diod. Sic, i. 94 (59 B. 0.) :
rotV 'louSa/ot? M0vffT)v rbv *Ia; kiriKC&aijfjifvov 9t6v, tc. r. X.

* See Kuenen, 'Hibberfc Lectures,' p. 308.

LyduB, *De Menribus,' iv. 38, 14 : Ol XaX8aT rfa

u, oltar 6 Mp rois iirrA irrfAow, rovriarw b SqfHQVpy6s : Bnnsen,
193; Benan, 'SaobhonUaiaii, 1 p. 44, note. And sea
Diodorus Siculua, i. 94, a.

120 LECTURES ON THE SCIENCE OB 1 RELIGION.

Hallelu-jah)> may not Lydus by the Chaldseaife have
simply meant the Jews? We should be driven to
a different conclusion, if Jahu did really occur as a
divine name in the Assyrian inscriptions. Sir Henry
RawHnson, however, to "wtibm I applied for informa-
tion,* declares himself to be doubtful, as jset, whether
the Jahu who is mentioned in the Assyrian inscrip-
tio^s is really an Assyrian name. He thinks it may be
a Syrian word that found an entrance into Assyrian,
like several other foreign words. Other scholars, on
the contrary, such as Professor Schrader, express them-
selves less doubtfully on this point, and claim Jahu
as one of the old Assyrian gods. Nay, they now go
evfcn a step further, and trace his first beginning back
to Accadian. Thus Professor Delitzsch maintains that
the simple sound I signified in Accadian 'god' and
'the supreme god/ just as Ui, ila (Hebrew fl) did;
that the Assyrians pronounced this I with the nomi-
native termination ia-u ; that accordingly the character
for I was called by the Assyrians ia-u ; and that it
can only be regarded as an accident that hitherto
Ya-u, as the name of the deity, has not been met with
in any Assyrian inscription 1 .

It is difficult either to accept or to reject statements
of facts put forward with so much authority, and it
seems to me the most respectful attitude which we
can assume with regard to the new evidence placed
before us by Assyrian and Accadian scholars, if for
the present we keep at a certain distance, and wait
before finally recasting our received notions of Semitic
religion. That the Babylonian and Assyrian docu-

1 See Kuemn, 'Hibbert Lecture,' p. 311.

LECTUBE III. 121

merits are being deciphered in a truly scientific spirit
has never been a matter of doubt to me, since the
first publication of the Babylonian version of the
Behistun inscriptions. Nor have I been in the least
surprised at the frequent cnanges in the reading* of
certain ncftnes, and in the rendering of certain sen-
tences. Though unable to follow Jhe bold investigators
of these Semitic documents, it was not difficult for Any
one acquainted with the history of the decipherment
of the Persian Cuneiform* inscriptions, to understand
why there should be at first stf much uncertainty in
reading an alphabet like that of the Semitic Cunei-
form texts. With regard to the Sumerian decipher-
ments, I have no right to say even so much as tEis,
but here too I feel we ought to learn to wait, and
not discourage those laborious explorers who try to
translate a language of which as yet no more is
really known than that it is neither Semitic nor
Aryan. All I can say is, that if their endeavours are
ever crowned with complete success, their achievement
will be more wonderful than the decipherment of all
other inscriptions.

Taking this view of the matter, I have, whenever I
had to treat of the religion of the Semitic races, simply
abstained from* touching on Babylonian or Assyrian,
still more on Accadian and Sumerian ground. I pre-
ferred leaving a gap to filling it with materials which,
from the nature of the case, were as yet so pliant and
so brittle.* I greatly admire the courage of otfoae
students of ancient religion, and partienterly of fto~
fessor Tiele, who in his 'Comparative History of An-
cient Religions ' has made such excellent use of the
same materials. But I cannot disregard the warning

12 LEOTUBES ON THE SCIENCE OP RELIGION.

voices of other scholars, such as, for instance, M?. Guy-
ard, who remarks that the gods of the Sumerian and
Accadian* religions called 'Moulge, Silik-moulon-chi'
are in reality the names of Bel and Mardak, wrongly
deciphered 1 . It might b sfSd that M. Guyard is not
a quite impartial authority in guch questions. But
he quotes Mr. Binches, whose authority will hardly
be questioned, and who remarks that suCh names
of AcSadian kings as Hammurabi and Burnaburias,
should really be read Kimtu rapastu and Kidin-bel-
mat&ti.

I say again that even such portents are not enough
to shake my faith in that method of Babylonian and
ev&i of Accadian decipherment which has been followed
for years by so many eminent scholars, but I think the
historian of ancient religions is justified in waiting
before he either accepts or definitely rejects tlw new
light that the ancient Cuneiform Inscriptions are meant
to shed over the most remote periods of Semitic thought.
Thai some of our best Semitic scholars should be less
patient, and point out what seems to them utter im-
possibilities in the conclusions to which Babylonian and
Accadian researches seem to lead, is perfectly natural.
Such criticism should be welcomed, not resented. Thus
Professor Kuenen, tBe great historian rf the 'Religion
of Israel,* objects to the Accadian derivation of Jeho-
vah or Jahveh, because he sees difficulties which must
be removed before such a derivation could be accepted.
He remarks that as early as the inscription of Mesha,
about 900 B. a, the name of Jahveh occurs in its qua-
driliteral forms, Y(a)hw(e)h, and such a form could
never have growa out of lau; while lau, as he shows,

1 See ' Athenaeum/ if June, 1883.

LECTUBTfi III. 128

might well be understood as a secondaiy development
of Y(a)hw(e)lj. 'In the eighth century ,' as ti\e same
scholar adds 1 , 'the name of Jahveh was regarded by
many, rightly or wrongly^ as a derivative of the verb
to be. It was explained as he is, and in it was. sSen
the exprefeion of the unchangeableness and faithful-
ness of the God to whose essence the name corres-
ponded.* Professor Kuenen holds, in fact, that Ifoses
was the first to call the god of the sons or Israel
Jahveh 2 , instead of his t>ld name El-Shaddai, and I
only wonder that he did not xfiention that the name
of Jahveh occurs for the first time in the name of the
mother of Moses, Jochebed, ' she whose glory is Jeho-
vah.' He leaves it open to explain Jahveh, either as
He who is, or as He who alone is, while the other gods
are not; butjie inclines himself to take the root in
a caulal sense, and to take the name of Jahveh as
meaning he who gives life, who causes everything to
exist, the creator. This would make Jahveh almost
a reproduction of the old Vedic Asura, the life-giver,
from as, to breathe, to be, asu, breath, asura, the
living and enlivening god, the Ahura of the Avesta,
showing again how the same thoughts and the same
names may crop up on Aryan and Semitic ground
without necessitating in the least the admission of an
actual contact during pre-historic periods of Aryans
and Semites in Iran 8 .

But whether for the present we include or exdtute
the name V Jehovah from the stock of derate a*$ftft

1 Ksenen, ' Hibbert Lectures,' p. 311 ; KBH, <
vol. i. p. 42.

Kuenen, ' EeHgion of Israel/ -voL L p. 378.
8 Ibid, p, 354.

124 LECTURES ON THE SCIENCE OF BELIGION.

shared in common by the whole Semitic race, we
have, I^think, sufficient witnesses to establish the fact
that ther was a period during which the ancestors of
the Semitic family had not yefc teen divided either
in language or religion. That period transcends the
recollection of every one of the Semitic rdbes in the
same way as neither Hindus, GreekSj nor Komans
have any recollection of the time when tliey spoke
a common language, and worshipped their Father in
heaven by a name that wasas yet neither Sanskrit,
nor Greek, nor Latin.* I do not hesitate to call this
pre-historic period historical in the best sense of the
word. It was a real period, because, unless it was
real, all the realities of the Semitic languages and the
Semitic religions, such as we find them after their
separation, would be unintelligible. Hebrew, Syriac,
and Arabic point to a common source as mtteh as
Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin; and unless we can bring
ourselves to doubt that the Hindus, the Greeks, the
Romans, and the Teutons derived the worship of their
principal deity from their common Aryan sanctuary,
we shall not be able to deny that there was likewise
a primitive religion of the whole Semitic race, and
that UK, the Strong One in heaven, was invoked by
the ancestors of alf the Semitic race$, before there
were Babylonians in Babylon, Phoenicians in Sidon
and TynTs, before there were Jews in Mesopotamia
or Jerusalem. The evidence of the Semitic is the
same as that of the Aryan languages : the Conclusion
cannot be different.

We "now come to the third nucleus of language,
and, as I hope t<5 show, of religion also that which
forms the foundation of the Turanian world. The

LEOTTTBE III. 125

subject is extremely difficult, and I confess I doubt
whether I shall succeed in engaging your syjnpathy
in favour of the religious opinions of people &> strange,
so far removed from us,^as the Chinese, the Mongo-
lians, the Samoyedes, the 'Finns, and Lapps,. We
naturally %ake an interest in the ancient history of
the Aryan and Semitic nations^f or,* after all, -we are
ourselves*Aryan in language, and Semitic, at least to
a certain extent, in religion. But what have*we in
common with the Turanians, with Chinese and Sa-
moyedes? Very little, it may sdbm ; and yet it is not
the yellow skin and the high cheekbones that make
the man. Nay, if we look but steadily into those
black Chinese eyes, we shall find that there, too, there
is a soul that responds to a soul, and that the God
whom they wean is the same God whom we mean,
however helpless their utterance, however imperfect
their worship.

That the languages of the Finns, Lapps, Samoyedes,
Turks, Mongol and Tungusians presuppose an early,
though, it may be, not a very firm settlement, is now
admitted by all competent authorities. That the
Tamulic, Lohitic, Gangetic, Malaie and Taic languages
presuppose a similar concentration, is as yet an hy-
pothesis only, while the convergence of these two
branches, the North Turanian and South Turanian,
towards the most ancient Chinese as their common
centre, though it may be called plausible, has certainly
not yet tifeen established by sufficient scientific evi-
dence. If therefore we endeavour to discover among
the religions of these people fragments, and, more par-
ticularly, linguistic fragments which* betray the same

126 LECTUKES ON THE SCIENCE 0? BELKHON,

source, we must never forget that, as yet, we are building
hypothesis on hypothesis only, and that our pleading for
the existence of common Turanian concepts of the Divine
cannot count on the same willing acceptance which
is fe^dily accorded to arguments in favour of common
Aryan and Semitic concepts of. the Deit^ On the
other hand it skould be borne in mind that, if we
succeeded in establisTiing the existence of *names of
the Deity shared in common by some at least of the
Turanian peoples, this would supply a new and very
important support of*the theory that the Turanian
languages possess indeed a common prehistoric begin-
ning, and a common historic continuity.

11 we take the religion of China as the earliest
representative of Turanian worship, the question is,
whether we can find any names of $he Deity in
Chinese which appear again in the religions anS my-
thologies of other Turanian tribes, such as the Mand-
shus, the Mongolians, the Tatars, or Finns. I confess
tfeat, considering the changing and shifting character
<$ the Turanian languages, considering also the long
interval of time that must have passed between the
first linguistic and religious settlement in China, and
the later gradual and imperfect consolidation of the
other Turanian races, I was not very (ftmguine in my
expectation that any such names as Dyaus pitar
among tffe Aryans, or El and Baal among the She*
mites, could have survived in the religious traditions
of the vast Turanian world. Such preconceived
opinions, however, ought not to keep us from further
researches, and if what we find is but little, we must
never forget that we have hardly a right to, expect
evea this little. There are in researches of this kind

LBCT0BE III. 127

different degrees of certainty, and I am the very last
person to slu them over, and to represent all our
results as equally certain. But if we want lo arrive
at terra ftrma, we must 3qpt jnind a plunge now and
then ; and if we wish to mount a ladder, we musfc not
be afraid <JF taking ifce first step. The coincidences
between the religious phraseology bf Chinese and
other Turanian languages are certainly not liljp Ube
coincidences between Greek and Sanskrit, or between
Hebrew and Phoenician; but they are such that they
ought not to be passed over by the pioneers of a new
science.

You remember that the popular worship of anciept
China was a worship of single spirits, of powers, or,
we might almost say, of names, the names of the most
prominent powers of nature which are supposed to
exerdteft an influence for good or evil on the life of
man. We find a belief in spirits of the sky, the
sun, the moon, the stars, the earth, the mountains,
the rivers ; to say nothing as yet of the spirits of th$
departed.

In China, where there always has been a strong
tendency towards order and regularity, some kind of
system has been superinduced by the recognition of
two powers, one' active, the other passive, one male,
the other female, which comprehend everything, and
which, in the mind of. the more enlightened, tower
high above the great crowd of minor spirits. These
two powers %re within and beneath and behind every*
thing that is double in nature, and they have fre-
quently been identified with heaven and earth.

We can clearly see, however, that the spirit of
heaven occupied from the beginning a much higher

128 LECTURES ON THE SOIENOB Off RELIGION.

position than the spirit of the earth. It is in i&e his-
torica^books only, in the Shu-king 1 , that we are told
that hetfven and earth together are he father and
mother of all things. In the most ancient poetry
Heayen alone is both fa&er and mother 2 . This spirit
of heaven is known in Chinese, by the natae of Tim,
and wherever in other religions we should expect the
name of the supreme deity, whether Jupitdr or Allah,
we find in Chinese the name of Tien or sky. This
Tien, according to the Imperial Dictionary of Kanghee,
means the Great Oflfc, he that dwells on high and
regulates all below. We see in fact that Tien, ori-
ginally the name of sky, has passed in Chinese
t&Vough nearly all the phases, from the lowest to the
highest, through which the Aryan name for sky,
dyaus, passed in the poetry, the religion, the my-
thology, and philosophy of India and Greece. The
sign of tien in Chinese is ^, and this is compounded
of two signs: ^ ta, which means great, and yih,
which means one. The sky, therefore, was conceived
as the One, the Peerless, and as the Great, the High,
the Exalted. I remember reading in a Chinese book,
*As there is but one sky, how can there be many
gods?' In fact, their belief in Ti^i, the spirit of
heaven, moulded the whole of the religious phraseo-
logy of ihe Chinese. * The glorious heaven/ we read,
'is called bright, it accompanies you wherever you

1 la the 'Shu-king* (3, n) Tien is called Shaag-tien, or High
Heaven, which la synonymous with Shang-te, High Spirit, another very
commjm name of the supreme deity. The Confucians never made any
image of Bhang-te, but the Tao-sse represented their (Yah-hwang)
Shang-te under thefcuman form. Medhurat, 'Inquiry,' p. 46.

a Chalmers, 'Origin of the Chinese/ p. 14; Medhurst, 1. c p 124,
contrast between Shin and Shangti,

LECTTJBE III. 129

go; the glorious heaven is called luminous, it goes
wherever you roam/ Tien is called the ancestor of
all things; the highest that is above. He is called
the great framer, who makes things as a potter frames
an earthen vessel. The Chinese also speak of the de-
crees and tHe will of Heaven, of the steps of Heaven
or Providence. The sages who Ijeach* the people are
sent by heaven, and Confucius himself is said tojive
been used by heaven as the 'alarum* of the worid.
The same Confucius, when on the brink of despond-
ency, because no one would beliSve in him, knows of
one comfort only: that comfort is: 'Heaven knows
me.' It is clear from many passages that with Con-
fucius Tien or the Spirit of Heaven was the supreme
deity, and that he looked upon the other gods of the
people, the spirits of the air, the mountains and the
rivers, Tihe spirits also of the departed, very much
with the same feelings with which Sokrates regarded
the mythological deities of Greece. Thus when asked
on one occasion how the spirits should be served, he
replied: c lf we are not able to serve men, how can
we serve the spirits?' And at another time he said,
in his short and significant manner: 'Bespect the
Gods, and keep them at a distance L*

We have now\> see whether we can find any traces
of this belief in a supreme spirit of heaven among the
other branches of the Turanian class, the Mandshus,
Mongolians, Tatars, Finns, or Lapps. As there are
many name? for sky in the Turanian dialects, it would
not be absolutely necessary that we should fincL the
same name which we found in Chinese: yet, if traces
of that name could be found among Mongolians and

1 Medhurst, *BepIy to !Dr, Booae/ p. 32.
K

ISO LECTUBES ON THE SCIENCE OF BELICUON.

Tatars, our argument would, no doubt, gain far'greater
strength. It is the same in all researches of compara-
tive mythology. If we find the same conceptions,
the same myths and legends, in* India, Greece, Italy,
and. Germany, there is, no doubfc some presumption
in favour of their common origin, but nocnore. But
if we meet with gods and heroes, having the same
names in the mythology of the Veda, and? in the my-
thology of Greece and Eome and Germany, we stand
on firmer ground. We hove then to deal with real
facts that cannot be^iisputed, and alt that remains i$
to explain them.

In Turanian mythology, however, such facts are
not easily brought together. With the exception of
China, we know very little of the ancient history of
the Turanian races, and what we knqpr of their pre-
sent state comes frequently from prejudiced observers.
Besides, their old heathendom is fast disappearing be-
fore the advance of Buddhism, Mohammedanism, and
Christianity. Yet if we take the accounts of the most
trustworthy travellers in Central and Northern Asia,
and more particularly the careful observations of
Castr&i, we cannot but recognise some most striking
coincidences in the scattered notices of the religion of
the Tungusic, Mongolic, Tataric, afld Finnic tribes*
Everywhere we find a worship of the spirita of nature,
of the "spirits of the departed, though behind an<J.
above it there rises the belief in some higher power,
known by different names, sometimes called the
Fattier, the Old One, who is the Maker and Protector
of the world, and who always resides in heaven \
Chinjese historians are the only writers who give qp

' Vorlesungen ttbsr Fimujsohe Mytfcologie,' p. 2.

LEOTTOB III. 131

an account of the earlier history of some of these
Turanian, tribes, particularly of the Huns, whom they
GB^lHiangnu, and of the Turks 9 whom they call Tuhiu.
They relate that the* Huns worshipped the sun, ths
moon, the spirits of the sfi:y*and the earth, and.tMb
spirits of tke depart^., and that their priests, the
Shamans, possessed a power over the clouds, being
able to bri^g down snow, hail, rain", and wind 1 .

Menander, a Byzantine historian, relates of the Arks
that in his time they worshipped the fire, the water,
and the earth, but that at the same time they believed
in a God, the maker of the world, and offered to him
sacrifices of camels, oxen, and sheep.

Still later we get some information from medieval
travellers, such as Piano Carpini 2 and Marco Polo 3 ,

1 Castrfc, VorleBungen fiber Pnmisohe Mythologie,' p. 36.

9 ' They believe in one God, the Maker of all things, visible and
invisible, and the Distributor of good and evil in this world, bnt they
worship him not with prayers or praises or any kind of service.
NathelesB they have certain idols of felt, imitating the human face,
and having underneath the face something- resembling teats; these
they place on either side the door. These they believe to be the
guardians of the flocks, from whom they have the boons of milk and
increase Others they fabricate of bits of silk, and these are highly
honoured .... and whenever they begin to eat and drink, they first
offer these idols a portion of their food or drinV See * Maroo Polo/ ed.
Yule, vol. i. p. 249.

8 'This is the fashion of their religion. They say there is a Most
High God of Heaven, whom they worship daily with thurible and
incense, but they pray to Him only for health of mind and body. But
they have also certain other gods of theirs called Natigay, and bey say
he is the god of fee Earth, who watohes over their children, 6**tf**'***
crops. They show him great worship and honour, and evwy J*a* Mb
a figure of him in his house, made of felt aadolofch; and they ftlflfl pafr*
in the same manner images of his wife and children. Tfea wife thay pui
on the left hand, and the children in front. And wfcen they eat, they
take the fat of the meat and grease the god'a D&OQ& withal, as well as
the mouths of his wife am* ckiltoau Than thft? take off the broth and
E %

132 LEO-TUBES ON THE SCIENCE OF BELIGION.

who say that the Mongol tribes paid great reverence
to th$ sun, the fire, and the water, but that they be-
lieved also in a great and powerful God, whom they
called Natagai (Natigay) qs Itoga.

modern times we have chiefly to depend on
Castr&i, who had eyes to see -and ears tt) hear what
few other travdlerj would have seen or heard, or un-
dSr^jOod. Speaking of the Tungusic trifles, he says,
' they worship the sun, the moon, the stars, the earth,
fire, the spirits of fbrests s rivers, and certain sacred
localities ; they worship even images and fetishes, but
with all this they retain a faith in a supreme being
which they call Buga 1 .' e The Samoyedes,' he says,
' worship idols and various natural objects ; but they
always profess a belief in a higher divine power which
they call Num.'

This deity which is called Num is also callfd Junta
by the Samoyedes 2 , and is in fact the same deity
which in the grand mythology of Finland is known
under the name of Jumala. The mythology of Fin-
land has been more carefully preserved than the my-
thologies of all the other Altaic races, and in their
ancient epic poems which have been kept up by oral
tradition for cenijpries, and have been written down

sprinkle it before the door of the house ; and that done, they deem that
their god, and his family have had their share of the dinner. 1 ' Marco
Polo, 1 ed. Yule, voL i p. 348, Colonel Yule traces these Nagatay
back to the Ongot of the Tongues, and the Noga& of the Bnriatee,
Marco Polo himself ascribes the same worship of the Nagatay to the
Catfcayans, i. e. Chinese (vol. i. p. 437), but Colonel Yale thinks that
this may be due to a confusion of Chinese with Tartars. See also vol. ii.
p. 478

1 Is this the Bussian 'bog/ god?

* Castren, 'VorlesungenuberFinniBoheMythologie/p. 13.

LECTURE III, 133

but very lately, we have magnificent descriptions of
Jumala, the deity of the sky.

Jumala meant origmally the sky. It is derived, as
Castre'n has shown (p. 34)4 from Juma, thunder, and
la, the place, meaning therefore the place of thunder,
or the sky. * It is used first of all for sky, secondly
for the god of the sky, and thirdly for gods in general.
The very sefme word, only modified according to the
phonetic rules of each language, occurs among the
Lapps (p. n), the Esthonians, the Syrjanes, the
Tcheremissians, and the Votyafes (p. 34). We can
watch the growth and the changes of this heavenly
deity as we catch a glimpse here and there of the re-
ligious thoughts of the Altaic tribes. An old Sa-
moyede woman who was asked by Castre'n (p. 16)
whether she e?er said her prayers, replied: 'Every
morning I step out of my tent and bow before the
sun, and say : " When thou riaest, I, too, rise from my
bed." And every evening I say : " When thou sinkest
down, I, too, sink down to rest."* That was her
prayer, perhaps the whole of her religious service ;
a poor prayer it may seem to us, but not to her : for
it made that old woman look twice at least every day
away from earth and up to heaven ; it implied that
her life was bouftd up with a larger and higher life ;
it encircled the daily routine of her earthly existence
with something of a divine light. She herself was
evidently proud of it, for she added, with a touch of
self-righteouShess ; * There are wild people who never
say their morning and evening prayers/

While in this case the deity of the sky is represented,
as it were, by the sun, we see Jumala, under different
circumstances, conceived as the deity of the sea*

134 LECTUKES ON THE SCIENCE OF EELIGION.

"When walking one evening with a Samoyede sailor
along.the coast of the Polar Sea, Casfcr&i asked him :
' Tell me, where is NumT (i.e. ^umala.) Without a
moment's hesitation the ol<i sailor pointed to the dark,
distant sea, and said : ' He is there. 9

Again, in the epic poem Kal^&la, wherf the hostess
of Pohjola is in labgur, she calls on Jumala, and says :
* Obige now into the bath, Jumala, into t&e warmth,
Lord of the air I' (p. 19).

At another time Jumalafis the god of the air, and ia
invoked in the following lines (p. 31):

Harness now thyself, Jumala,
Buler of the air, thy horses t
Bring them forth, thy rapid racers,
Drive the sledge with glittering colours,
Passing through our bones, our ankles.
Through our flesh that shakes and trembles,
Through our veins which seem all broken.
Knit the flesh and bones together.
Fasten vein to vein more firmly.
Let our joints be filled with silver,
Let our veins with gold be running 1

In all these cases the deity invoked is the same, it
is iihe deity of the sky, Jumala ; but so indefinite is
his character, that we can hardly say whether he is
the god of the sky, t or the sun, or tfce sea, or the air,
or whether he is a supreme deity reflected in all these
aspects.of nature.

However, you will naturally ask, where is there
any similarity between the name of tfyt deity and
the Chinese deity of the sky, Tim? The common
worship of Jumala may prove some kind of religious
concentration among the different Altaic nations in
the North of Asia, but it does not prove any pre-*
historic community of worship between those nation*

LEOTUBE HI. 135

and the ancient inhabitants of China. It is true that
the Chinese Tien, with its three meanings of sky, god
of the sky, ancf god in general, is the exact xsounter-
part of the North Turanian^ Jumala ; hut still we want
more ; we want, if possible, iSraces of the same n/tnfe
of the deitf in China* in Mongolia, and Tatary, just
as we found the name of Jupiter in India and Italy,
and the naTne of El in Babylon and Palestine.

Well, let us reinember that Chinese is a fiono-
sy liable language, and thai the later Turanian dialects
have entered into the agglutinative stage, that is to
say, that they use derivative suffixes, and we shall
then without much difficulty discover traces of the
Chinese word Tien, with all its meanings, among
some at least of the most important of the Turanian
races. In the. Mongolian language we find Tmg-ri\
and tihte means, first, sky; then, god of the sky; then,
god in general ; and, lastly, spirit or demon, whether
good or bad.

Thus we have gained the first firm ground, and we
may now advance another step. It is a fortunate
accident that this very word tengri is one of the few
that can be traced back historically from its modern

1 Turkish *tangry*((^kk or ijjf3, ted&n), ihe Yakuts 'tangara '
The Buriates place Dsaiagachi or 'Chief Creator of -Fortune' in the
middle of their hut, the place of honour. At the door is the Emelgelji,
the tutelary of the herds and young cattle, made of sheepskins. Outside
the hut is the Chandaghatu, a name implying that the idol was fanned:
of a white har^kin, the tutelary of the chase, and perhaps of wax. Afl
these have been eipelled by Buddhism except Daaia^cM,

Tengri, and introduced among the Buddhist drrifcitia* Setf
Polo,' ed. Yule, vol. i. p 2go. 'The Supreme Good SJgordt ajppfcars to
have been called by the Mongols Tengri (heavn\and Ehormuzda, and
is identified by Schmidt with ih* Pe3nriaEca$cL IB BuddH* times
he became identified vith Ipdra, L o. voL i p. 949.

136 LBOTURES ON THE SCIENCE OF BELIQION.

to its more ancient forms. Chinese writers^ when
speaking of the ancient history of the Huns, tell us
that i3ie title which the Huns gave t*o their leaders
was tangli-kutu (or tchen-jti) 1 . This title is said to
have had in their language the meaning of 'Son of
Heaven,' which reminds us of tlje still current title of
the Emperor of China, viz. 'Son of Heaven 2 / tien-tze,
comyeying the meaTiing, not, as is commonly sup-
posecHT of ' Son of God/ but c Son of Heaven/ or, as
we should say, 'Emperor, by the grace of God.'
Taking therefore tien*tse as corresponding to tangli-
kutu, we arrive at the following equation :

Hunnish Mongolian Chinese

tarig-li teng-ri tien.

Again, in the historical accounts which the Chinese
give of the Tukiu, the ancestors of the Turks, it is
said that they worshipped the Spirits of the ISarth,
and that they called these spirits purteng-i~li. Hero
the first syllable must be intended for earth, while in
teng-irli we have again the same word as the Mon-
golian tengri, only used, even at that early time, no
longer in the sense of heaven, or god of heaven, but
as a name of gods and spirits in general. We find
a similar transition of meaning in the modern Yakuto
word tangara. It means the sky, and^it means God ;
but among the Christian converts in Siberia, tangara
is also used to signify ' the Saints.' The wild reindeer
is called in Takute ' God's reindeer/ because it lives in
the open air, or because God alone takes cfre of it.

Here, then, we have the same kind of evidence
whicf enabled us to establish a primitive Aryan and

1 See Schott, ' TJeber das Altaisolie SprachgesohlechV p. o.
* See Sohott, ' Chinemsohe Literatur/ p. 63.

LEOTUEB III. 137

a primitive Semitic religion: we have a common
name, and this name given to the highest, deity,
preserved in 'the monosyllabic language of China,
and in the cognate, though agglutinative, dialects of
some of the principal North Turanian tribes. , We
find in these words,not merely a vague similarity
of sound and meaning, but, by watching their growth
in Chines^, Mongolian, and Turkish, we are abl* to
discover in them traces of organic identity. Every-
where they begin with the meaning of sky, they rise
to the meaning of God, and they sink down again to
the meaning of gods and spirits. The changes in the
meaning of these words run parallel with the changes
that took place in the religions of these nations
which comprehended the first intimation of the
Divine under ^the name of the sky, and thus formed
for tlfemselves a god of the sky. By his various
manifestations that god of the sky became more and
more mythologically individualised, was broken up
into many gods, and these many gods led again in
the end to the concept of a God in general. Thus
only can we explain historically, i. e. phonetically and
etymologically, the connection between the French
divinit^ and the Vedic Dyaus, sky; and the same
applies to the Takute tangcvra, Samt, in its historical
relation to the Chinese tien, sky.

Did we allow ourselves to be guided by mere simi-
larity of sound and meaning, it would be easy to take
another stSp and to attempt a comparison between
divine names occurring in the Northern and the
Southern branches of the Turanian class. We saw,
for instance, that the name of th supreme deity
among the Samoyedes was Num, and we are told

138 LEOTURES ON THE SCIENCE OB 1 BELIGIOff.

that among the Tibetans Nam means godhead. In
mere seund Nam is no doubt much nearer to Num
than Num is to the Finnish Juwula. Nevertheless
th$ real affinity of the Sjunayede Mtm and the Fin-
nish tfumala admits of no doubt, while it would be
mere guesswork to connect Samoyede Num and Ti-
betan Nam\ unless $i& phonetic rules had first been
estaiil&hed which would justify the change of a into
u, and a common source had been discovered from
which both words could havQ sprung.

If we now turn for a moment to the minor spirits
believed in by the large masses in China, we shall
ea^ly see that they, too, in their character are strik-
ingly like the spirits worshipped by the North Tu-
ranian tribes. These spirits in Chinese are called
Shin 8 , which is really the name given- to every in-
visible power or influence which can be perceived in
operation in the universe. Some Shin or spirits re-
ceive real worship, which is graduated according to
their dignity; others are looked upon with fear. The
spirits of pestilence are driven out and dispersed by
exorcism; many are only talked about. There are
so many spirits that it seems impossible to fix their
exact number. Th% principal classes * ^re the celes-
tial spirits (tfan shin), the terrestrial spirits (ti fa'),
and the .Ancestral spirits (jin kwd\ and this is the

is probably intended for *he word whioli Jaembkft In hi*
a-EngliBh Dictionary,' p f 309, ^tes Tnam,* Thie rawmi
heaven, sky. He adds that ynam-f el-dkrfr-po is Said to be a deity of the
Horpa-w: Mongols. Nam-mk'a is 'the space above where the btafo
ore flying, and the saints are dotting, where it lightens and thundwi/

MedhmBt, 'Eeply/p.11,
* Ibid, p. ax.

LECT0KE in. 139

order 1 in which. they are ranked according to their
dignity. Ampng celestial spirits (tim shin) vre find
the spirits of the gun and the moon and the stars,
the clouds, wind, thundery and rain; among terrestrial
spirits, those of the mountains, the fields, the grain,
the rivers* the trees? the year. Among the departed
spirits ar^e those of the emperors, the sages, and other
public benefactors, which are to be revered^Jb^ the
whole nation, while each family has its own manes
which are treated with special reverence and honoured
by many superstitious rites 2 .

The same state of religious feeling is exhibited
among the North Turanian tribes, only without those
minute distinctions and regulations in which the
Chinese mind delights. The Samoyedes, as we saw,
believed in a supreme god of heaven, called JNum;
but Oastre'n, who lived so long among them, 'says :
'The chief deities invoked by their priests or sorcer-
ers, the Shamans, are the so-called Tadebcjos*, invi-
sible spirits dwelling in the air, the earth, the water,
and everywhere in nature. I have heard many a
Samoyede say that they were merely the spirits of
the departed, but others look upon them as a class
of inferior delves.'

The same scholar tells us (p. 105) that ' the mytho-

1 Medhurst, 'Keply/ p 23. 'The spirits of heaven are called sUit;
the spirits of earth are called lei; when men die, theit tfam&rfng aft&
transformed fibula aad spirits are called aet.'

9 Ibid. p. 43, * The great sacrifices are offered only to ^ <a- Skvn$~te>
the same ad Tien. The five Te which used to be Joined Vftfajtkmy-te
At the great border sacrifice were only the fife power* o* qttdtties of
STtanff-te personified. Since the year AJX 136$ the wonftdp
five 2% has been abolished. 1

* Castr&o, 'Fmmsohe Mythologies,' p. 12*.

140 LECTURES ON THE SOIEffCE OF RELIGION.

logy of the Finns is flooded -with names of deities.
Every gbject in nature has a genius, called haltia,
which is supposed to be its creator and protector.
These spirits were not tied ^p these outward objects,
bu wre free to roam at>out, and had a body and
soul, and their own well-marked personality. Nor
did their existence depend on the existence of a
singfe object; for though there was no Sbject in
nature without a genius, the genius was not con-
fined to any single object,but comprehended the
whole class or genus. This mountain-ash, this
stone/ this house has its own genius, but the same
genius cares for all other mountain-ashes, stones, and
houses. 1

We have only to translate this into the language
of logic, and we shall understand at once what has
happened here as elsewhere in the growth of religious
ideas and mythological names. What we call a gene-
ral concept, or what used to be called 'essentia gene-
ralis,' 'the tree-hood, 9 'the stone-hood/ 'the house-
hood/ in fact, the genus tree, stone, and house, is what
the Finns and Samoyedes call the genius, the haltia,
the tadelqo, and what the Chinese call Shin. We
speak very glibly of^an essentia genercdis, but to the
unschooled mind this was too great an Effort. Some*
thing substantial and individual had to be retained
when trees had to be spoken of as a forest, or days
as a year; and in this transition period from indi-
vidual to general conceptions, from the intuitional to
the conceptual, from the real to the abstract, the
shadow, the ghost, the power or the spirit of the
forest, of the yea'r, of the clouds, and the lightning,
took possession of the human mind, and a class of

LECTUEE IH. 141

being% was called into existence which stands before
us as so-called deities in the religion and mythology
of the ancienf world.

The worship of ancestral spirits is likewise shared
in common by the North Turanian races ar\d the
Chinese. I do not lay much stresfi on that fact,
because the worship of the spirits of the departed is
perhaps Uhe most widely spread form of natural super-
stition all over the world. It is nevertheless Uf some
interest that we should i$eet this superstition so fully
developed in China and in the whole North of Asia.
Most of the Finnish and Altaic tribes, says Castren
(p. 119), cherish a belief that death, which they look
upon with terrible fear, does not entirely destroy
individual existence. And even those who do not
profess belief in a future life, observe certain cere-
monits which show that they think of the departed
as still existing. They take food, dresses, oxen,
knives, tinder-boxes, kettles, and sledges, and place
them on the graves ; nay, if pressed, they would con-
fess that this is done to enable the departed to hunt,
to fish, and to %ht, as they used to do when alive.
Lapps and Finns admit that the body decays, but
they imagine that a new body is given to the dead
in the lower ^rld. Others speSk of the departed as
ghosts or spirits, who either stay in the grave or in
the realm of the dead, or who roam about'on earth,
particularly in the dead of night, and during storm
and rain. They give signs of themselves in the howl-
ing of the wind, the rustling of leaves, the cracfcHng
of the fire, and in a thousand other ways. TEey are
invisible to ordinary mortals, but*the sorcerers or
Shamans can see them, and can even divine their

142 LEOTUBES ON THE SCIENCE OF BELIGION.

thoughts. It is curious that in general these Spirits
$re supposed to he mischievous ; and the most mis-
chievous of all are the spirits of the departed priests
(p, 123). They interrupt the sleef, they send illness
&nl misfortunes, and they frouble the conscience of
their "relatives.* Everything is done to l|eep them
away. When the corpse has been carried out of the
houqe, a redhot stonft is thrown after the ^departed,
as a cfearm to prevent his return. The offerings of
food and other articles deposited on the grave are
accounted for by some, as depriving the dead of any
excuse for coming to the house, and fetching these
things himself. Among the Tchuvashes a son uses
thefollowing invocation when offering sacrifice to the
spirit of his father: We honour thee with a feast;
look, here is bread for thee, and different kinds of
meat; thou hast all thou canst want: but cl# not
trouble us, do not come near us ' (p. 123).

It is certainly a general belief that if they receive
no such offerings, the dead revenge themselves by
sending diseases and other misfortunes. The ancient
Hiongnu or Huns killed the prisoners of war on the
tombs of their leaders; for the Shamans assured them
that the anger of the spirits could not be appeased
otherwise. The sanfe Huns had regular sacrifices in
honour of their ancestral spirits. One tribe, the
Topas, wfeich had migrated from Siberia to Central
Asia, sent ambassadors with offerings to the tombs of
their ancestors. Their tombs were protected with
high palings, to prevent the living from clambering
in, anti the dead from clambering out. Some of these
tombs were magnificently adorned 1 , and at last grew

1 Oastr&i, ' Fianisolie Mythologie,' p. I aa.

LEOTUBE III. 149

almost, and in China 1 altogether, into temples where
the spirits of the departed were actually worshipped,
All this taketf place by slow degrees ; it begi&s with
placing a flower on*the tomb ; it ends with worship-
ping the spirits of departed emperors 2 %s equal* of
the Supreme Spirit, the Shang~te or 3Hen, and as en*
joying a divine rank*far above other spirits or Shin.

The difference, at first sight, ^between the minute
ceremonial of China and the homely worship oWftnns
and Lapps may seem enormous ; but if we trace both
back as far as we can, we see fyat the early stages of
their religious belief are curiously alike. Firat, a
worship of heaven, as the emblem of the most exalted
conception which the untutored mind of man can en-
tertain, expanding with the expanding thoughts of
its worshippers, and eventually leading and lifting
the sil from" horizon to horizon to a belief in that
which is beyond all horizons, a belief in that
which is infinite. Secondly, a belief in deathless
spirits or powers of nature; which supplies the more
immediate and every-day wants of the religious in-
stinct of man, satisfies the imagination, and furnished
the earliest poetry with elevated themes. Lastly, a
belief in the existence of ancestral spirits : which im-
plies, consciously or unconsciously in a spiritual or in
a material form, that which is one of the life-springs
of all religion, a belief in immortality.

Allow me in conclusion to recapitulate shortly the
results of this Lecture.

1 TOon an emperor died, and men erected an ajaoeBfcwl
eet up a parental tablet (as a resting-place for the ' rihin* r Spe&of the
departed), they called him Te. Medjwuat, 'ftupfry,' p. 7; from the
Ze-ke, voL i. p. 49.

y,' p. 45,

144 LECTUBES ON THE SCIENCE OF BELIGION,

We found, first of all, that there is a natural con-
nexior^ between language and religion, and that there-
fore the classification of languages is applicable also
to the ancient religions of the world.

"W& found, secondly, th&t there was a common Aryan
religion before"' the separation gf the Ary&n race; a
common Semitic religion before the separation of the
Semitic race; and jf common Tnranic religion before
the sljmration of the Chinese and the other tribes
belonging to the Turanian *ckss. We found, in fact,
three ancient centres^of religion as we had before
thre ancient centres of language, and we have thus
gained, I believe, a truly historical basis for a scientific
tr&ttment of the principal religions of the world.

FOUKTH

DELITORED AT THE BOTAL
MABOH 12, 1870.

WHEN I came to deliver ihe first of this short
course of lectures, I confess I felt sorry for
having undertaken so difficult a task; and if I could
have withdrawn from it with honour, I should gladly
have done so. Now that I have only this one lecture
left, I feel equally sorry, and I wish I could continue
my coiyse in order to say something more of what I
wished to say, and what in four lectures I could say
but very imperfectly. From the announcement of
my lectures you must have seen that in what I called
' An Introduction to the Science of Religion 7 1 did not
intend to treat of more than some preliminary ques-
tions. I chiefly wanted to show in what sense a truly
scientific study of religion was possible, what materials
there are to eniible us to gain a trustworthy know-
ledge of the principal religions of the world, and
according to what principles these religions rmay be
classified. It would perhaps have been more jn-
teresting to*some of my hearers if we had rn^ea
once into the ancient temples to look #* tt$?%&$
idols of the past, and to discover, if possible, seifib of
the ftmdamental ideas that found expression in the
ancient systems of foifck and worship. But in order
L

146 LECTURES ON THE SOnBXTOK OF BELICUON.

to explore -with real advantage any ruins, whether
of stone or of thought, it is necessary that we should
kno-vf where to look and how to look. In most
works on the history of ancient religions we are
iriven about like forlorn tourists in a vast museum
whdre ancien^ and modern statues, gems^of Oriental
and European workmanship, Original works of art
and mere copies ate piled up together, ^nd at the
en3 of our journey we only feel bewildered and dis-
heartened. We have seen much, no doubt, but we
carry away very little. It* is better, before we enter
int<i these labyrinths, that we should spend a few
hours in making up our minds as to what we really
w^nt to see and what we may pass by; and if in
these introductory lectures we have only arrived at
a dear view on these points, you will find hereafter
that our time has not been altogether silent ingrain.

You will have observed that I have carefully ab-
stained from entering on the domain of what I call
Theoretic, as distinguished from Comparative Theology.
Theoretic theology, or, as it is sometimes called, the
philosophy of religion, has, as far as I can judge, its
right place at the end, not at the beginning of Com-
parative Theology. I have made no secret of my own
conviction that a study of Comparative Theology will
produce with regard to Theoretic Theology the same
revolution which a study of Comparative Philology
has produced in what used to be called the Philosophy
of language. You know how all speculations on the
nature of language, on its origin, its development, its
natural growth and inevitable decay have had to be
taken up afresji from the very beginning, after the
new light thrown on the history of language by the

LEOTUBE IV. 147

comparative method. I look forward to the same
results with respect to philosophical inquiries into
the nature of religion, its origin, and its development,
I do not mean to say'that all former speculations on
these subjects will become Tisiless. Plato's Cratylut,
even the Sfymes of Harris, and Horn* Tooke's *ZW-
versions of Purl&y have not become useless after the
work done Jay Grimm and Bopp, by Humboldt ajid
Bunsen. But I believe that philosophers who specu-
late on the origm of religion and on the psychological
conditions of faith, will in future write more circum-
spectly, and with less of that dogmatic assurance
which has hitherto distinguished so many speculations
on the philosophy of religion, not excepting those af
Schelling and Hegel. Before the rise of geology
it was easy to speculate on the origin of the earth ;
before the rise* of glossology, any theories on the
revealed, the mimetic, the inter] ectional, or the con-
ventional origin of language might easily be held
and defended. Not so now, when facts have filled
the place that was formerly open to theories, and
when those who have worked most carefully among
the d&bris of the earth or the strata of languages are
most reluctant to approach the great problem of the
first beginnings.

So much in order to explain why in this intro-
ductory fcourse I have confined myself within narrower
limits than some of my hearers seem to have expected.
And now, asI have but one hour left, I shall try to
make the best use of it I can, by devoting it entirely
to a point on which I have not yet touched, viz/7m
the right spirit in which ancient religions ought to be
studied and interpreted.

148 LECTURES ON THE SCIENCE OF RELIGHON.

No judge, if he had before him the tforst of
criminals, would treat him as most historians and
theologians have treated the religion^ of the -world.
Every act in the lives of their founders which shows
ffliai they were but metf, is eagerly seized and judged
without merdjr; every doctrinp that is not carefully
guarded is interpreted in the worst sense that it will
boftr; every act of*worship that differs frwn our -own
way%f serving God is held up to ridicule and con-
tempt. And this is not dpne by accident, but with a
set purpose, nay, vftth something of that artificial
serfse of duty which stimulates the counsel for the
defence to see nothing but an angel in his own client,
aSid anything but an angel in the plaintiff on the
other side. The result has. been as it could not be
otherwise a complete miscarriage of justice, an utter
misapprehension of the real character and purpose of
the ancient religions of mankind ; and, as a necessary
consequence, a failure in discovering the peculiar
features which really distinguish Christianity from
all the religions of the world, and secure to its
founder his own peculiar place in the history of the
world, far away from VasishiAa, Zoroaster, and Buddha,
from Moses and Mohammed, from Confucius and
Lao-tse. By undtily depreciating aft other religions,
we 3&ave placed our own in a position -which its
founder never intended for it; we have torn "it away
from the sacred context of the history of the world;
we have ignored, or wilfully narrowed the sundry
times and divers manners in which, in times past,
God spake unto the fathers by the prophets; and in-
stead of recognising Christianity as coming in the
fulness of time, and as the fulfilment of ttie hopes and

LECTURE IV. 149

desires of the whole world, we have brought ourselves
to look upon yis advent as the only broken link in
that unbroken chain which is rightly called the Divine
government of the world,

Nay, worse than this : there are people who, from
mere ignorance of the ancient religions of mankind,
have adopted a doctrine more unchristian than any
that could te found in the pages of the religious J?oftks
of antiquity, viz. that all the nations of the earth,
before the rise of Christianity, were mere outcasts,
forsaken and forgotten of thefr Father in heaven,
without a knowledge of God, without a hope of sal-
vation. If a comparative study of the religions of the
world produced but this one result, that it drove this
godless heresy out of every Christian heart, and made
us see again ia the whole history of the world the
eternal wisdom and love of God towards all His
creatures, it would have done a good work.

And it is high time that this good work should be
done. We have learnt to do justice to the ancient
poetry, the political institutions, the legal enactments,
the systems of philosophy, and the works of art of
nations differing from ourselves in many respects ; we
have brought qjpselves to value $ven the crude and
imperfect beginnings in all these spheres of mental
activity; and I believe we have thus learn^ lessons
from ancient history which we could not have learnt
anywhere else. We can admire the temples of fee
ancient world, whether in Egypt* Babytao, or Chepee j
we can stand in raptures before the statues of Hodias j
and only when we approach the religious conceptions
which find their expression in the temples of Athene
and in the statues of Zeus, we turn away with pity

150 LEOTUBES ON THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION.

or scorn, we call these gods mere idols and images,
and Mass foeir worshippers Periklas, Phidias, So-
krates, and Plato with the worshippers of stocks and
stones. I do not deny Jftsfc the religions of the Baby-
lonTans, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans yrere imper-
fect and full of errors, particularly in their later
stages, but I maintain that the fact of tjjese ancient
people having any religion at all, however imper-
fect, raises them higher, and brings them nearer
to us, than all their worfes of art, all their poetry,
alUtheir philosophy? Neither their art nor their
poetry nor their philosophy would have been possible
without religion ; and if we will but look without
prejudice, if we will but judge as we ought always to
judge, with unwearying love and charity, we shall be
surprised at that new world of bedTuty an truth
which, like the azure of a vernal sky, rises before us
from behind the clouds of the ancient mythologies.

We can speak freely and fearlessly; we can afford
to be charitable. There was a time when it was
otherwise. There was a time when people imagined
that truth, particularly the highest truth, the truth of
religion, could only conquer by blind zeal, by fire and
sword. At that tkne all idols were to be overthrown,
their altars to be destroyed, and their worshippers to
be cut &> pieces. But there came a time when the
sword was to be put up into its place. . . . And if even
after that time there was a work to worlj; and a fight
to fight, which required the fiery zeal of apostles and
martyrs, that time also is now past; the conquest is
gained, and we^have time to reflect calmly on what is
past and what is still to come.

Surely we need not be afraid of Baal or Jupiter.

LECTTJBE IV. 151

Our dangers and our difficulties are now of a very
different kind.. Those who believe that there is a
God, and that He created heaven and earth, and that
He ruleth the world by'IEf unceasing providenqp,
cannot believe that millions of human beings; all
created like ourselves* in the image of God, were, in
their time of ignorance, so utterly abandoned that
their whole religion was falsehood, their whole w^rsTup
a farce, their whole life a mockery. An honest and
independent study of the*religions of the world will
teach us that it was not so will teach us the

lesson which it taught St. Augustine, that there is no
religion which does not contain some grains of truth.
Nay, it will teach us more; it will enable us to see
in the history of the ancient religions, more clearly
than anywhere else, the Divine education of the human
race.

I know this is a view which has been much ob-
jected to, but I hold it as strongly as ever. If we
must not read in the history of the whole human race
the daily lessons of a Divine teacher and guide, if
there is no purpose, no increasing purpose in the suc-
cession of the religions of the world, then we might
as well shut uft the godless book <$f history altogether,
and look upon men as no better than the grass which
is to-day in the field and to-morrow is cast^ into the
oven. Ma.-n would then be indeed of less value than
the sparrows, for none of them is forgotten before
God.

But those who imagine that, in order to mafce^sure
of their own salvation, they must have a great gulf
fixed between themselves and all the other nations of
the world between iheir own religion and the re-

152 LEOTCBES ON THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION.

ligions of Zoroaster, Buddha, or Confucius can hardly
be aw^&re how strongly the interpretation of the his-
tory of the religions of the world, as an education of
tfce human race, can be "supported by authorities
before which l^ey themselves would probably bow in
silence. We need not appeal to an English bishop to
prove the soundness, or to a German philosopher to
pnfvBjbhe truth, of this view. If we wanted authori-
ties we could appeal to Popes, to the Fathers of the
Church, to the Apostles thSmselves, for they have all
upheld the same view with no wavering or uncertain
voice.

I pointed out before that the simultaneous study
of the Old and the New Testament, with an occa-
sional reference to the religion and philosophy of
Greece and Borne, had supplied Christian Divines
with some of the most useful lessons for a wider
comparison of all the religions of the world. In
studying the Old Testament, and observing in it the
absence of some of the most essential truths of Chris-
tianity, they, too, had asked with surprise why the
interval between the fall of man and his redemption
had been so long, why men were allowed so long to
walk in darkness.* and whether the^ heathens had
really no place in the counsels of God, Here is the
answer gf a Pope, of Leo the Great 1 (440-461) *

'Let those who with impious murnmrings find fault
with the Divine dispensations, and who complain
about the lateness of Our Lord's nativity, cease from
their grievances, as if what was carried out in this
last age of the v^orld, had not been impending in time
past. . , . What the apostles preached, the prophets

1 Hardwick, 'Christ and other Masters,* vol. i. p, 85.

LECTUBB IV. 163

had announced before, and what has always been
believed, cannot be said to have been fulfilled too
late. By this delay of His work of salvation the
wisdom and love of Qofl fyave only made us m$ra
fitted for Jis call ; so that, what had^een announced
before by many signs*and words and mysteries during
so many Centuries, should not }& doubtful or uncer-
tain in the days of the Gospel, . . . God has not 'pro-
vided for the interests of men by a new counsel or
by a late compassion ; but He had instituted from the
beginning for all men one and the same path of sal-
vation.'

This is the language of a Pope of Leo the Greai.

Now let us hear what Irenseus says, and how he
explains to himself the necessary imperfection of the
early, religions of mankind. 'A mother/ he says,
'may indeed offer to her infant a complete repast, but
her infant cannot yet receive the food which is meant
for full-grown men. In the same manner God might
indeed from the beginning have offered to man the
truth in its completeness, but man was unable to
receive it, for he was still a child.*

If this, too, is considered a presumptuous reading
of the counsek of God, we have, .s a last appeal, the
words of St. Paul, that 'the law was the schoolmaster
to ther Jews/ joined with the words of St, Jeter, * Of
a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons,
but in evejy nation he that feareth him d workeA
righteousness is accepted with him.'

But, as I said before, we need not appeal toraay
authorities, if we will but read tk$ records of the
ancient religions of the world wfth an open heart
and in a charitable spirit in a spirit that thinketh

154 LECTUBES ON THE SCIENCE OB 1 BELIGUON.

no evil, but rejoices in the truth wherever it can be
found.

I suppose that most of us, sotfner or later in life,
hove felt how the whole world this wicked world,
as w& call it 4& changed as if by magic, if once we
can make up our mind to give" men credit for good
motives, never to b^ suspicious, never to think evil,
never -*o think ourselves better than our neighbours.
Trust a man to be true and good, and, even if he is
not, your trust will tend to "make him true and good.
It ifiuthe same with the religions of the world. Let
us but once make up our mind to look in them for
what is true and good, and we shall hardly know our
old religious again. If they are the work of the devil,
as many of us have been brought up to believe,
then never was there a kingdom so divided Against
itself from the very beginning. There is no religion
or if there is, I do not know it which does not say,
'Do good, avoid evil.' There is none which does not
contain what Eabbi Hillel called the quintessence of
all religions, the simple warning, 'Be good, my boy.'
'Be good, my boy/ may seem a very short catechism;
but let us add to it, 'Be good, my boy, for God's sake,'
and we have in it rery nearly the wh*le of the Law
and the Prophets.

I wishj could read you the extracts I have collected
from the sacred books of the ancient world, grains of
truth more precious to me iihan grains of gold; prayers
so simple and so true that we could all join in them if
we once accustomed ourselves to the strange sounds of
Sanskrit or Chinese. I can to-day give you a few
specimens only.

Here is a prayer of YasishtfAa, a Vedic prophet,

LEOTUBE IV. 155

addressed to Vaniwa, the Greek Oipavos, an ancient
name of the $ky and of the god who resides in the
sky.

I shall read you one vrse at least in the origina,}
it is the 86th hymn of the seventh book of the Big-
veda so J that you tnay hear the very sounds which
more than three thousand year^ ago were uttered for
the first lime in a village on the borders of JJie^Sut-
ledge, then called the tfatadru, by a man who felt as
we feel, who spoke as we speak, who believed in
many points as we believe a dark-complexioned
Hindu, shepherd, poet, priest, patriarch, and certainly
a man who, in the noble army of prophets, deserves
a place by the side of David. And does it not show
the indestructibility of the spirit, if we see how the
waves which? by a poetic impulse, he started on the
vast ocean of thought have been heaving and spread-
ing and widening, till after centuries and centuries
they strike to-day against our shores and tell us, in
accents that cannot be mistaken, what passed through
the mind of that ancient Aryan poet when he felt the
presence of an almighty Ood, the maker of heaven
and earth, and felt at the same time the burden of
his sin, and grayed to his God^that He might take
that burden from him, that He might forgive him
his sin? When you listen to the strange pounds of
this Vedic hymn, you are listening, even in this Eoyal
Institution, to spirit-rapping to real spirit-j&ppiBgs,
YasishtfAa*is really among us again, and if ycm will
accept me as his interpreter, you will find that we
can all understand what the old poet wished to say 1 :

1 M. M,, 'History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature/ p. 540.

156 LECTURES ON THE SCIENCE OF BELIGUON.

* Dhir& tv asya mahinS,
TO yas tastambha rodasi Add urvi,
pra n&kam n'shvam nunude briliantaw,
dvit& nakshatram pajjrathafc k& bhuma,
Wise and mighty are fiie works of him who stem-
med asunder the wide firmaments (heaven rind earth).
He lifted on high the bright and glorious heaven ; he
streitehgd out apart the starry sky and the earth.

' Do I say this to my own self? How can I get near
unto Varuna? Will he accept my offering without
displeasure? When shS.ll I, with a quiet mind, see
him propitiated?

( 1 ask, Varuwa, wishing to know this my sin;
I go to ask the wise. The sages all tell me the same:
rt Varuna it is who is angry with thee."

* Was it for an old sin, Vaxuna, thai thou wishest
to destroy thy Mend, who always praises theeT Tell
me, thou unconquerable Lord I and I will quickly
turn to thee with praise, freed from sin.

( Absolve us from the sins of our fathers, and from
those which we committed with our own bodies.
Release Vasish^a, King, like a thief who has
feasted on stolen cattle ; release him like a calf from
the rope.

c lt was not our own doing, Yaruna, it was a
slip ; an ^intoxicating draught, passion, dice, thpught-
lessness. The old is there to mislead the young;
even sleep is not free from mischief.

'Let me, freed from sin, do service to the angry
godlike a slave to his lord 1 . The lord god enlight-
eneth the foolish ; he, the wisest, leads his worshipper
to wealth.

J &*> Benfey, 'Gottingar Gelehrte Nachribhten,' 1874, p. 370.

LECTORS IV, 1ST

lord Varuna, may this song go well to thy
heait! May we prosper in acquiring and peeping!
Protect us, gods, always with your blessings/

I am not blind to ttye blemishes of this ancient
prayer, but I am not blind 4 to its beauty either, lad
I think yfcu will admit that the discovery of even one
such poem among the hymns of the Rig-veda, and
the certainty that such a poem #as composed in india
at least three thousand years ago, without any inspi-
ration but that which aU can find who seek for it if
haply they may find it, is woll worth the labour of
a life. It shows that man was never forsaken of God,
and that conviction is worth more to the student of
history than all the dynasties of Babylon and Egfypt,
worth more than all lacustrian villages, worth more
than the slgills and jaw-bones of Neanderthal or
Abb^ille.

I add a few more translations of Vedic hymns, some
of which have been published elsewhere, while one is
given here for the first time 1

PHAYEB FOB FORGIVENESS (BIG-VEDA VH 89).

1. Let me not yet, Varuna^ enter into the house
of earth ; have mercy, almighty, have mercy!

2. If I move along trembling, like a cloud driven;
by the wind ; have mercy, almighty, have mercy I

3. Through want of strength, tiiou .gstapqpg
bright god, have I gone astray 5 have H*ercy, b*^^,
have mercy I

4. Thirst came upon the worshiper, though &a

1 See < Einleitnug in die Voglefebefcd* MigioDwiawnach^' p. an.

158 LECTURES ON THE SOIENCE OF EELTGtION.

stood in the midst of the waters; have tfiercy,
Blmigbty, have mercy 1

5. Whenever we men, Varuna, conttnit an offence
before the heavenly host, whenever we break the law
thfough thoughtlessness ; punish us not, god, for
that offence*

OP PBAISE ADDBESSED TO
(RIG-VEDA I. 35).

i. However we break thy laws from day to day,
men as we are, god, Varuna,

3. Do not deliver us unto death, nor to the blow of
the Hurious ; nor to the wrath of the spiteful I

3. To propitiate thee, Varuna, we unbend thy
mind with songs, as the charioteer (unties) a weary
steed.

4. Away from me they flee dispirited, intent only
on gaining wealth ; as birds to their nests.

5. When shall we bring hither the man, who is
victory to the warriors ; when shall we bring Varuna,
the wide-seeing, to be propitiated?

[6, They (Mtra and Varuna) take this in common;
gracious, they never Ml the faithful grver.]

7. He who knows the place of the Tbirds that fly
through the sky, who on the waters knows the
ships j

8. He, the upholder of order, who knows the twelve
months with the offspring of each, and knows the
month that is engendered afterwards;

9. He who knows the track of the wind, of the
wide, the bright/the mighty; and knows those who
reside on high;

LECTUBE IV. 159

io.*He, the upholder of order, Yarurca, sits down
among his people ; he, the wise, sits there to govern,

11. From tbence perceiving all wondrous things, he
sees what has been and what will be done.

12. May he, the wise A<Hty#,make our paths straight
all our days ; may he prolong our livgs !

13. Yaruwa, wearing golden mail, has put on his
shining clgak ; the spies sat dowgi around him,

14. The god whom the scoffers do not ptovoke,
nor the tormentors of men, nor the plotters of mis-
chief ;

15. He, who gives to men glory, and not half glory,
who gives it even to our own selves ;

1 6. Yearning for him, the far-seeing, my thoughts
move onwards, as kine move to their pastures.

17. Let us speak together again, because my honey
has been brought : that thou mayest eat what thou
likest, like a friend 1 .

1 8. Did I see the god who is to be seen by all, did
I see the chariot above the earth? He must have
accepted my prayers.

19. hear this my calling, Varuna, be gracious
now I longing for help, I have called upon thee.

zo. Thou, wise god, art lord of all, of heaven and
earth: listen 09. thy way!

21. That I may live, take from me the upper rope,
loose the middle, and remove the lowest I

In most of the hymns of ihe Eig-veda, however, tbd
gods assume a far more mythological character tiban
in these songs addressed to Yaruna, though the spiri-

1 See BdletDflan, in Orient wid Occident, ii. p. 147. One migfct lead
totri-iva, * because honey hag been, fcroight by me, as by a prieet, sweet
to taste.'

160 LECTUBES ON THE SCIENCE OF BELIGION.

tual and ethical character of the 'deity is but Seldom
entirely lost. If we take for instance a short hymn ad-
dresseA to Agni or Fire, we easily see that Agni (ignis)
is conceived as the representative of fire, yet we also
perceive even here a mgre distant background, or a
true Qivine element, only enveloped in a mythological
shell.

HYMN TO AGNI (RIO-VEDA II. 6}

i. JSgni, accept this log which I offer to thee, accept
this my service ; listen well* to these my songs.

3. With this log, Agni, may we worship thee,
thoif son of strength, conqueror of horses ! and with
this hymn, thou high-born 1

3- May we, thy servants, serve thee with songs,
granter of riches, thou who lovest songs and delightest
in riches!

4. Thou lord of wealth and giver of wealth, fob thou
wise and powerful ; drive away from us the enemies I

5. He gives us rain from heaven, he gives us in-
violable strength, he gives us food a thousandfold.

6. Youngest of the gods, their messenger, their in-
vofcer, most deserving of worship, come, at our praise,
to him who worships thee and longs for thy help.

7. For thou, sage, goest wisely between these
two creations (heaven and earth, gods and men), like
a friendly messenger between two hamlets I

8. Thou art wise, and thou hast been pleased:
perform thou, intelligent Agni, the sacrifice without
interruption, sit down on this sacred grass !

Here we may clearly observe that peculiar blending
of ethical and physical elements in the character of
one and the same deity, a blending which seems

LEGTUBE IV. 161

strange to us, but must have been perfectly natural
in an earlier stage of religious thought, for w meet
with the same ideas everywhere, whenever we are able
to trace back the growth ef religious concepts to their
first beginnings, not only among the Aryan nations,
but in Aftiea, in America, and eveln in Australia,
though nowhere with the same clearness and fulness
as in the h^mns of the Yedic Aryans.

I have often expressed my opinion tiiat we ought
to be careful in ascribingthe same high antiquity to
everything occurring in the Ei^-veda. Not that I re-
tract what I tried to prove in my ' History of Ancient
Sanskrit Literature,' that the whole collection of the
hymns must have been finished to the last lefter
before the beginning of the Br&hmana period. Nor
am I aware that a single weak joint has been dis-
.cover$L by any of my numerous critics in the chain
of arguments on which I relied. But scientific ho-
nesty obliges me nevertheless to confess openly that
I cannot even now feel quite convinced in my own.
mind that all the hymns, all the verses, all the words
and syllables in our text of the Edg-veda are really
of the same high antiquity. No doubt, we should
approach all such questions witiiout any preconceived
opinions, but we cannot on the o3ier hand forget all
we have been taught by a study of post-Vedic litera-
ture, or by a study of other ancient literatures. We
must wait for further evidence, and be eareful^^rt to
force these researches into a false directiw by /^^
^mature dicta. In order to gjlve a epacHnen of wfifct
J mean, I shall give a translation of the wall-k&trtfa
hymn to Vwvaka^man from the last Handala, a Slan-
tfala whiqh &as generally been Considered, though, as

162 LEGTTTBES ON THE SCIENCE OF KELIGION.

yet, without very definite reasons, as a repository of
more Inodern poems.

The very name of the deity, addressed in this hymn,
"SJsvakarman, indicates thafc the poet did not belong to
the Earliest period of Vedic religion. It occurs as a
proper name in the tenth Manefeia only. Originally
Vitfvakarman, the maker of all things, is an epithet of
se-9%raj old gods. Indra is called Visvakannan 1 , like-
wise Sfrrya, the sun 2 , and Visvakrit, he who makes
everything, occurs in the j&fcharva-veda 3 as an epithet
of typi, the fire, who In the Br^hmawas 4 also is iden-
tified with Vwvakarman. Visvakarman, as an inde-
pepdent, but very abstract deity appears, like Prar$-
pati and similar divine individuals, as the creator, or,
more correctly, as the fashioner and architect of the
universe. In the hymns dedicated to him some rays
break through here and there from the dark mytho-
logical background through which and from which
the concept of Visvakarman arose. Sometimes we are
still able to recognise the traces of Agni, sometimes of
Sftrya, although the poets themselves think of him
chiefly as the Creator. Thus we read in one verse :

'The seer and a priest, who offering all the worlds
as a sacrifice, camedown as our fathy, he, appearing
first, entered among mortals, desiring wealth with
blessing/

This, at first sight, is not very clear, nor do I pre-
tend to say that this verse has as yet been rendered
quite intelligible, in spite of the efforts of various
translators and commentators. Still we may see a
little light, if ^we remember that Vwvakarman, the

1 Big-Veda* viii. 98, a. a Ibid. x. 170, 4.

3 Atharva-yeda, vi. 47, z. * &atapatha-1br&lunaft^ ir, 2, a.

LECTURE IV. 163

maker of all things, was originally Agni, the god of
fire, and more particularly, the god of the fire atfd the
light of the morning. Agni, as the god of the
morning (aushasya), is often conceived as a priesi,
who, with his splendour, pours out the whole -World
and offers it as a moraing sacrifice. Such a sacrifice
is represented as taking place either at the beginning
of every day, or at the beginning of a new yqar,*or,
by another step, at the beginning of the world. The
light of the morning sun wtis perceived by the poet as
illuminating the world, like the 'actual fires lighteg in
the morning on every hearth. Or the poet might see
in the light of the rising sun a power that brings
forth the whole world, brings it into sight and being,
in fact makes or creates the world. This is a poetical,
perhaps a fantastic idea; nevertheless it is con-
ceivable ; and in interpreting the words of the Veda,
we must never rest till we arrive at something that
is at least conceivable.

The poet again seems to think of Agni, the fire,
when he says of Vbvakarman that he settled down
as a father among men. The germ of this conception
lies in the light of the morning appearing first as
something distant and divine, but fhen, unlike other
divine powers, remaining with men on earth, on the
very hearth of every dwelling. This thought that
Agni is the first to take up his abode with men, that
his presence is the condition of all human, activity,
workmanship, and art, and that through his blessing
alone men obtain health and wealth, is expressed in
many Vedic songs in ever varying ways.

If we transfer these thoughts to the Ykvakarman,
the maker or shaper of all things, some of the darfc
M %

164) LECTUBES ON THE SdrENdE OF EELIGION.

words of the first verse become more intelligible,
white some of the translations hitherto published
leave the impression as if some of the Vedic poets
bad really connected no thought whatever with their
metrical effusions.

i. l * What was the place, what was the support, and
where was it, from jrhence the all-seeing "^vakarman
(the Aaker of all things), when producing the earth,
displayed the heaven by his might?

z. 'He, the one God, whose eyes are everywhere,
whese mouth, whose arms, whose feet are everywhere ;
he, when producing heaven and earth, forges them
together with his arms and with the wings.

3. 2e What was the forest, what was the tree 8 , from
which they cut out heaven and earth ? Ye wise, seek
in your mind that place on which he Stood w^en sup-
porting the worlds.

4. * O Visvakarman, rejoicing in the sacrifice, teach
thy friends what are thy highest abodes, and what
are thy lowest, and what are these thy middle abodes !
Sacrifice for thyself, increasing thy body 4 .

1 Dr. Muir translates this verse : ' Our father, who, a rishi and a
priest, celebrated a saciifioe offering up all these gjeatures, he, earnestly
desiring substance, he, the archetype, entered into later man.'
Langlois ; ' Que le riohi (droa), notre pontife et notre pere, qui par son
sacrifice % forme" tons ces mondes, vienne s'aeseoir (& notr fttyer) . Qa*il
desire et bemsse nos ofi&andea, Habitant des regions snperienrea, il
descend aussi vers nous.'

* Of. j8Veta*vatara TJpan lii. 3.

8 We say fai? or materies, matter ; Eig-Veda, x. 31, 7.

This expression also 'Sacrifioe for thyself, increasing thy body/
refers primarily to Agni. It was a familiar idea with the Brahman*
to look upon the are both as the subject and the object of a sacrifice.
The fire embraced the offering, and was thus a kind of priest ; it carried
& te- the god*, and wae thus a kind of mediator between gods and men.

LECTURE rv, 163

5. * maker of all things, growing by the oblations,
sacrifice for thyself, for earth and for heavenj Let
other men wait around in darkness, but among us let
the wise man be powerful^

6. Let us invoke to-day, for our protection in battlfe,
the lord of speech, Visvakannan, th0 maker of all
things, who inspires our mind. May he accept all
our offerings, he who is a blessing to everybody, jmd
who performs good deeds for our safety! 1

My next extract will be from the Zendavesta, the
sacred book of the Zoroastrians, older in its language
than the cuneiform inscriptions of Cyrus, Darius,
Xerxes, those ancient kings of Persia who knew that
they were kings by the grace of Awramazda> the
Zend Ahurd magddo\ and who placed his sacred
image high on the mountain-records of Behistun,
That *ncient book, or its fragments at least, have
survived many dynasties and kingdoms, and are
still believed in by a small remnant of the Persian
racg, now settled at Bombay, and known all over th
wond by the came of Parsis.

The first extract is taken from the Yagna, forming
its thirtieth chapter. It has been translated or, I

But the fiie represented also something divine, a god to whom honour
was due, and thus it became both the object and the subject of the
sacrifice.* Hence the idea that Agni sacrifices Mmyflfj that he offers a
sacrifice to himself, and likewise that he offers himself as a sacrifice
This led to many later legends, see Both, 'Kirukta,' p. 142. Agni TO#
also conceived as representing the rising sun and the wwon^ 9f4 &W
that point of view sunrise was conceived as the great sacrifice ia ti&$toc&
the light serving, lifce a sacrificial flame, for tfee gfcwy'WIwft'W&atta
eartft, and, at the same time, for his own gkay. Jffiaace lastly 1fc6
ooemogQiiic ideas by which the <J*Uy saxaiBce % is conceiva* *u *h.
sacrifice of creation and as the glory of the creator.

e.^Qi, i. p. 339.

166 LECTURES ON THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION.

should rather say, a decipherment of it has been
attempted by several scholars, more particularly by
Professor Spiegel and Professor Haug* It has also
been referred to by Bunsen in his 'God in History'
(fol. i. p. 277, of Misfl winkworth's translation),
and'l may quote from him yhat will erve as a
living, though imaginary, background for this striking

'Leffus picture to ourselves, 1 he writes, 'one of the
holy hills dedicated to tlje worship of fire, in the
neighbourhood of the primeval city of marvels in
Central Asia, Bactra "the glorious," now called
Balkh, "the mother of cities." From this height
we 1 look down in imagination over the elevated
plateau, which lies nearly 3000 feet above the level
of the sea, sloping downwards toward the North and
ending in a sandy desert, which does not even* allow
the stream Bactrus to reach the neighbouring Oxus.
On the southern horizon, the last spurs of the
Hindukush, or, as the historian of Alexander terms
it, the Indian Caucasus, rear their lofty peaks 5000
feet high. Out of those hills, the Paropamisus or
Hindukush, springs the chief river of the country,
the Bactrus or Dehas, which near the city divides
into hundreds of Sanals, making tlffi face of the
country one blooming garden of richest fruits. To
this point converge the caravans, which travel across
the mountains to the land of marvels, or bring
treasures from thence ..... Thither, on occasion of
the peaceful sacrifice by fire, from whose ascending
flame auguries were to be drawn, Zarathustra had
convened the nobles of the land, that he might per-

f Essays on the Sacred Language of the Parsees/ i86a, p. 141.

LECTUBE IV. 167

form *& great public religious act. Arrived there,
at the head of his disciples, the seers and preachers,
lie summons the princes to draw nigh, and to *choose
between faith and superstition.'

I give the translation o the hymn, partly after
Haug (18^8), partly after Spiegel (1^59), and I*have
likewise availed myself of some important emenda-
tions proppsed by Dr. Eubschm^nn 1 . Yet, I must
confess that, in numerous passages, my translation is
purely tentative, and all I can answer for is the
general tenour of the hymn.

1. 'Now I shall proclaim to all who have come to
listen, the praises of thee, the all-wise Lord, and the
hymns of Vohumano (the good spirit). Wise Asjia!
I ask that (thy) grace may appear in the lights of
heaven.

2. Hear with your ears what is best, perceive with
your mind what is pure, so that every man may for
himself choose his tenets. Before the great doom, may
the wise be on our side !

3. 'Those old Spirits who are twins, each with his
own work, made known 2 what is good and what is
evil in thoughts, words, and deeds. Those who are
good, distinguished between the two, not those who
are evil-doers.

4. 'When these two Spirits came together, they
made 'first life and death, so that there should be
at last the most wretched life for the bad, but for the
good blessedness.

1 ' "Em ZoroastrischeB Ijed, mat IttLckmcht atrf die Tradition fibe/seteb
tmd erklart ' von Dr. H. HubBchmann : Miinchen, 18^2.

9 Hang does not admit the causative meaning of aervfttem, bat
takes it in the sense of audiwrunt or auditi sunt, i.e. they were known,
they existed.

168 LECTURES ON THE SCIENCE OT BELKHON.

5. *0f these two Spirits the evil one chose the
worst n deeds ; the kind Spirit, he whose garment is
the immovable sky, chose what is right; and tyhey
also who faithfully pleaje Ahuramazda by good

6. 'Those who worshipped the Devas* and were
deceived, did not rightly distinguish between the
twq; those who hwi chosen the worst Spirit came
to hola counsel together, and ran to Aeshma in order
to afflict the life of man.

7. 'And to him (the good) came might, and with
wisdom virtue; and the everlasting Armaiti -herself

" made his body vigorous. It fell to thee to be rich by
he? gifts.

8. e But when the punishment of their crimes will
come, and, oh Mazda, thy power will^be known as
the reward of piety for those who delivered *{Druj)
falsehood into the hand of truth (Asha),

9. Let us then be of those who further this world ;
oh Ahuramazda, oh bliss-conferring Ashal Let our
mind be there where wisdom abides.

TO. 'Then indeed there will be the fall of the per-
nicious Druj, but in the beautiful abode of Vohumano,
of Mazda and of Asha, will be gathered for ever those
who dwell in good report,

n. 'Oh men, if you cling to these commandments
which Mazda has given, . , . which are a tornfent to
the wicked, and a blessing to the righteous, then
there wiU be victory through them.'

The next three verses are taken from the forty-
thinl chapter of the Ya9na 1 .

V rifr. 3, ed. Brockhaus, p. I3 o; Spiegel, 'Yaai<p, 146;
Hang, 'Essays/ p. 150. *

LECTURE IV. 168

'I ask thee, tell me the truth, Ahural Who
was from the beginning the father of the pure jrorld?
Who has macTe a path for the sun and for the staarsl
Who (but thou) makes tia moon to increase and to
decrease? That, Mazda, tod other things, I. wish
to know.

'I ask thee, tell me the truth, O Ahura! Who
holds the*earth and the doucfe that they do not
fall? Who holds the sea and the trees? Wtto has
given swiftness to the mnd and the clouds? Who
is the creator of the good spirits?

* I ask thee, tell me the truth, Ahura! Whfi has
made the kindly light and the darkness, who has
made the kindly sleep and the awaking? Who has
made the mornings, the noons, and the nights, they
who remind the wise of his duty 2 '

Whatever the difficulties may be, and they are no
doubt most formidable, that prevent us from de-
ciphering aright the words of the Zendavesta, so
much is clear, that in the Bible of Zoroaster every
man is called upon to take his part in the great
battle between Good and Evil which is always going
on s and is assured that in the end good will prevail.

What shall^I quote from Buddha? for we have
so much left*of his sayings ancl his parables that
it is indeed difficult to choose. In a collection of
his sayings, written in Pali of which I have lately
published a translation 1 we read:

i. 'All that we are is the result of whAfc we Jwra
thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is macte up

1 The Dhaminaj>%<3% a Collection of Verges, bea$g one of ike canonical
books of the Buddhists, translated from P4U by F. M*i Mtiller, In
'Sacred Books of t&e East,' veL z. 1881.

170 LECTTOES ON THE SCIENCE OF BELKHON.

of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with an
evil ijiought, pain follows him as the wheel follows
the foot of the ox that draws the cart. '

49. c As the bee collects toney and departs without
ifijusing the flower, or its colour, or scent, so let a sage
dwell on earth. *

62. '"These sons belong to me, and this wealth
bel^Dgs to me," with such thoughts a fool is tor-
mented. He himself does not belong to himself, how
much less sons and wealth I

131, 122. 'Let no naan think lightly of evil, saying
in hlfe heart, It will not come nigh unto me. Let no
man think lightly of good, saying in his heart, It will
not benefit me. Even by the falling of water-drops
a water-pot is filled.

173. 'He whose evil deeds are covered by good
deeds, brightens up this world like the moon* when
she rises from behind the clouds.

223. 'Let a man overcome anger by love, evil by
good, the greedy by liberality, the liar by truth 1 .

252. 'The fault of others is easily perceived, but
that of oneself is difficult to perceive ; a man winnows
his ieighbour's faults like chaff, but his own fault he
bides, as a cheat hides the bad die from the player 2 .

264. 'Not by tonsure does an undisciplined man
who speaks falsehood become a saint : can a man be
a saint *who is stiU held captive by desires and
greediness 1

394. 'What is the use of platted hair, fool 1 ?

1 See Rom. rii. ai . 'Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with
good, 1

* See Matt vii. 3. 'And why beholdest thon the mote that is in thy
brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye ? ' .

LECTUBE IV. 171

what of the raiment of goat-skins 1 } Within thee
there is ravening, but the outside thou makest
clean 1 .'

In no religion are we^so constantly reminded of
our own as in Buddhism, and yet in no religiop. l&s
man beendrawn aw#y so far fronntruth as in the
religion of Buddha. Buddhism and Christianity are
indeed thetwo opposite poles wildi regard to the most
essential points of religion: Buddhism igno&ag all
feeling of dependence on & higher power 9 and there-
fore denying the very existence of a supreme Deity;
Christianity resting entirely on a belief in God afc the
Father, in the Son of Man as the Son of God, and
making all men children of God by faith in His Eton.
Yet between the language of Buddha and his dis-
ciples and thg language of Christ and His apostles
there ^are strange coincidences. Even some of the
Buddhist legends and parables sound as if taken
from the New Testament, though we know that many
of them existed before the beginning of the Christian
era.

Thus we read of Ananda,the disciple of Buddha, who,
after a long walk in the country, meets with Matangt,
a woman of the low caste of the K&ndt&&$ } near a
well, and ask? her for some water. She tells him
what she is, and that she must not come near him.
But he replies, * My sister, I ask not for thy caste or
thy family, I ask only for a draught of water/ She
afterwards becomes herself a disciple of Buddto*:

* See Lnke xi. 39 'Now do ye Pharisees make dean the outside of
the cup and the platter; but your inward part fr full of ravening and
wickedness/

* Burnouf, f Introduction fe rHiatoire du Buddhigme,' p. 305.

172 LECTURES ON THE SCIENCE OP RELIGION.

Sometimes the same doctrine which in the New
Testament occurs in the simple form of a command-
ment, is inculcated by the Buddhists in the form of a
pjrable.

A*Buddhist priest, we read 1 , was preaching to the
multitudes thaf had gathered round hiin. In the
crowd there was a king whose heart was full of
sorrtre^ because he Bad no son to perpetuate his race.
While he was listening, the preacher said:

5 To give away our riches is considered the most
difficult virtue in the Vorld ; he who gives away his
riches is like a man who gives away his life : for our
very life seems to cling to our riches. But Buddha,
when his mind was moved by pity, gave his life, like
grass, for the sake of others ; why should we think of
miserable riches! By this exalted virtue, Buddha,
when he was freed from all desires, and had obtained
divine knowledge, attained unto Buddhahood. There-
fore let a wise man, after he has turned away his
desires from all pleasures, do good to all beings, even
unto sacrificing his own life, that thus he may attain
to trjie knowledge.

c Listen to me: There was formerly a prince, free
from all worldly dqires. Though he yas young and
handsome, yet he left his palace, and embraced the
Hfe of a, travelling ascetic. This aseetic coming one
day to the house of a merchant, was seen by his young
wife, and she, touched by the loveliness of his eyes,
exclaimed: "How was this hard mode of life em-
braced by such a one as thou art? Blessed, indeed, is
that woman on whom thou lookest with thy lovely
eyes!"

i. 38, i wj.

LECTUBE IV. 178

When he heard this, the ascetic plucked out one
eye, placed it into his hand, and said : t( Mothgr, look
at this I Take* this hideous ball of flesh, if you like it.
The other eye is like untft this ; tell me, what is there
lovely in them?"'

The prd&cher continued in the same strain, quoting
other parables to the same purpose, and finished by
inculcating the lesson that the tme sage should neither
care for riches, nor for his life, and that he shSuld not
cling to his wife and chjj.dren, for they are like the
grass that is cast away.

It is impossible to read such parables withoutHbeing
reminded of verses of the Bible, such as (Matt. v. 29) :
' And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and -cast
it from thee l ;' and again (Matt. six. 39) : * Every one
that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or
father, or mother, or wife, or children ;' and again
(Luke xii. 38): 'The grass which is to-day in the field,
and to-morrow is cast into the oven/

In the same collection, the Ocean of the rivers of
stories, by Somadeva (vi. 37), we read of a merchant
who had embraced the religion of Sugata, and showed
great respect to the Buddhist monks. His yourijj son,
however, despised his father, and called him a sinner.

1 Why do you abuse me?' said^bhe father.

The son replied ; ' You have abandoned the law of
the Vedas, and followed a new law which is no law,
You have forsaken the Br&hmans, and
fitonuwas. What is the use of the

1 In the Dialog Greatitranm, p. I> 4^ it ffl toM of DenworiWiha*
hapqlled out bis eyes, (i) because they prevented 5hJm fcoto mediation,
(2) because be satt &e <frio&&l 50ttriBli, ^tHSGatme he ooold not took on

174 LECTUBES ON THE SCIENCE OF EBLIGION.

which is followed only by men of low birth, who want
to find a refuge in the monasteries, who are happy
when they have thrown away their foin cloth, and
shaved off every hair on their head; who eat what-
ever r they please, and perform neither ablutions nor
penances 1 '

The father replied: * There are different forms of
religion : one looks to another world, the other is in-
tended for the masses. But surely true Brahmanism
also consists in avoiding of passion, in truthfulness,
kindness towards all Hbeings, and in not recklessly
breaEing the rules of caste. Therefore you should not
always abuse my religion which grants protection to
all "beings., For surely there is no doubt that to be
kind cannot be unlawful, and I know no other kind-
ness but to give protection to all living beings. There-
fore if I am too much attached to my religion whose
object is love, and whose end is deliverance, what sin
is there in me, child? 1

However, as the son did not desist from his abuse,
his father took him before the king, and the king
ordered him to be executed. He granted him two
montRs to prepare for de^h, At the end of the two
months the son wa^ brought before the king again,
and when the king saw that he had grown thin and
pale, he asked for the reason. The culprit repliejL that
seeing death approach nearer and nearer every day, he
could not foiTyk of eating. Then the Mng told him,
that he threatened to have him executed in order that
he Blight know the anguish that every creature feels
at the approach of death, and that he might learn to
respect a religion which enforces compassion for all
beings. Having known the fear of death, he ought

LECTURE IV. 175

now to strive after spiritual freedom, and never again
abuse his father's religion 1 .

The son waif moved, and asked the king how he
could obtain spiritual freedom. The king hearing that
there was a fair in the towns ordered the young.msfii
to take a TOssel brimijil of oil, and to arry it through
the streets of the town without spilling a drop. Two
executionens with drawn swords Were to walk beltfnd
him, and at the first drop being spilled, they -frere to
cut off his head. When tfre young man, after having
walked through all the streets f the city, returned to
the king without having spilled one drop, the king
said: 'Did you to-day, while walking through the
streets, see anybody ? *

The young man replied : e My thoughts were fixed
on the vessel, and I saw and heard nothing else. 9

Then the king said : ' Let thy thoughts be fixed in
the same way on the Highest I He who is collected,
and has ceased to care for outward life, will see the
truth, and having seen the truth, will not be caught
again by the net of works. Thus I have taught you
in few words the way that leads to spiritual freedom/

According to Buddha, the motive of all our actions
should be pity, or what we should call love for our
neighbour, and* the same sentiment is inculcated again
and again in the sacred poetry of the Brahmans. Thus
we reacl in the Mah&bharata, Udyoga-parva'cap. 38,
4 Thou shalt not do to others what thou likest not thy-
self. This is the law in short, everything else proceeds
from passion/

M^Mbharata, Amwasana-parva, cap. 145 :

'Not to hurt anybody by word, thought* or deed,
1 0f.

176 LECTURES ON THE SCIENCE OF BELIGUON.

and to be benevolent and charitable. This is the
eterngl law of the good.'

Mah&bh&rata, S&nti-parva, cap. i5o*

'Forgiveness and patience, kindness and equable-
tffess, truthfulness and uprightness, restraint of the
senses and energy, gentleness and modesiy and gra-
vity, generosity and calmness, contentment, kindliness
of ^peech, and absence of hatred and malice these
together make up self-control/

MaMhhftrata, $Snti-parva, cap. no:

'Those who are dreaded by none and who them-
selves dread no one, who regard all mankind like
themselves, such men surmount all difficulties.'

MaMbharata, Anus&sana-parva, cap. 144 :

'Those who always treat friends and foes witfe an
equal heart, being friends to all, such men shall go to
heaven 1 .'

And as in Buddhism and Brahmanism, so again in
the writings of Confucius, we find what we value most
in our own reHgion. I shall quote but one saying of
the Chinese sage 3 :

'What you do not like when done to yourself, do
notTlo that to others/

One passage only from the founder of the second
religion in China, from Lao-tse (cap. 2) a :

'There is an infinite Being 4 , which existed before
heaven and earth.

'the Pandit,' December,
1867.

*Dr. Legge's ' Life and Teachings of Confucius,' p 47.

8 ( Le Lira de la Voie et de la Vertu, compos* dans le YI tiede
avant 1'ere chre'tienne, pax Lao-tseu,' iraduit par Stanislas Julien,
Paris, 1842, p. 91.

4 Stan. Julien traDBlatee, f H eat UB ^tre oonfus/ and lie explains

LEOTtTEE IY. 177

* How calm it is 1 how free 1

e It lives alone, it changes not.

' It moves evelywhere, but it never suffers.

'We may look on it as te Mother of the Universe.

C I, I know not its nama

'In ordei*to give it a title, I call it Tao (the Way).

* When I try to give it a name, I call it Great.
'After calling it Great, I call ii Fugitive.
'After calling it Fugitive, I call it Distant.

'After calling it Distant,! say it comes back to me/
Need I say that Greek and Bpman writers abound
in the most exalted sentiments on religion and moral-
ity, in spite of their mythology and in spite of their
idolatry 3 When Plato says that men ought to strive
after likeness with God, do you think that he thought
of Jupiter, or Mars, or Mercury? When another poet
exclaimed that the conscience is a god for all men,
was he so very far from a knowledge of the true
God?

On African ground the hieroglyphic and hieratic
texts of the ancient Egyptians show the same
strange mixture of sublime and childish, nay worse
than childish, thoughts to which all students of *pri~
mitive religion have become accustomed, nay from
which they mtfst learn to draw Some of their most
important lessons. It is easy to appreciate what is
simple, "and true, and beautiful in the Sacred Books
of fiie East, but those who are satisfied with 'such
gems, itre like botanists who should care for

confus according to the Chinese commentaries by * ce qu'fl eat impossible
de distingue? olairemeni. Si par hazard on rn'mtewoge sur cef 6tre (le
Tao), ]e re*pondif : II n'a ni commenoement, si fin,' etc. See, however,
Dr. J. Legge, 'The Religions of CMj%' 1880, p. 313.
If

178 LECTURES ON THE SCIENCE OF &ELKHON.

etad lilies only, and in whose eyes the thorns and
brier* are mere weeds and rubbish. This is not the
true spirit in which the natural development either
of the flowers of the earth or of the products of the
mind can be studied, and it is surprising to see how
long it takes before the students of antimfpology will
learn that one simple lesson.

in a papyrus at Ttfrin 1 , the following "wf>rds are put
into tffe mouth of 'the almighty God, tie self-existent,
who made heaven and easth, the waters, the breaths
of life, fire, the gods* men, animals, cattle, reptiles,
bircfej fishes, kings, men and gods.' ... *I am the
maker of heaven and of the earth, I raise its moun-
tains and the creatures which are upon it; I make the
waters, and the Mehura comes into being. ... I am
the maker of heaven, and of the mysteries of the two-
fold horizon. 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 dark-
ness, . , . I make the hours, and the hours come into
existence. I am Chepera in the morning, IU at noon,
Tmu in the evening.'

Jjid again : ( Kail to thee, Ptah-tanu, great god
who concealeth his form, . . . thou art watching when
at rest; the father of all fathers and' uf all gods. . . .
Watcher, who traversest the endless ages of eternity.
The heaven was yet uncreated, uncreated was the
earth" the water flowed not; thou hast put together
the earth, thou hast united thy limbs, thou hast reck-
oned thy members; what thou hast found apart, thou
hast put into its place ; O God, architect of the world,
thou art without a father, begotten by thine own
1 Le Page Eenouf, ' Hibbert Lectures,' p. aai.

LEOTUBE IV. 179

blessing; thou art without a mother, being born
through repetition of thyself. Thou drivest aw&y the
darkness by the beams of thine eyes. Thou ascendeat
into the zenith of heaven, Ind thou comest down eve/)
as thou hast risen. When tfiou art a dweller in* the
infernal world, thy knees are above* the earth, and
thine head is in the upper sky. Thou sustainest the
substances vvhich thou hast made. It is by thige <?wn
strength that thou mo vest; thou art raised up by the
might of thine own arms. .". . The roaring of thy voice
is in the cloud; thy breath is So. the mountain-^ops ;
the waters of the inundation cover the lofty trees of
every region. . . . Heaven and earth obey the com-
mands which thou hast given; they travel by the
road which thou hast laid down for them, they trans-
gress not the -path which thou hast prescribed to
them, and which thou hast opened to them. . . . Thou
restest, and it is night ; when thine eyes shine forth,
we are illuminated. ... let us give glory to the God
who hath raised 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 madfc all
land and countries And the great sea, in his name of
"Let-the-earth-te." . . . The babe which is brought forth
daily, the ancient one who traverses every path, the
height Tphich cannot be attained/

The following are extracts from a hymn addressed
to Amon, the great divinity of Thebes, preferrod m
the Museum at Bulak :

1 Hail to thee, Amon R&, Lord of -the thrones of &e
earth the ancient of heaven, the oldest of the earth,
Lord of all existences, the support of things; the sup-
port of all things. The One in his works, single

N %

180 LECTURES OK THE SCIENCE OP BELIGlON.

among the gods ; the beautiful bull of the cycle of the
gods,*chief of all the gods ; Lord of Jjruth, father of
ihe gods ; maker of men, creator of beasts, maker of
l^rbs, feeder of cattle, goc power begotten of Ptah
, . ."to whom the gods give honour . . . Most glorious
one, Lord of teAor, chief maker* of the ea&h after his
image, how great are his thoughts above every god !
Hsfil i$ thee, B&, Lorcl of law, whose shrine is hidden,
Lord of the gods ; Chepra in his boat, at whose com-
mand the gods were madfc. Atmu, maker of men,
. . , m giving them life * . . . listening to the poor who
is in distress, gentle of heart when one cries to him
. v . Lord of wisdom, whose precepts are wise, at
whose pleasure the Nile overflows: Lord of mercy,
most loving, at whose coming men live: opener of
every eye, proceeding from the firmament, causer of
pleasure and light; at whose goodness the gods re-
joice ; their hearts revived when they see him. B,
adored in Thebes, high crowned in the house of the
obelisk (EeUopolis), sovereign of life, health, and
strength, sovereign Lord of all the gods ; who art
visile in the midst of the horizon, ruler of the past
generations and the nether woild; whose name is
hidden from his creatures . . . Hail io thee the one,
alone with many hands, lying awake while all men
sleep, tip seek out the good of his creatures, Amon,
sustainer of all things. Tmu and Horus of the
horizon pay homage to thee in jell their words. Sa-
lutation to thee, because thou abidest in us, adoration
tcfthee because thou hast created us/

Are there many prayers uttered by kings like this
of King Barneses II?

Who then art thou, my father Amonl Doth a

LECTURE IV. 181

father forget his son 1 Surely a wretched lot awaiteth
him who opposeth thy will ; but blessed is hg who
knoweth thee, for thy deeds proceed from a heart full
of love. I call upon thee s f) my father Amon! behold
me in the midst of many peoples, unknown to me.; &l
nations ar8 united against me, and I am alone ; no
other is with me. My many soldiers have abandoned
me, none of my horsemen hath? looked towards me ;
and when I called them, none hath listened*.*) my
voice. But I believe thatAnion is worth more to me
than a million of soldiers, than a hundred thousand
horsemen, and ten thousands of brothers and %ons,
even were they all gathered together. The work of
many men is nought ; Amon will prevail over them.'

The following are a few passages translated from
the book of ftahhotep, which has been called e ihe
most tacient book of the world/ and would indeed
have a right to that title if, as we are told, the Paris
MS. containing it was written centuries before Moses
was born, while the author lived during the reign of
King Assa Tatkara of the fifth dynasty 1 :

s lf thou art a wise man, bring up thy son in the
love of God.'

'God loveth the obedient and hateth the dis-
obedient.'

' A good son is spoken of as the gift of God/

In the Maxims of Ani we read :

* The sanctuary of God abhors ' (noisy manJ&efca-
tionsl). Pray humbly with a loving heart
words of which are uttered in secret. He will
tect thee in thine affairs ; He will listen to thy words.
He will accept thine offerings/

1 Le Page Eenouf, 'Hibbert I^oturefi/ p. 76.

182 LEOTUBES ON THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION.

' The God of the world is in the light above the
firmament. His emblems are upon earth ; it is to
them, that worship is rendered daily.'

In conclusion, I add a few sayings from funeral
nfonuments, put into thep mouth of the departed 3 :

'Not a little ihild did I injiye. Not a*widow did
I oppress. Not a herdsman did I ill-treat. There
wa4 no beggar in my days ; no one stafved in my
time. Sjid when the years of famine came, I ploughed
all the lands of the province to its northern and
southern boundaries, feeding its inhabitants and pro-
viding their food. There was no starving person in
it, and I made the widow as though she possessed a
husband.'

In another inscription the departed says :

* Doing that which is right, and hating that which
is wrong, I was bread to the hungry, water to the
thirsty, clothing to the naked, a refuge to him that
was in want ; that which I did to him, the great God
hath done to me ! '

It is difficult to stop quoting. With every year
new treasures are brought to light from the ancient
literature of Egypt, and I doubt net that in time, par-
ticularly if the hieroglyphic documents continue to be
deciphered in a truly scholarlike spirit,*Egypt will be-
come one of the richest mines to the student of religion.

But wfc must look now at sqme at least of the black
inhabitants of Africa, I mean those whose language and
religion have been carefully studied and described to
us .by trustworthy men, such as Bishop Oolenso,
Bishop Callaway, Dr. Bleek, Dr. Theophilus Hahn;
more partidilarly the Bdntu tribes, occupying the
* Le Page Beaouf, 'Bibbert Lectures,* p. 72.

LECTURE IT. 183

Eastern coast from beyond the Equator to the Gape.
What darkness there is at present ^among these races
we have learnt'from the history of the last wars, but
we should not forget howjiighly some of these races,
particularly the Zulus, are. spoken of by English
missionaries. If the number of conve/ts among them
is as yet small, perhaps it is well that it should be so.
Bishop Callaway tells us that.one lad, the first he
baptized in Natal, told him that his mother, T*O wit-
nessed the battle between the English troops under
Cathcart and the Basutos", an^ observed the terrible
effect of our artillery, was so much struck witk the
power displayed, that she concluded that they who
could shake the very earth, could not be mistaken in
anything, and advised her son to accept their religion.
It is only the^ old story, that truth is on the side of
the big battalions. But the same Bishop is evidently
gaining influence by better means, and chiefly by
schools which, as he truly says, 'must be the seed-bed
of the Church, because Christianity flourishes with
more vigour in the cultivated than in the uncultivated
mind/ One of the Zulus, whose confidence Dr. Calla-
way had gained, sajid to him l :

'We did not hear first from the white men nuuuu
the King wh5 is above. In sufhmer-time, when it
thunders, we say, "The King is playing." And if
there is one who is afraid, the elder people say to him,
" It is nothing but fear.' What thing belonging^ tba
King have you eaten 1 ? " '

Another very old man stated (p. 0)5 *
were children, it was said ; " The King is i

1 Br, OaJteway, 'tfaMBnkulu/p, 79*

184 LECTTJBES ON THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION.

they used to point to the King on high ; we did not
hear Jhis name ; we heard only that the King is on
high. We heard it said that the creator of the world
(Umdabuko) is the King wfeich is above" ' (p. 60).

A, very old woman When examined by one of her
own countrymea, said (p. 53)- When we rifreak of the
origin of corn, asking, "Whence came this?" the old
people said, "It came*from the creator whC created all
things^ but we do not know him." When we asked
continually, " Where is the*creator? for our chiefs we
see," the old men defied, saying, " And those chiefs,
too, Whom we see, they were created by the creator."
And when we asked, "Where is he? for he is not
visible at all; where is he then?" we heard our fathers
pointing towards heaven, and saying, * The Creator of
all things is in heaven. And there is a nation of
people there, too . . . ." It used to be said constantly,
" He is the King of kings." Also when we heard it
said that the heaven had eaten the cattle at such a
village (i.e. when the lightning had struck them), we
said, "The King has taken the cattle from such a
village." And when it thundered the people took
courage by saying, " The "K^g is playing/' '

Again, another very old man, belonging to the
Amantanja tribe, who showed four wounds, and whose
people had been scattered by the armies of Utshaka,
said (p. J6) : 'The old faith of our forefathers was
this ; they said, " There is Unkulunkulu, who is a man,
who is of the earth." And they used to say, " There
is a king in heaven." When it hailed, and thundered,
they said, " The king is arming ; he will cause it to
hail; put things"in order." ., As to the source of being
I know that only which is in heaven (p. 59). Tha

LEOTUBB IV, 185

ancient men said, " The source of being (Umdabuko)
is above, which gives life to men." .... It was *aid at
first, the rain came from the King, and that the sun
camQ from him, and themoon which gives a white
light during the night, that *nen may go and npt Ibe
injured.

'If lightning struck cattle, the people were not dis-
tressed. It used to be said (jft 60): "The Bang. has
slaughtered for himself among his own food? Is it
yours 1 Is it not the King's ? He is hungry ; he killa
for himself." If a village is stwick by lightning, and a
cow is killed, it is said, "This village will be*pros-
perous." If a man is struck and dies, it is said, " The
King has found fault with him."'

Another name of the Creator is Itongo, the Spirit,
and this is fte account given by a native (p. 94) :
' Whdh he says Itongo, he is not speaking of a man
who has died and risen again ; he is speaking of the
Up-bearer of the earth, which supports men and cattle.
The Up-bearer is the earth by which we live; and
there is the Up-bearer of the earth by which we live,
and without which we could not be, and by which
we are.'

Thus we find among a people who were said to be
without any religious life, without any idea of a Divine
power, that some of the most essential elements of
religion are fully developed, a belief in an* invisible
God, the Creator of all things, residing in heaven,
sending rain and hail and thunder, punishing tho
wicked, and claiming his sacrifice from among the
cattle on a thousand hills. This shows how careful-
we should be before we accept purely negative evi-
dence on the religion or the absence of all religion

186 LBOTUBES ON THE SCIENCE OF BELIGUON.

among savage tribes. Suppose an educated native of
India or China were to appear suddenly in the Black
country, and address some questions in p scarcely intel-
ligible English 1 to a dust-begrimed coal-heaver, and
ask him what his ancestors had told him about the
source of being -*- what account ^jcould he give to his
countrymen of the state of religious faith in England,
if all his information had been gathered from the
answer? which he would be likely to receive from
such witnesses! Perhaps fte would never hear the
name of God except in a, * God bless you ! ' which people
uttered in England as well as in Germany and many
other countries, when any one present sneezed. It was
in such an exclamation that Dr. Callaway first dis-
covered one of the names of the deity among the Zulus.
Asking an old man who lived at the mission station,
whether the word Utik#o had come into use after the
arrival of the missionaries, he received the answer
(p. 64) : * No ; the word TJtik#o is not a word we learnt
from the English; it is an old word of our own. It
used to be always said when a man sneezes, " May
Utikajo ever regard me with favour." ' This Utikajo
was (Supposed to have been conceal^! by Unkulunkulu
(p. 67), and to be seen by no one. Men saw Unkulun-
kulu, and said that*he was the creator* of all things
(Umveli^angi) ; they said this, because they did not
see Him who madeTJnkulunkulu ; they therefore said
that Tfokulunkulu was God.
After these crude fragments picked up among the

1 P. 67. ' On the arrival of the English in this land of ours, the
first who came was a missionary named Uyegana. On his arrival he
taught the people, but they did not understand what he said .... and
although he did not understand the people's language, he jabbered
constantly to the people, and they could not understand what he said.'

LECTURE IV. 187

uncultured races of Africa, who have not yet arrived at
any positive form of faith, let us now, in conclusion,
look at a few specimens of religious thought, emanat-
ing from those who no hng&r hold to any positive
form of faith. I take as theif representative Faiai, tfie
"brother of ^.bulfazl, one of that smallcompany at the
Court of the Emperor Akbar, who, after a comparative
study of thfc religions of the world, had renounced* the
religion of Mohammad, and for whom, as we shall see 1 ,
the orthodox Bad^oni could not invent invective strong
enough to express his horror. Faizi was one of those
men whom their contemporaries call heretics and*blas-
phemers, but whom posterity often calls saints and
martyrs, the salt of the earth, the light of the world ; a
man of real devotion, real love for his fellow-creatures,
real faith in God, the Unknown God, whom we ignor-
antly Vorship, whom no human thought and no human
language can declare, and whose altar, the same that
St. Paul saw at Athens will remain standing for ever
in the hearts of all true believers.

* Take Faizi's Df wan to bear witness to the wonder-
ful speeches of a free-thinker who belongs to a thousand
sects.

C I have be&ome dust, but from the odour of my
grave, people shall know that man rises from such
dust,

'They may know Faizi's 2 end from the beginning:
wiiihout an equal he goes from the world, aad -wl&ptife
an equal he rises.

* In. the assembly of the day of resTjirection, when
past things shall be forgiven, the gins of the Kabbah

i a*4 p. a i s, a Faizi means also the heart.

188 LECTURES ON THE SCIENCE Otf RELIGION.

will be forgiven for the sake of the dust of Christian
churches 1 .

1 Thou who existest from eternity and abidest for
ever, sight cannot bear Thy light, praise cannot ex-
press. Thy perfection ;

f Thy light melts the understanding, and*Thy glory
baffles wisdom ; to think of Thee destroys reason. Thy
essence confounds thdught.

'Thy" holiness pronounces that the blood-drops of
human meditation are shed, in vain in search of Thy
knowledge : human understanding is but an atom of
dust."

* Thy jealousy, the guard of Thy door, stuns human
thought by a blow in the face, and gives human
ignorance a slap on the nape of the neck.

'Science is like blinding sand of the* desert on the
road to Thy perfection. The town of literature is a
mere hamlet compared with the world of Thy know-
ledge. '

'My foot has no power to travel on this path which
misleads sages ; I have no power to bear the odour of
the wine, it confounds my mind.

f Man's so-called foresight and guiding reason wander
about bewildered in the city of Thy glojy.

* Human knowledge and thought combined can only
spell the first letter of the alphabet "of Thy love.

'Mere beginners and such as are far advanced in
knowledge are both eager for union with Thee; but

1 The sins of Islam are as worthless as the dust of Christianity. On
{he day of resurrection, both Muhammadanfl and Christiana -will see the
vanity of their religious doctrines Men fight about religion on earth ;
in heaven they shall find out that there is only one true religion, the
worship of God's spirit.

LECTUBE IV, 189

the beginners are tattlers, and those that are advanced
are triflers.

'Each brain 1 is full of thought of grasping Thee;
the brow of Plato even bjtrned with the fever-heat of
this hopeless thought.

'How shall a thoughtless man Ijke me succeed,
when Thy jealousy strikes a dagger into the liver of
saints 1 ?

' that Thy grace would cleanse my brauT; for if
not, my restlessness will end in madness.

'To bow down the head upon the dust of Thy
threshold and then to look up, is neither rigfet in
faith, nor permitted by truth.'

* man, tfcou coin bearing the double stamp of
body and spirit, I do not know what thy nature is ;
for thou art higher than heaven and lower than
earth.

' Thy frame contains the image of the heavenly and
the lower regions ; be either heavenly or earthly, thou
art at liberty to choose.

'Do not act against thy reason, for it is a trust-
worthy counsellor; put not thy heart on illusions, for
the heart is allying fool.

* If thou wishest to understand the secret meaning
of theVords, "to prefer the welfare of othdts to thy
own," treat thyself with poison, and others with
sugar.

* Accept misfortune with a joyful look, if thou art
in the service of Him whom people serve.

* Plunged into the wisdom of Greece, my mind ros<
again from the deep in the land of Ind ; be thou as i

190 LEOT0EES Off THE SCJIENCE OF BBLKHOff,

thou hadst fallen into this deep abyss (of my know-
ledge,^ e. learn of me).

'If people would withdraw the veil" from the face
of my knowledge, they would find that what those
wfto are far advanced in* knowledge call certainty, is
with me the faintest dawn of thought.

*If people would take the screen from the eye of
my ^knowledge, they <would find that what is reve-
lation (ecstatic knowledge) for the wise, is but drunken
madness for me. n

If I were to bring forth what is in my mind, I
wonder whether the spirit of the age could bear it.

'My vessel does not require the wine of the friend-
ship of time; my own blood is the basis of the wine
of my enthusiasm/

I wish we could explore together in this spirit the
ancient religions of mankind, for I feel convinced that
the more we know of them, the more we shall see
that there is not one which is entirely false; nay,
that in one sense every religion was a true religion,
being the only religion which was possible at the time,
whicte was compatible with the language, the thoughts,
and the sentiments of each generation, which was
appropriate to the 8,ge of the world. *I know full
well the objections that will be made to this. Was
the worship of Moloch, it will be said, a true religion
when they burnt their sons and their daughters in
the fire to their gods ? Was the worship of Mylitta,
or is the worship of K&H a true religion, when within
the sanctuary of their temples they committed abo*
minataons that must be nameless? Was the teaching
of Buddha a true religion, when men were asked to

LECTTOB IV. 191

believe that the highest reward of virtue and medi-
tation consisted in a complete annihilation jpf the
soul?

Such arguments may toll in party warfare, though
even there they have provoked fearful retaliation.
Can that*be a trae.reUgion, it ha* been answered,
which consigned men of holy innocence to the flames,
because they held that the Son was like unto, the
Father, but not the same as the Father, or l>eeause
they would not worship Jbhe Virgin and the Saints?
Can that be a true religion which screened the same
nameless crimes behind the sacred walls of nftnas-
teries? Can that be a true religion which taught the
eternity of punishment without any hope of pardon
or salvation for the sinner, not penitent in proper
time?

Feeble who judge of religions in that spirit will
never understand their real purport, will never reach
their sacred springs. These are the excrescences, the
inevitable excrescences of all religions. We might as
well judge of the health of a people from its hospitals,
or of its morality from its prisons. If we want to
judge of a religion* we must try to study it as touch
as possible in 1 the mind of its founder; and when thai*
is impossible,*as it is but too offen, try to find it in
the lonely chamber and the sick-room, rather than in
the colleges of augurs and the councils of priests.

If we do this, and if we bear in mind
must accommodate itself to the intellaataal
of those whom it is to influence, we shall fee surprised,
to find much of true religion where we only ex-
pected degrading superstition or an 'absurd worship
of idols.

192 LEOTUEES ON THE SCIENOE OF BELIGUON.

The intention of religion, wherever we meet it, is
alwayi holy. However imperfect, however childish a
religion may be, it always places the human soul in
the presence of God; and however imperfect and how-
e^far ghildish the conception of God may be, it always
represents the highest ideal of perfection <which the
human soul, for the time being, can reach and grasp.
Keljgion therefore places the human sou!4n the pre-
sence o? its highest ideal, it lifts it above the level of
ordinary goodness, and produces at least a yearning
after a higher and better life a life in the light of
God.

The expression that is given to these early manifes-
tations of religious sentiment is no doubt frequently
childish : it may be irreverent or even repulsive. But
has not every father to learn the lesson gf a charitable
interpretation in watching the first stammerings of
religion in his children? Why, then, should people
find it so difficult to learn the same lesson in the
ancient history of the world, and to judge in the same
spirit the religious utterances of the childhood of the
human, race? Who does not recollect the startling and
seemingly irreverent questionings* of children about
God, and who does not know how perfectly guiltless
the child's mind is <K real irreverence? Such outbursts
of infantine religion hardly bear repeating. I shall
only mefltion one instance. I well recollect tne dis-
may ^rhich was created by a child exclaiming, e Oh !
I wish there was at least one room in the house where
I could play alone, and where God could not see me !'
People who heard it were shocked ; but to my mind,
I confess, this * childish exclamation sounded more
trutbfiil and wonderful than even the Psalm of David,

LBOTUBB IV. 19&

'Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit? or whither
shall I flee from Thy presence V

It is the same with the childish language of ancient
religion. We say very calmly that God is omniscient
and omnipresent. Heslod speaks of the sun, as ike
eye of Zeug, that sees and perceives everything. *Ara-
tus wrote, e Full of eus are all* the" streets, all the
markets of^men ; full of Him js the sea and the har-
bours .... and we are also His offspring/

A Vedic poet, though of more modern date than the
one I quoted before, speaking of the same Varuna
whom Vasishtfia invoked, says: *The great lord of
these worlds sees as if he were near. If a man thinks
he is walking by stealth, Ivhe gods know it all. If a
man stands or walks or rides, if he goes to lie down
or to get up, what two people sitting together whisper,
King Yaruwa \nows it, he is there as a third. This
earth, too, belongs to Varuna, the king, and this wide
sky with its ends far apart. The two seas (the sky
and the ocean) are Varufta's loins; he is aJso 3p$$aMd
in this small drop of water. He who should ft&e far
beyond the sky, even he would not be rid of Varuna,
the king. His spies proceed from heaven towards
this world; with thousand eyes they overlook this
earth. King ^aruwa sees all thss, what is between
heaven and earth, and what is beyond. He has
counted the twinklings of our eyes. As <a player
throws down the dice, he settles all things V

I do not cteny that there is in this hymn B|i$fcp8t
is childish, that it contains expressions W^tftiSf of
the majesty of the Deity; but if I look at the lan-
guage and the thoughts of the people who composed

1 ' Chips from A German Woirfesfcop,' L 4*. ' Atlutfro-vedV iv. 16,
O

194 LECTURES ON THE SCIENCE OF BELHHON.

these hymns more than three thousand years ago, I
wonder rather at the happy and pure expression which
they iJave given to these deep thoughts than at the
occasional harshnesses which jar upon our ears,

<These are the words <jf a Hindu convert, when he
wentlbaek to India to preach the Gospel: 'Jtfow I am
not going to India to injure the feelings of the people
by saying, " Your Scriptyire is all nonsen^, anything
outside *the Old and New Testament is good for no-
thing." No, I tell you, I will appeal to the Hindu
philosophers and moralists* and poets, at the same
time Jbringing to them my light, and reasoning with
them in the spirit of Christ, That will be my work.
We. have sayings to this effect: "He who would be
greatest shall be least." You cannot call this non-
sense, for it is the saying of our Saviour, " Whosoever
would be chief among you, let him be your sewant."
The missionaries, kind, earnest, devoted as they are,
do not know these things, and at once exclude every-
thing bearing the name of Hindu. Go to Egypt, and
you will find some pieces of stone, beautifully carved
and ornamented, that seem to have been part of some
&rge building, and by examining these, you can
imagine how magnificent this structure must have
'l^een. Go to India, %nd examine the cdmmon sayings
0ft ike people, and you will be surprised to see what
a splendid religion the Hindu religion must have
been 1 /

Much the same might be said of the religion of the
Indians of North America also, however different the
growth of their religious ideas has been from that of

1 'Brief Account <$ Jognth. Chandra Gangooly, a Brahman of High.
$a0te and a Convert to Oliriptianity,' London, 1860.

LECTURE IV. 195

their namesakes in the East. The early missionaries
among the Red Indians were struck by nothing s* much
as by their apparent pantheism, by their seeing the-
presence of the Divine everywhere, even in what we^e>
clearly the works of man. Th&s Roger Williams related
'that wheif they talke^amongst themsalves of the Eng-
lish ships and great buildings, of the plowing of their
Fields, and^specially of Bookss and Letters, tjjieywiU
end thus: Manittflwock, " they are Gods," Oummanitt&ay
"you are a God." ' He sees in these idioms an expression^,
( of the strong conviction natural! in the soule of m*D, ,
that God is filling all things, and places, and ty&k aL
Excellencies dwell in God, and proceed from him, and 1
that they only are blessed who have that Jehovah
for their portion/ It may have been so when Roger
Williams wrote, but a scholarlike study of the North
American languages such as has lately been inaugu-
rated by a few American savants, shows that, if it
was so, the equivocal character of language had more
to do with producing this peculiar American pan-
theism than the independent evolution of thought,
Manito, literally 'Manit,' plur. manMog (see TrumbuH
'Transact. Am. Phi^ Assoc. 3 L p. 120), is no doubt the
TyiJTfrTi- name (ox their Supreme Spirit. Lahontaine
defined it long ago as a name given by the savages
' to all that surpasses their understanding and proceeds
from a cauae that they cannot trace* ('Voyages/ Engl
ed. 1703, vol. ii 39). But this Manit is no*
of ihe ky or the sun or any other
nomenon gradually developed into a
Dyaus or Zeus, and then generalised into a name of
the Divine, like deva or <few- If we^may trust the
best students of the American languages the name of
o 2

196 LEOT0RES ON THE SCIENCE OF BELIGION.

Manit began with an abstract concept. It was formed
* by pifcfixing the indefinite or impersonal particle 3 m
to the subjunctive participle (anit) of *a verb which
signifies ** to surpass," w to be more than." Anue, which
is an impersonal form of the same verb (in the indicat.
present), was the* sign of the comparative dfegree, and
translated by " more,* " rather." ' As the word Manit,
however, besides being the name of the Highest God,
continued to be used in ordinary language in the sense
of excessive, extraordinary, wonderful, the missionaries
hearing the Indians ai the apprehension of any ex-
celleifey in men, women, birds, beasts, fish, etc., crying
out Manitoo, took it in the sense of 'it is a God/
Possibly the two meanings of the word may have run
together in the minds of the Indians also, and, if so,
we should have here another instance otthe influence
of language on thought, or, if you like, of petrified
on living thought, though in this case due, not to
polyonomy, but to homonymy. The result is the
same, but the steps which led to the expression * this
is Manit* are different from the steps that led from
' dyaus,' sky, to our saying * this is divine.'

Ajfbient language is a difficult instrument to handle,
particularly for religious purposes. It is^impossible to
express abstract ideas except by metaphor, and it is
not too much to say that the whole dictionary of ancient
religion b made up of metaphors. With us these
metaphors are all forgotten. We speak of spirit without
thinking of breath, of heaven without ih^TriTig of the
sky, of pardon without thinking of a release, of reve-
lation, without thinking of a veil. But in ancient
language every" one of these words, nay, every word
that does not refer to sensuous objects, is still in a

LEOTUBE IV. 197

chrysalis stage: half material and half spiritual, and
rising and falling in its character according to the
varying capacities of speakers and hearers. Here is a
constant source of misunderstandings, many of whjph
have maintained their place Tn the religion and in the
mythology of the ancient world^ There are two dis-
tinct tendencies to be observed in the growth of ancient
religion. There is, on the on3 side, the struggle of the
mind against the material character of language, a
constant attempt to strip words of their coarse cover-
ing, and fit them, by main fofce, for the purposes of
abstract thought. But there is, on the other side, a
constant relapse from the spiritual into the material,
and, strange to say, a predilection for the material
sense instead of the spiritual. This action and reaction
has been goiag on in the language of religion from the
earliest times, and it is at work even now.

It seems at first a fatal element in religion that it
cannot escape from this flux and reflux of huioan
thought, which is repeated at least once in every
generation between father and son, between mother
and daughter ; but if we watch it more closely we
shall find, I think,<that this flux and reflux constitutes
the very life #f religion.

Place yourselves in the position of those who first
are saj.d to have worshipped the sky. We say that
they worshipped the sky, or that the sky was their
god; and in one sense this is true, but in a s$ra$,?iQr
different from that which is usually atfcad*e<$ &*ta0k
statements. If we use 'god* in the sense which it
has now, then to say that the sky was their god is to
say what is simply impossible. Such a word as God,
in the sense in which we use it such a word even

198 LECTITBES ON THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION,

as deus and fc&, in Latin and Greek, or deva in San-
skrit, *which could be used as a general predicate
did not and could not exist at that early time in the
history of thought and speech. If we want to under-
stand ancient religion, we must first try to understand
ancient language.

Let us remember," then 9 that the first materials of
language supply expressions for such Impressions
only as are received through the senses. If, there-
fore, there was a root meajtfng to burn, to be bright,
to warm, such a root might supply a recognised name
for tffe sun and for the sky.

But let us now imagine, as well as we can, the
process which went on in the human mind before the
name of sky could be torn away from its material
object and be used as the name of something totally
different from the sky. There was in the h&rt of
man, from the very first, a feeling of incompleteness,
of weakness, of dependence, whatever we like to
call it in our abstract language. We can explain it
as little as we can explain why the newborn child
feels the cravings of hunger and thirst. But it was
so fr3m the first, and is so even cow. Man knows
not whence he comes and whither he g<jes. He looks
for a guide, for a friend; he wearies for some one on
whom he can rest; he wants something like a father
in heaven. In addition to all the impressions which
he received from the outer world, there was in the
heart of man a stronger impulse from within a
sigh, a yearning, a call for something that should not
come and go like everything else, that should be be-
fore, and after, *and for ever, that should hold and
support everything, that should make man feel at

LBCTUBB IV, 199

home in this strange world. Before this vague
yearning could assume any definite shape it wanted a
name : it could not be fiilly grasped or clearly con-
ceived except by naming it. But where to look for
a name ? ^ No doubt the stSrehouse of language ww
there, but from every name thajj waft tried the mind
of man shrank back because it did not fit, because
it seemed \o fetter rather tb&n to wing the jthdfcght
that fluttered within and called for light and freedom.
But when at last a naifle or even many names were
tried and chosen, let us see wBat took place, as far as
the mind of man was concerned, A certain satisfac-
tion, no doubt, was gained by having a name or
several names, however imperfect; but these names,
like all other names, were but signs poor, imperfect
signs j they *were predicates, and very partial pre-
dicates, of various small portions only of that vague
and vast something which slumbered in the mind.
When, the name of the brilliant sky bad been daoeen,
as it has been chosen at one time or other by nearly
every nation upon earth, was sky the full expression
of that within the mind which wanted expression?
Was the mind satisfied ? Had the sky been recog-
nised as its ^jod? Far from it^ People knew* per-
fectly well what they meant by the visible sky ; the
first man who, after looking everywhere foj what he
wanted, and who at kst in sheer exhaustion grasped
at the name of sky as better than nothing, kjauaw b&fc
too well that his success was after all A miaoraWe
failure. The brilliant sky was. no doubt, the most
exalted, it was the only unchanging qpd infinite being
that had received a name, and that could lend its
name to that as yet unborn Idea of the Infinite which

200 LECTUBES ON THE SCIENCE OP RELIGION.

disquieted the human mind. But let us only see
this dearly, that the man who chgse that name
did not mean, could not have meant, that the visible
slfcy was all he wanted, that the blue canopy above
was kis god.

And now obSferv^ what happens when the name
sky has thus been given and accepted. The seeking
and*fin<Jing of such a nafce, however imperfect, was the
act of a manly mind, of a poet, of a prophet, of a
patriarch, who could struggle, like another Jacob,
with the idea of God that was within him, till he had
conceived it, and brought it forth, and given it its
name. But when that name had to be used with the
young and the aged, with silly children and doting
grandmothers, it was impossible to preserve it from
being misunderstood. The first step downwards
would be to look upon the sky as the abode of that
Being which was called by the same name ; the next
step would be to forget altogether what was behind
the name, and to implore the sky, the visible canopy
over our heads, to send rain, to protect the fields, the
cattle^ and the corn, to give to man his daily bread.
Nay, very soon those who warned* the world that it
was not the visible^ sky that was meant, but that
what was meant was something high above, deep
below, far away from tbe blue firmament, wonld be
looked^ upon either as dreamers whom no one could
understand, or as unbelievers who despised the sky,
the great benefactor of the world. Lastly, many
things that were true of the visible sky would be
told of its divine^ namesake, and legends would spring
up, destroying every trace of the deity that once wag,
hidden beneath that ambiguous name.

LEOTUBE IV. 201

I call this variety of acceptation, this misunder-
standing, which is inevitable in ancient and also in
modem religion, the dialectic growth and decay, or, if
you like, the dialectic life of religion, and we shall qpe
again and again, how important it is in enabling us
to form a* right estimate of religions language and
thought. The dialectic shades in the language of
religion ar8 almost infinite; they explain the dacay,
but they also account for the life of religion. You
may remember that Jaoob Grimm, in one of his
poetical moods, explained the origin of High and Low-
German, of Sanskrit and Prakrit, of Doric and Ionic,
by looking upon the high dialects as originally the
language of men, upon the low dialects as origin&lly
the language of women and children. We can ob-
serve, I believe, the same parallel streams in the lan-
guage*of religion, There is a high and there is a low
dialect ; there is a broad and there is a narrow dia-
lect; there are dialects for men and dialects for chil-
dren, for clergy and laity, for the noisy streets and
for the still and lonely chamber. And as the child on
growing up to manhood has to unlearn the language
of the nursery, its*religion, too, has to be translated
from a feminize into a more masguline dialect. This
does not take place without a struggle, and it is this
constantly recurring struggle, this inextinguishable
desire to recover itself, which keeps religion from
utter stagnation. From first to last religion Jg #tt$^. ,
lating between these two opposite poles> and $ &&$y
if the attraction of one of the two poles becomes too
strong, that 'the healthy movement cejtses, and stag-
nd decay set in. If religkm cannot aecom-
itself on tte on side to the capacity of

202 LECTUBES ON THE SCIENCE OF BELIOION,

children, or if on the other side it fails to satisfy the
requirements of men, it has lost its vitality, and it
becomes either mere superstition or mere philosophy.

If I have succeeded in expressing myself clearly, I
taint you will understand in what sense it may he
said that there Js truth in all religions, ^en in the
lowest. The intenfion which led to the first utter-
an<v of a name like sky, used no lotiger in its
material sense, but in a higher sense, was right. The
spirit was witting, but language was weak. The
mental process was ot, as commonly supposed, an
identification of the definite idea of deity with sky.
Such a process is hardly conceivable. It was, on the
contrary, a first attempt at defining the indefinite im-
pression of deity by a name that should approxi-
mately or metaphorically render at least one of its
most prominent features. The first framer of that
name of the deity, I repeat it again, could as little
have thought of the material heaven as we do when
we speak of the kingdom of heaven 1 .

And now let us observe another feature of ancient
religion that has often been so startling, but which, if
we dhly remember what is the natoe of ancient lan-
guage, becomes likewise perfectly intejjigible. It is
well known that ancient languages are particularly
rich in synonymes, or, to speak more correctly, ^that in
them the*same object is called by many names is, in
fact, polyonymous. While in modern languages most
objects have one name only, we find in ancient San-
skrit, in ancient Greek and Arabic, a large choice of
words for the same object. This is perfectly natural,

1 Medhnirt, 'Eaqtdry, 1 p. 20.

LECTUBE IV. 208

Each name could express one side only of whatever
had to be named, and, not satisfied with one partial
name, the early framers of language produced one
name after the other, and after a time retained those
which seemed most useful fospecial purposes. !bus,
the sky m%ht be called ^ot only th Brilliant, but the
dark, the covering, the thundering, thfc pain-giving.
This is tkQ+polyonomy of language, and it iVwiw
are accustomed to call polytheism in religiot,
same mental yearning wtych found its first
tion in using the name of the brilliant sky as an indi-
cation of the Divine, would soon grasp at other ifemea
of the sky, not expressive of brilliancy, and therefore
more appropriate to a religious mood in which the
Divine was conceived as dark, awful, all-powerful.
Thus we find* by the side of Dyaus, another name
of the* covering sky, Varuwa, originally only another
attempt at naming the Divine, but which, like the
name of Dyaus, soon assumed a separate and inde-
pendent existence.

And this is not all. The very imperfection of all
the names that had been chosen, their very inadequacy
to express the fulnqps and infinity of the Divine, tfould
keep up the search for new names, till at last every
part of nature in which an approach to the Divine
could be discovered was chosen as a name of the
Omnipresent. If the presence of the Divine*was per-
ceived in the strong wind, the strong wind b&&8& iig
name ; if its, presence was perceived in the aa^^sp& '
and the firet the earthquake and the fire became its
names.

Do you still wonder at polytheisft or at mytho-
logy? Why, they are inevitable. They are, if you

204 LEOTUBES ON THE SCIENCE OP BELIGION.

like* a parler enfantin of religion. But the world has
its childhood, and when it was a child it spoke as a
child, it understood as a child, it thought as a child;
and, I say again, in that it spoke as a child its lan-
guage was true, in that it believed as a child its
religion was true. The fault Crests wittf us, if we
insist on taking flie language of children for the
language of men, if w attempt to translate literally
ancien? into modern language, oriental into occidental
speech, poetry into prose 1 .

It is perfectly true that at present few interpreters,
if airy, would take such expressions as the head, the
face, the mouth, the lips, the breath of Jehovah in a
literal sense.

Per questo la Scrittura conde^ende
A vostra facilitate, e piedi e mano
Atfcribuisce a Dio, et altro intende 2 .

But what does it mean, then, if we hear one of our
most honest and most learned theologians declare that
he can no longer read from the altar the words of the
Bible, 'God spake these words and said"? If we can
make allowance for mouth and lips and breath, we
can surely make tfle same allowance for words and
their utterance. The language of antiquity is the
language of childhood : ay v and we ourselveS, when
we try to reach the Infinite and the Divine by means

1 'An earl; Oriental historian does not write in the exact and accurate
style of a nineteenth century Occidental critic.' Canon Bawlinson, in
the Lectures delivered under the auspices of the Christian Evidence
Society.

Dante, 'Paradise,' iv, 44-46.

LECTURE IV. 305

4.

of more abstract terms, are wo even now

than children trying to place a ladder agains^
sky?

The parkr wifantin in religion is not extinct', it
never will be. Not only hare some of the an^ieA
childish religions beenjkept alive, as, {or insbance, the
religion of India, which is to m^ mind like a half-
fossilised megatherion walking about in the brgad
daylight of the nineteenth century ; but in oflr oWn
religion and in the language of the New Testament,
there are many things which disjelose their true mean-
ing to those only who know what language is made
of, who have not only ears to hear, but a heart to
understand the real meaning of parables.

What I maintain, then, is this, that as we put the
most charitatje interpretation on the utterances of
children, we ought to put the same charitable inter-
pretation on the apparent absurdities, the follies, the
errors, nay, even the horrors of ancient religion.
When we read of Belus, the supreme god of the Ba-
bylonians, cutting off his head, that the blood flowing
from it might be mixed with the dust out of which
man was to be formed, this sounds horrible enough ;
but depend uijon it what was originally intended by
this myth was no more than this, that there is in
man an element of Divine life : that * we are also His
blood, or His offspring.'

The same idea existed in the ancient rsligioa j& the
Egyptians, for we read in the i?th chapter $F fiwir
Bitual, that the Sun mutilated himself, and that frpm
the stream of his blood he created all beings 1 . And

1 Vicomte de Roug<3, in 'Ajanaies de PMloaophie c&r&tenne,' Nov.
I&69, P- 33^.

206 MOTUBES ON THE SCIENCE Off RELIGION.

the author of Genesis, too, when he wishes to express
the sa^jne idea, can only use the same human and sym-
bolical language ; he can only say tha*t ' God formed
man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into
hfs npstrils the breath ofelife/

In Mexico, at the festival of BjuitzilpochtH, an image
of ttuTgod, made of the seeds* of plants, and the blood
of igimolated children, was pierced by a preest with an
arrow kt the end of the ceremony. The king ate
the heart, and the rest of r the body was distributed
among the congregation. This custom of eating the
bo<Jy c of God, which can well be conceived sym-*
helically, is apt to degenerate into crude fetishism,
36 that the faithful believes in the end that he really
feeds on his God, not in the true, the spiritual, but in
the false, the material, sense 1 .

If we have once learnt to be charitable and rea-
sonable in the interpretation of the sacred books of
other religions, we shall more easily learn to fee
charitable and reasonable in the interpretation of our
own. We shall no longer try to force a literal
sense on words which, if interpreted literally, must
lose their true and original purport, we shall no
longer interpret the Law and the Prophets as if they
had been written in the English of our own century,
but read hem IB a truly historical spirit, prepared
for many'oiirlculties, undismayed by many contradic-
tions, %rhich, so far from disproving the authenticity,
become to the historian of ancient language and
ancient thought the strongest confirmatory evidence
of the, age, the genuineness, and the real truth of

1 See Wundt, ' VarleBungen dber Msnsohen und Thierseele/ yd. ii.
p. 262.

LEOTTOE IV.

ancient sacred books. Let us but treat our own
sacred books with neither more nor less mercy than
the sacred books of any other nations, and they will
soon regain that position and influence which they?
once possessed^ but which the artificial and
historical theories of the last three centuries
well-nigh destroyed,