[ p. 60 ]
CAREFUL STUDY of the documents of the great ethical religions shows that their development can, without exception, be traced back to polytheisms and tribal worship closely akin to those of existing primitive peoples. A comparative study of all religions shows so many parallel features of belief and custom, and so much survival of early forms in the later, that it becomes clear that in its fundamentals religion is essentially one in spite of its multifarious forms. Consequently students of the subject feel entirely justified in going to primitive peoples of the present day for information concerning the earliest forms of religious belief and practice. But even so the question of origins is not simple. The practices of the most primitive peoples represent a long era of evolution before they attained their present form. And there is no people that has a pure religion. Waves of cultural influence have spread in all directions over the earth, and the peoples now most isolated and primitive have gone to their present homes from regions far away,[1] absorbing traces of religious belief and practice and disseminating their own as they passed.
Thus the problem of discovering the earliest forms of religious belief is by no means simple. We cannot take the religion of the most primitive people as necessarily constituting [ p. 61 ] the most primitive form of religion. It may contain much that is borrowed and may in some respects even be decadent. Every practice and belief requires interpretation, and it is by no means easy to enter into a sympathetic understanding of people so far removed from ourselves. Also, the understanding of other peoples’ religious experience requires that one have a religious experience of one’s own and understand that experience. Professor Malinowski has recently pointed out that both the fundamentalist and the atheist are at a special disadvantage here, the former because his own intensity and dogmatism make it difficult for him to appreciate the genuineness of a religious experience the conditions of which differ so much from his own, the latter because much of the ordinary religious man’s experience is unintelligible to him.[2] Another recent writer points out another difficulty in the fact that, even to two people of the same primitive tribe, as to two people of a modem city, the same religious beliefs and practices may mean something very different.[3] One person has not as much religious interest and sensitivity as another. Thus generalization is rendered all the more difficult.
It is for this reason that we began our study with an examination of the birth of religion in the individual rather than with its origin in the race. Only when we understand what are the most essential features of the religious experience, and have analyzed it critically and thoroughly where we know it best, are we in a position to interpret the religion of those farthest removed from ourselves. There is no surer way to arrive at the wrong conclusions than to begin with a description of primitive religions (which are the most difficult to understand because so far removed from us) , formulate theories of the nature of religion based on these descriptions, and then [ p. 62 ] try to reduce all religion to this theoretical formula. Yet that has, undoubtedly, been the method adopted by many investigators who have approached the problem primarily from the standpoint of anthropology. It is no wonder that many of these have seen in religious belief nothing but a tissue of hoary superstitions and survivals of primitive magic which civilized man should long ago have outgrown. Among theories of this kind we may refer briefly to those of Tylor, Durkheim, and Westermarck.
The first of the modern anthropological interpretations of religion was that of E. B. Tylor, published in 1871.[4] He regarded the belief in spiritual beings as lying at the basis of all religion, and so felt that the fundamental problem was to explain the origin of that belief. This he attributed to two factors, the first being primitive man’s observation of the difference between the living body and a corpse, leading to the conclusion that there must be something present in the former and not in the latter. Now the primitive conception of a spirit is that of a filmy, unsubstantial replica of the body which is capable of a separate existence and is the possessor of the consciousness and will of the person. Tylor recognized that the sheer invention of such a hypothetical entity to explain the difference between the dead and the living would involve a tremendous leap of the imagination. Therefore he looked for a second factor to bridge this gap, and he thought that this could be found in the experience of dreams. He discovered that primitives commonly believe that in a dream the soul leaves the body and actually goes through the experiences envisioned. Thus, since dreams had suggested to the savage that some conscious replica of himself could leave his body and wander abroad while he slept, this concept could explain the [ p. 63 ] difference between the living and the dead. From man this concept of a spirit was easily spread to animals and to such inanimate objects as impressed the primitive as having any unusual power. Thus the world became peopled for him by spirit agencies of all sorts in nature, and by the spirits of the innumerable dead, including his own ancestors, chieftains and enemies. Some of these were obviously injurious and others might be beneficial. Thus religion, Tylor believed, arose as an effort to propitiate these spirits by offerings and to win their favor by prayers.
It may well be doubted whether Tylor’s ingenious explanation of the origin of belief in spirits is the true one, for it is surely a very far-fetched theory to explain so simple a matter as dreams, the true explanation of which is constantly present to the experience of every savage and every child. Tylor, like most people who engage in much abstract thinking, probably had little capacity for visual imagery in daydreams. But primitives, like children and the majority of practical people, do have that capacity. And the difference, for a vivid visualizer, between a half-awake daydream and an ordinary dream is not very great. So the savage had no real need to invent the remarkable theory of a soul to explain the fact that he had mistaken imagery for reality in his sleep. After the belief in a soul had been developed it could easily, of course, be applied to those dreams to which it was appropriate. And Durkheim has shown that it is not applied to all dreams.[5] A more plausible explanation of the belief in spirits is that it arose as a hypostatization and personalization of the notion of mana; but we shall refer to that later.
Whatever the explanation of the origin of the belief in spirits, however, it is now very widely agreed among students of the subject that this belief is not the earliest form of re [ p. 64 ] ligion. There are other forms of religion that seem to be more primitive. The elaborate religious ceremonies of the Australians, for example, though these people believe in the existence of spirits, have nothing to do with this belief. The same may be said of the daily ritual of the Todas of India, reported by W. H. R. Rivers.[6] The fetish of the African is sometimes occupied by a spirit, but at other times only possessed of an impersonal supernatural power. Again, as R. R. Marett has clearly shown,[7] many objects of worship, especially nature deities, are not regarded as having spirits but simply as being alive and possessing remarkable powers. Thus it is evident from the earliest vedic poems that the sun and other nature deities were not spirits but simply living beings of great majesty and power, “magnified nonnatural men,” in the picturesque phrase of Matthew Arnold and Andrew Lang. Later they are addressed as having spirits, and later still as anthropomorphic high gods to whom the natural object originally worshiped is merely a home.[8] But in all these cases the object worshiped is believed to be imbued with a peculiar, sacred and supernatural power, the mana to which we have already referred.
Thus Tylor’s theory that animistic belief is the root of religion does not square with the facts concerning the most rudimentary types of religion now known. It is also, as Durkheim again points out,[9] unsatisfactory in that so persistent and deep-rooted a social phenomenon as religion can scarcely be believed to rest upon a mere intellectual error. Indeed, its intellectual forms are so varied, and it is so capable of surviving the overthrow of one intellectual formulation after another, that it is not reasonable to think that its thought content, the element of belief, is really the foundation of the [ p. 65 ] structure. It expresses itself in thought, and when one intellectual formulation proves unsatisfactory it seeks another; but its roots would seem to lie deeper in experience than any intellectual interpretation of events.
From these disadvantages Durkheim’s sociological theory of religion is free. It explains away religious belief as entirely illusory, but since it does not rest religion upon belief it does not make religion itself illusory. It claims rather to purify religion by freeing it from mere superstition. It finds the roots of religion in man’s sense of his relation to his fellows, and therefore is much better able to do justice to the essentially moral nature of most religious practice and to salvage its values from the wreck of its intellectual content. To modern humanists, Durkheim’s theory has proved very attractive and, indeed, it has close historical connections with the forerunner of the humanist movement, Auguste Comte. Durkheim’s definition of religion emphasizes two things: a felt distinction between the sacred and the secular, and the moral union of individuals in a religious society. “A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, i.e., things set apart and forbidden — beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church all those who adhere to them.”[10] Beliefs and practices therefore may change. But religion remains so long as other beliefs and practices can be found to perform this important ethical and social function.
Because of their isolation and the simplicity of their material culture, Durkheim assumes the Australian aboriginals to be representative of religion in its most primitive form. They believe in spirits and have traditions concerning certain beings who came from the sky, taught them their culture, [ p. 66 ] and returned thither. But there is neither worship nor prayer offered to the spirits or other divine beings. The aboriginal religious consciousness is absorbed in a mere totemic ritual, each clan or social group having its own totemic symbol. The use of these symbols Durkheim believes to be a necessity for social cohesion, for the concept of the clan is too complex to be completely grasped without it. The religious feeling attached to the symbol, he claims, is derived from the actual feeling toward the clan itself. The social group in which the individual lives and moves and has his being bears, in actual fact, he argues, the relationship toward the individual which religion attributes to God. It dominates him by its superior authority. On the other hand, when he feels himself in harmony with it, it is a source of strength and courage. It calls forth his highest devotion, and in its fellowship he finds his deepest satisfaction.
These feelings aroused by the social group become attached, says Durkheim, to the totemic symbol. To it is attributed the mystical force that arouses them, the moral authority and power that really belong to the group itself. It becomes an object of devotion, inspiring awe and reverence. Its peculiar mystical power is generalized in the concept of mana and attached to everything connected with the cult and to other objects similarly inspiring awe. Gradually it is personalized, becoming first an animal deity and later an anthropomorphic god who appears in the animal form of what was once the totem — a course of development plainly recorded in Egyptian religion. Thus religious belief in the supernatural is presented as developing out of a tendency, commonly manifested in religion, to take the symbol for the reality, thus imbuing it with an unreal, mystical power and authority, personalizing and exalting it. But the reality of religion is man’s relation to his fellow men, the real power and moral authority of the group, and all the values that accrue from [ p. 67 ] sharing in a common life and devotion to the common good.
Criticism of Durkheim’s theory by both theists and naturalists centers round the explanation of the notion of the sacred, as distinct from the secular, and that of the mystical power commonly called mana. These are attributed by Durkheim directly to the felt influence of the group. The mana of the totem is the mana of the group; its authority is that of the clan; the sacred is neither more nor less than the social. Professor Goldenweiser points out[11] that there are many social ceremonies of primitive people which are distinctly not sacred, so that the sense of the sacred certainly involves something more than a mere feeling inspired by the presence of the group; it must at least be some distinctive kind of group relationship that is sacred. Further, it is by no means the case that, as Durkheim assumes, all peoples are, or have been, totemic. Even some of the most primitive foodgatherers, such as the Andaman Islanders, the Congo pygmies and the South African Bushmen, are not totemic,[12] yet they have a religion, they distinguish between the sacred and the secular, and they possess the concept of mana. Totemism would seem to be a matter of social organization, incorporated into the religious practices of a people, rather than the most primitive expression of religious feeling. There is much evidence that the culture of the Australian aboriginals has been greatly influenced by diffusion of magical practices and social forms from outside the country.[13] The sky-beings to whom they attribute so much of their culture were probably real [ p. 68 ] people of a higher culture, who believed that their own spirits came from the sky and returned thither, and who sometime in the dim past were in sufficiently close contact with the Australians to impress some of their practices upon them.
Thus the anthropological evidence upon which Durkheim’s theory is based breaks down. Nor is it adequate as a theory of the nature and origin of religion. Religion is so much a matter of individual spiritual culture that Professor Whitehead described it as “what we do with our solitariness.” [14] This is to go to the other extreme, but it points to a feature of religion to which the sociological theory cannot do justice. When religious feeling is cultivated intensely apart from all relation to society it becomes distorted; but it may still be very intense, and this would not be possible if its real root were simply in the social relationship. Further, the tendency in religion to reach out beyond man to find a relationship with something deeper in the universe, cannot be adequately explained as due simply to a tendency to treat symbols as reality. Long after thought has abandoned those symbols which merely represent the social group, man, instead of reverting to society itself for his religious sustenance, seeks some deeper root than the social for his moral and religious satisfaction. This must be due to something in religious experience itself, for it is too persistent to be merely a social habit created by false ideas long abandoned. Indeed, if we refer again to the birth of religion in the individual as we know it today, we see how inadequate the collectivist theory is to explain it. This process is certainly rooted in moral experience, but certainly not merely in a feeling derived from the influence of society. Finally, the whole tendency of religion and morality to reject the verdicts of society as not ultimately authoritative in their sphere shows how inadequate it is to attempt to trace religious [ p. 69 ] feeling to nothing deeper than the impression made on the individual by the group.[15]
We may take Westermarck as exemplifying what is commonly called the “naturalistic”[16] theory of religion — that it is primarily natural objects that stir primitive man to superstitious awe, reverence and worship, so that religious belief and practice are to be regarded as the outcome of a very natural but mistaken interpretation of nature. Religion is defined as “a belief in and a regardful attitude towards a supernatural being on whom man feels himself dependent and to whose will he makes an appeal in his worship.” [17] Thus religion is interpreted as resting on belief in the supernatural, and the primary problem is to explain the origin of this belief. The distinction between natural and supernatural phenomena, Westermarck says, is quite clearly made by primitive people. Familiar phenomena are taken for granted and ascribed to “natural causes,” but the unfamiliar and mysterious arouses fear and the whole attitude toward it is different. Further, the primitive distinguishes between mechanical causation and volitional activity. Even among supernatural phenomena he makes this distinction, those mechanically caused being treated as magical but not made objects of worship. It is only those supernatural phenomena that impress him as being voluntary that the savage treats with religious respect and makes his objects of worship. And in order that this should [ p. 70 ] happen these distinctions need not be conceptualized in abstract terms. The emotional response of man to the unfamiliar is even compared to the shying of a horse; and it is pointed out that even a child responds differently to the animate and to the inanimate.
In proof of his contention that mystery is the essential characteristic of supernatural beings Westermarck presents an imposing array of facts. He gathers evidence from primitive language to show that everywhere the word for the divine tends also to mean the mysterious and wonderful. Thus the manitou of the American Indians is “a spiritual and mysterious power thought to reside in some material form the Fijian kalou means a god and may also be applied to anything marvelous. Since Westermarck wrote, this phenomenon has come to be recognized as the most universal feature of primitive religion. It is the belief in mana. “Mana” is a Polynesian word, though found also in Melanesia and Indonesia. It is translated by such terms as power, might, influence, authority, prestige and glory. It signifies an efficacy going beyond that encountered in everyday life.[18] Mana sometimes appears to be impersonal, sometimes personal, and it resides not only in gods, spirits, priests and magical and religious ceremonies but also in chiefs and eyen in ordinar y pe rsons, animals and things so far as they seen to posses, power beyond that ordinarily intelligible. It is the explanation of all that is mysterious and wonderful. There can be little doubt that the concept of mana represents the most primitive, as well as the most universal, belief that is of definitely religious origin.
For further evidence that the belief in the supernatural arises from the sense of mystery and awe Westermarck points to the type of object that is commonly deified. Here the evidence is overwhelming. Men do not make gods of ordinary [ p. 71 ] things until they have found something remarkable about them. But, especially among the more primitive peoples, everything that is strikingly unusual, even a twisted stick or a peculiarly shaped rock, is apt to be regarded as possessing supernatural attributes and may be deified. Gods are made of anything that is awe-inspiring, mysterious or dangerous. The snake, alcoholic liquors, great waterfalls, mountains, thunder, storms, great heroes and rulers, the seasons, objects of remarkable utility such as the cow, objects used in magical ceremonies such as the totem, the groves and caves and other places where such ceremonies are held, strange diseases, persons afflicted with mental disorder — in short, everything strange and wonderful is apt to be regarded as either itself divine, possessed of a spirit, or at least the seat of mana.
With Westermarck’s contention that everything mysterious tends to be thought of as supernatural we may, then, agree. But, as he himself points out, merely to be supernatural is not necessarily to be a religious object. Magic is distinguishable from religion. Religion involves worship, devotion and a moral attitude, while magic is simply an effort to use supernatural forces to attain human ends. Westermarck explains this by saying that it is those supernatural objects that are personalized, regarded as voluntary agents, that are made objects of the religious approach. Religious activity is an appeal to the will of a supernatural being. But if this were so then there could be no religion (there could be only magic) where the ceremonial is not directed toward a being conceived as personal, i.e., capable of a voluntary response. This would make the Australian aboriginals actually devoid of religion, for, though they believe in the existence of spirits and other supernatural personal beings, they offer to them no prayers or sacrifices; yet they carry out their totemic ceremonies and initiations with a truly religious fervor and find a genuine spiritual encouragement and moral strength in them. Again, [ p. 72 ] Westermarck’s theory would deny the name of religion to the thought and devotion of Spinoza and Gautama, for the object of their devotion was conceived as impersonal. It would deny the name of religion also to the modern humanist movement.
But the first half of Westermarck’s argument is in itself really fatal to his position, for it points out that, to the primitive, the divine and the mysterious and wonderful mean the same thing. Mana is not to be distinguished from the sacred and divine. Yet it is in itself impersonal and is often attached to impersonal objects. The divine is therefore something mysterious and wonderful in the universe, but not necessarily personal. Yet, even when not personal, it is something to be treated with reverence, something sacred, something it would be sin to ignore or treat lightly, something that may be very precious. It is something not clearly conceived but intensely felt. Above all it is felt in the ceremonies themselves, and because it is felt there these are to be performed with intensive attention and zealous care. Thus the ceremonies, as in Australia, can be developed into an elaborate system long before the imagination has personalized objects of nature and thought of appealing to these imaginary powers for support in the battle of life. The notion of mana then stands out as the most elementary of all religious concepts, and religion is seen to have its basis in something immediately felt, not in a mere illusory personalization of the mysterious and wonderful.
A still more fundamental deficiency in Westermarck’s theory is its failure to do justice to the moral element in religion. He regards religion as simply an effort of the superstitious person to utilize supernatural forces to secure his ends or to prevent them from injuring him, an effort differing from magic only in that it is directed toward supernatural agencies believed to possess feeling and will. It thus takes the forms of prayer, sacrifice and other types of personal appeal [ p. 73 ] instead of the impersonal methods of magic. On this view man, in religion, is merely concerned with getting what he wants. The moral element is secondary.
Now it must be frankly recognized that much of the socalled religious activity of people, both in civilized communities and among savages, is of just this character. But, though it observes religious forms, is it really religion? In all the great ethical religions such mer, pursuit of the loaves and fishes is repudiated as a simulation and prostitution of religion. It contains no real devotion, no worship from the heart, no moral earnestness; and these things are the essence of religion. The “true believer,” who possesses them, may ask material favors of his God, but he feels a duty that does not derive from his mere need of these favors. This deeper and distinctively moral element in the relation of the worshiper to the object of his worship is not superficially obvious in the religious practice of primitive peoples, but it is certainly there.y Their ceremonials are not merely means to securing material ends and social and military prizes, but duties to be performed. The Australian aboriginal insists that his ceremonies” make everybody better.” Those who know them well assert that the ceremonials are performed with great reverence as well as zeal, and that they are regarded as a moral obligation as well as acts of prudence to insure the life and safety of the tribe.
To neglect them is a specific disloyalty to the welfare of the tribe, and leaves a feeling of vague uneasiness, of loss of contact with the great heroes and the source of life; moreover, disloyalty to the tradition and rules means unworthiness, with the result that the old men will not hand on esoteric knowledge to such unworthy young folk.[19]
[ p. 74 ]
In his evaluation of religion as essentially moral in character by reason of its fundamentally social nature, Durkheim is much nearer the truth than either Tylor or Westermarck. This fact has recently been strongly emphasized by another great anthropologist. He speaks of “the ethical element intrinsically inherent in all religious activities,” and continues:
They always require efforts, discipline, and submission on the part of the individual for the good of the community. Taboos, vigils, religious exercises are essentially moral, not merely because they express submission of man to spiritual powers, but also because they are a sacrifice of man’s personal comfort for the common weal. But there is another aspect which, as we shall see, makes all religions moral in their very essence. Every cult is associated with a definite congregation; ancestor worship is primarily based on the family; at times even on a wider group, the clan; at times it becomes tribal when the ancestor spirit is that of a chief. The members of such a group of worshippers have natural duties towards each other. The sense of common responsibility, of reciprocal charity and good will, flows from the same fundamental idea and sentiment which moves clansmen, brothers or tribesmen to common worship.[20]
Thus, even in the most primitive forms of religion we must recognize a moral element, which Westermarck’s explanation of its origin would make secondary and unessential. In the developed religious consciousness of civilized man, however, it is primary and fundamental. Religion is the service of the divine, not its utilization for our human purposes. So much is this the case that we say a m, makes a god of money or position if he acts as if those things were worth being made the supreme ends of his life. It is a secondary matter, though a natural and important corollary, that that which is so worthy of our service is able to serve us and may be appealed to for that purpose. People who are not deeply sensitive to [ p. 75 ] religious values, and sufficiently reflective, are apt to put this secondary matter first; and we must not think harshly of the primitive if, in the difficulty and uncertainty of his life, he does so most of the time. But even he perceives the other side and feels his religion as primarily a duty, though a duty from which he expects to reap benefits.
In Professor Rudolph Otto’s well known book. Das Heilige,[21] an attempt is made to do justice to both the mystical and the moral elements in primitive religion, while still regarding the mystical element as primary. This work is also important for the influence it has had in the rejection of the notion that religion rests primarily upon an intellectual content of belief, and in directing the search for its basis in something immediately felt. The idea of the holy, as found in the developed religious consciousness, contains, Otto says, two elements: a rational element, the idea of the good; and an irrational element, the sense of the sacred, a dim awareness of an aspect of reality which is mysterious, terrible, fascinating. This is the distinctive and original element of the religious consciousness. To it he gives the name of the “numinous.” In the course of its development religion becomes more and more rational and moral and this mystical element sinks into the background; but if it is lost altogether our experience ceases to be religious.
Now there is much of importance in this emphasis on the mystical element in religion. It is probably true that religion can never dispense with mysticism altogether. But it does not follow that that which is intuitively grasped in the mystical element of religious experience is nonmoral. In primitive religion as we know it today the element of fear, awe and [ p. 76 ] fascination is undoubtedly predominant. But primitive religion as we know it today is not the beginning, but the end, of a long process of evolution. It is religion stalemated, religion at a dead end, religion in which the vital element that would make it dynamic, changing, progressive, has been overlaid by elements that render it static, adapted to its environment, but no longer adaptable, no longer a power to change the environment itself and the vehicle of its own expression. Religious evolution, like other forms of evolution, runs into a cul-de-sac along many of its lines of differentiation. In only a few directions, and perhaps ultimately only in one, is continuous progress possible. That is the lesson of evolutionary history in animate nature and human civilization. We must not expect, therefore, that the most prominent element in primitive religion can reveal the essential genius of all religion.
The vital element in religion is the moral element. The dead hand everywhere upon it, but heaviest upon primitive religion, is magic. The features of the numinous to which Otto points as the original and distinctive features of the sacred and holy are those derived from the magical element in religion — the mysterium tremendum et fascinans. From this, he rightly points out, there is no logical transition to the ethical.
How should it be logically inferred from the still “crude,” halfdemonic character of a moon-god or a sun-god or a numen attached to some locality, that he is a guardian and guarantor of the oath and of honorable dealing, of hospitality, of the sanctity of marriage, and of duties to tribe and clan? [22]
Yet Otto recognizes that it is always felt as axiomatic that the divine should be regarded as to some extent concerned with the moral. Here, he admits, is a problem; and his solution [ p. 77 ] is a lame one: " we are forced to assume an obscure a priori knowledge of the necessity of this synthesis, combining rational and non-rational.” [23] Surely, before we leave the matter there we should try every alternative hypothesis.
It becomes obvious from these studies that any satisfactory theory of the origin of religion must be able to account, not only for the prominence of magic and mysticism in religion, but also for the connection of these, from the beginning, with a vital moral element. The attempt to explain how the moral could have grown out of, or become tacked on to, the magical and mystical has signally failed. The suggestion therefore arises that we might succeed better by approaching the problem from the other side. It may be the case that the moral element is really primary and the magical and mystical a natural outgrowth from it; and perhaps some element of the mystical is also a necessary and permanent feature of all religion. An interpretation of this kind may, I think, be developed through an examination of the contribution to our knowledge of the subject made by Professor R. R. Marett. Marett finds in the notion of mana not only a preanimistic stage of religion but also a stage more primitive than that of the mystical reverence for natural objects emphasized by Westermarck.[24]
If we adopt Westermarck’s approach then we must believe that it was the mysterious and wonderful phenomena of external nature that first led man to formulate the hypothesis of a strange and marvelous energy resident in many things, whereby they were able to exercise an influence or power beyond anything ordinarily intelligible. We must believe that, [ p. 78 ] having formulated this hypothesis, he persuaded himself that, by various extraordinary dramatic and symbolical actions, he could somehow control this force and turn it to his benefit — and, as we have learned from the Australian aborigines, that he could do this without any thought of help from superhuman personalities or spirits. And we must conclude that the mana he attributed to the ceremonies and religious objects themselves was a second thought, due to their association with mysterious objects of nature and the mysterious power he had persuaded himself that they would exercise.
Now Marett’s theory reverses this. Religion, he points out, has abundantly proved its survival value for the primitive. But its value is due, not to the soundness of its intellectual element, which is mostly absurd, but to its wholesome effect upon his feelings.
After all, to feel like winning in the battle of life is always more than half-way to a victory which, in the biological sense, can never be complete. . . . Neither to know nor to do, but to feel that he can do is the deepest aspiration of the savage. He seeks from cult neither truth nor works so much as a sense of power. . . . Though a withdrawal from real life in esse, religion retains the sense of being real life in posse — real life mastered in advance. . . . Herein, then, lies the truth of religious symbolism — not in what it says, for it speaks darkly, but in what it makes a man feel, namely, that his heart is strong.[25]
The most primitive religious exercise is a response to feeling, not to thought, and it takes the form of dance and dramatization rather than prayer and sacrifice. It works wonders — real wonders — upon the state of mind of those who participate in it. And because of this they tend to believe that it works wonders in an objective fashion too. The subtle [ p. 79 ] influence that has made the tribesman confident of success is credited with a more direct part in the success that follows. Mana is a name for the power that uplifts his heart in the tribal dance. And when he comes home flushed with victory he believes that the same power strengthened his arm in the battle or the hunt for which the dance prepared.
On this interpretation the notion of mana arises in reflection upon the emotional experience of the primitive group ceremony and is first attached to the ceremonies themselves. From this beginning the subsequent development may be readily inferred. The vaguely conceived mysterious power , felt in the ceremony must be given a locus, and it tends most naturally to be localized in the ceremony itself and, as these become regularized in practice, in the properties used in the ceremony. The churinga stones, the clan symbol or totem, the symbolic garb worn by the participants, the bull-roarer and all other instruments come to be regarded as imbued with mana. The ceremonies are held in places that have a suitable atmosphere — in groves or caves, on mountaintops, in the shadow of great trees and quaint and impressive rock formations — and those places become full of mana. Eventually everything that arouses feelings at all similar to those of the ceremony — feelings of awe and mystery — and anything that seems to possess an extraordinary power are regarded as having mana. Living in a world believed full of this mysterious power, the primitive looks expectantly to the mana of his ceremonies to prevail over the mana of other things, to ward off dangers and contribute to his food supply. He develops ceremonies which, by their symbolic meaning and dramatization, persuade him of their efficacy in these ways. All of these are magical, relying for their objective efficiency on their mana. Some of them, performed solely for their supposed objective effect, lose that effect upon the feeling of the [ p. 80 ] performer which was the source of the belief in mana, and magical practice is developed more or less in divorce from religion.
This means that the magico-religious ceremonies of the primitive are not originally founded on any kind of belief, but magical and religious beliefs are outgrowths from the ceremonies and, in particular, from the feelings underlying the ceremonies, expressed in them and stimulated by them. The ceremonies themselves must have been gradual growths beginning in spontaneous expressions of feeling. These spontaneous feelings, whatever they were, must be regarded as the ultimate source and permanent foundation of primitive religion. The feelings were, and are, probably very complex, since they issue in both magic and religion. But whatever they are, the secret of primitive religion is to be found in them. And if religion is a unified growth from the primitive to its highest modern forms then its most essential feeling elements must be the same throughout. We have seen in our previous chapter that, at the higher levels, religion is rooted in feelings concerned with the moral life. The question therefore formulates itself as the problem as to where the moral element enters into religion. Is it an integral part of the feeling-states out of which the earliest ceremonies arose? Or are they, in their origin, nonmoral, the ethical element becoming incorporated into them in the course of their development?
Marett hesitates between these alternatives, but inclines toward the latter — “that the excitement generated by cult is almost unmoral in its initial phase.” It generates a passion which can transform a cold ethical code into a hunger and thirst after righteousness, but which may also prove itself dangerous and devilish.” Mana is, as Freud would say, ambivalent. Possessed by it a man is moved to let himself go whether for better or for worse. … It looks, then, as if religion [ p. 81 ] apart from morality was neither good nor bad, but just a neutral force.” [26]
This may, and must, all be granted — if one agrees that religious beliefs and practices apart from morality are still really religion. But it may be the case that the feeling in which these beliefs and practices arise is essentially a feeling for moral values, so that religion is fundamentally rooted in morality. If this is the case, as I will try to show, it could not be expected to involve, as a consequence, that religious beliefs and practices could never become separated by primitive people from their moral roots. This happens all too often, among civilized people, with beliefs and practices which we know have a moral origin. The elaboration of belief and ceremonial proceeds under impulsion of a great variety of motives — and this elaboration has slowly proceeded among primitive peoples for thousands of years. The sheer intensity of feeling-states cultivated in ritual and dance has been enjoyed for its own sake and directed toward all sorts of nonmoral and immoral ends. But if we look for those feelings which were most fundamental and for those in which the ceremonies must have spontaneously originated, we shall find, I think, that their central constituents must be recognized as feelings for moral values.
We may sum up the evidence from anthropology as culminating in the view that the most primitive religious idea is that of mana, that this arises in the actual ceremonial performances of the primitive groups, and that subsequently, as Marett says,” Gods start, in fact, as no more than portions of the ritual apparatus.”[27] What then is the nature of the ceremonial performed before there had developed even so [ p. 82 ] primitive a religious notion as mana — the ceremonial out of which that notion arose? It must have been a type of performance that originated in spontaneous expressions of feeling. But what expressions of feeling could have been so taken up by the group as to result in the development of group ceremonial to express them? Obviously, they must have been feelings concerned with the common welfare of the group. So we reach the conclusion that religion was a moral exercise in its first beginnings. It arose out of the expression of feeling for the common welfare.
A little further reflection will show how deep in the moral life these feelings must have gone. It must have been the strongest feelings and the strongest expressions that came to be cultivated and formalized in ceremonial. But strong expressions of feeling are called forth only in times that are more or less critical — for example, when the food supply is endangered or when dangers have to be faced from fierce neighbors, animal or human. Furthermore, expressions of feeling for the common welfare and of intention to play one’s part in contributing to it, if made under circumstances that cost nothing, are merely trite or idle boasting; they arouse no appreciative response. It is when the fears and difficulties are so great that individuals hesitate to do their part, when each has reason to doubt the adequate courage and co-operation of his partner and neighbor, when circumstances are so hard and dangerous that each man doubts even himself — it is then that men take courage from each other’s expressions of boldness; it is then that they welcome their comrades’ assurance of devotion to the common cause. His language being undeveloped and inadequate, primeval man could not have been very eloquent. He must have expressed himself as much in gesture as in words, especially when his feelings were strongly aroused. So these early expressions of courage and devotion to the common cause, of faith and hope against [ p. 83 ] a dark future, of moral indignation and vengeance against the enemy, must have taken the form of symbolic gesture and dramatized action rather than words. It was from such simple but vital and human things that the ceremonies of religion grew.
Here at last we can see the connection between the birth of religion in the individual and its birth in the race. We have seen that the religious life of the individual begins as he becomes conscious of the duality within himself — of the will to secure the good of other persons distinguishing itself from the will to secure his own good, of the resultant inner conflict and the sense of obligation. It is essentially the same experience that would underlie those primitive, dramatic expressions of feeling with which tribal ceremonies began. Before man acquired the intelligence to distinguish between his own private good and the good of others, the cohesion of the group was secured by instinctive, animal, gregarious tendencies. Each individual responded, like an animal or an infant, to the immediacy of his own feelings; but nature had so organized those feelings that the group held together with mutual aid. Intelligence first made selfishness possible. The cunning of homo sapiens made it possible to break the instinctive bonds of common action, to pursue private selfinterest. It brought moral conflict into being. When primeval man met this conflict in his soul with a gesture of courage and a symbolic declaration of adhesion to the common cause, religion was born. Religion was necessary to save the race from destruction by an egoistic individualism created by its very intelligence.
A little sober imagination and knowledge of primitive peoples enables us to reconstruct the rest of the story. There were dramatic expressions of courage in the face of danger; and these developed into the ceremonies whereby the primitive works up his enthusiasm and beats down his fears before [ p. 84 ] the battle or the hunt of dangerous animals. In the face of despair wrought by dwindling food supplies and long delayed rain there were symbolic expressions of hope; and these developed into the ceremonies whereby the primitive buoys up his spirits and persuades himself that he is helping forward the forces of nature in their benevolent tasks. There were vivid warnings and preachments from the grown men to the fast maturing youths, and responsive demonstrations of zeal and endurance from the young; and these developed into the initiation rites whereby the savage warriors ceremonially and psychologically “make a man” out of a boy. From our standpoint there seems to be much in these ceremonies that is vicious and cruel, as well as much that is superstitious and shortsighted. But to the understanding of the primitive these things are appropriate and good in both intention and effect. They have grown with little design, but upon them he has lavished his best thought and artistic skill. He enters into them with zeal, feels their meaning rather than thinks it, and finds that the effect upon him is good.
That effect is powerful; yet it is no ordinary power such as he feels in his arm and sees at work in animals and things around him. In the rites he finds a peculiar and extraordinary power. That he calls mana. Before the rite perhaps he is dubious, fearful, inclined to shirk. But in the midst of the wild dance or solemn ceremony something grips him, uplifts him, draws him out of himself, fills him with zeal and courage, thrills him with the sense of kinship with his people. It is not a mere abstraction but a concrete power that he feels. It goes with him into the battle, gives him strength and skill, and brings him home victorious. It is a thing — vague but real, mysterious but powerful, overpowering and terrible but helpful and needed. He does not personalize it, but naturally he localizes it. It is in the ceremonies, in the symbolic objects used in them, in the places where they are held. Finally, it [ p. 85 ] is in all objects that impress him as possessing a nature or power that is not of the ordinary kind. It becomes a convenient concept that explains the happening of all that has no other explanation. Then it becomes something that it is necessary to control, something that may perhaps be used to good effect. Naturally it is objects that have mana that must be used to control the mana of other things. So he takes something that has acquired mana from its use in the ceremonies — a feather, a bone, a shell, a tuft of hair — and uses it as a charm. Thus magic grows, both within the religious ceremony and the ideas associated with it, and outside of religion, more or less detached from it.
Once mana is localized, the objects thus dignified, singled out for special attention and credited with peculiar power, would often easily lend themselves to imaginative animation and personalization. Thus the totem, the grove, the waterfall, the mountain, the intoxicating drink, the mysterious snake and the fierce bull become quasi-personal seats of mana. The stage of animatism has been reached. But since mana explains all mysteries it explains those of life and death. It is the mana of something that generates the child in the womb. And when a man dies his mana goes from him. Mana is always an intangible power, and it is this intangible power that has left the body. In its disembodied state the mana of the person is greater than ever, for it is more mysterious. With these beginnings of animism mana is no longer so definitely localized. There are intangible powers of a personal, or at least animate, nature; and mana everywhere tends to be interpreted in animistic form. From animism and animatism the more imaginative peoples passed readily enough to polytheism. The Egyptians gradually personalized and spiritualized [ p. 86 ] the semitotemic animal symbols of each nome, or district, until they became high gods who appeared and were worshiped in an animal form. The Syrians turned the vaguely conceived and multitudinous fertility spirits into definitely characterized deities — the ba’alim became Ba’al or Bel. The Hindus transformed the early animatistic vedic nature deities of sun, sky, etc., into personal, spiritual beings who made these places their home. A few departed heroes, such as Krishna, were raised to the rank of high gods. Tribal deities were developed out of the animatistic gods of the locality inhabited by the tribe. So, in one way and another, according to circumstances and the imaginative capacity of the people, the pantheons of polytheism have grown.
But while magic and superstition, crude guesses at the mysteries of nature, poetic fancy and the scheming of priests have influenced the development of religious ideas, the moral element has never been entirely absent. It is because of its real moral value that religion survived despite the load of magic and trickery that was thrust upon it. It is the cement that has bound human society together, buttressed its mores, curbed the worst extremes of its tyrants though often a tool in their hands, inspired its reformers, and generally prevented the cunning and selfish from completely disintegrating the social whole. If testimony is needed on this point we might bring together the verdicts of two great British anthropologists, neither of whom can be accused of having any theological ax to grind: “The comparative study of civilisation teaches that the core of all sound communal life has always been a strong, living faith.” [28] “But to shed religion has surely never helped a people to prosper.” [^30]
[ p. 87 ]
Our analysis has done more than merely reaffirm the social value of religion and solve the interesting intellectual problem of its origin. It has shown us why religion is of social value; and it has clearly distinguished, within religion as ordinarily conceived, that which is essential and valuable from that which is adventitious and evil. The important thing is that it is the adventitious element — magic — that is evil, and the essential element — the moral — that is valuable. And again it is important to recognize that the magical element can be sloughed off from religion without leaving us with nothing but an ethic. For the moral element in religion is not an ethic. It is not a body of moral teaching. It is rather a mode of response to natural and inevitable feelings for social values. It is that mode of response which gives acknowledgment and expression to the ideal; and indeed, communal or group expression. It recognizes and inwardly meditates upon the objective character of the ideal. It seeks to achieve the integration and reintegration of personality by sharing a common spiritual experience with the group.
Our study of the birth of religion in the individual revealed it as a process of inner personal integration achieved largely through private meditation; our study of its origin and development in the race reveals it as a process whereby that integration is maintained by cultivating a spiritual integration with the religious society. And the whole process of inner personal integration is revealed as having its social value in that it involves the integration of the whole personality under control of a single master motive — the disinterested will to the good of others.
This last feature is, of course, not clearly visible in the religion of the primitive. There we have a conflict between the ego and the will to the common good of a small group, or the [ p. 88 ] particular good of a friend. But it is the same essential conflict of egoism and altruism however small the group, and even though the means of achieving its good is robbing or destroying some neighboring group. Sensitivity to the larger good of the larger group, like sensitivity to the higher values possible for the small group itself, is a plant of slow growth. It is with these developments that the great religious innovators are chiefly concerned. Religious progress is only in smaller part a progress in scientific and metaphysical understanding achieved by philosophers. It is, for the greater part, a progress in the widening horizon of values, to which the disinterested will aspires: and this is the work of the prophets. It is also, to no inconsiderable extent, a matter of improvement in the modes of worship, of spiritual expression, whereby the vision of wider and higher values is propagated and maintained; and this is the work, chiefly, of poet, artist and priest.
Thus religion gathers into itself the thought and knowledge of the times, their modes of social organization, their artistic and poetic expression, and, at its best, devotes them to the external integration of society and the internal integration of the individual. And, as with progressive insights it discovers the true goal of its own essential motive, this integration becomes more and more determined by the disinterested will to the good of all — that other and higher will that the religious man finds within himself and which, long before he has understood completely its nature and its end, he has come to call the will of God.
But finally we must recognize that, having done full justice to the paramountcy of the practical moral element in religion, we cannot neglect its conceptual interpretation. It is not enough to see clearly the goal toward which religion moves. Rational man will ask the reason for the goal. We have seen that it is intelligence that opens the way for the conflict to develop within man’s soul, that makes him a creature [ p. 89 ] capable of moral evil and thus of a moral good. We have seen that religious activity buttresses and supports, the altruistic elements in personality. We have seen man’s incipient egoistic individualism checked by these influences.
But is the check permanent? We see today an intelligent egoistic individualism triumphing in a widespread neglect of the traditional means of spiritual culture, a neglect fostered also by a perception of the moral deficiencies, perversions and intellectual errors in traditional religion. The name of God no longer arouses the awe that once it did. Among millions the symbols of narrow racial and class cults arouse more enthusiasm and reverence. Religion, if it is to perform its social function, must be able to give a reason why men ought to devote themselves to that ideal of universal good that is the flower of its finest development. It becomes of vital importance that we should be able to clarify the nature of that ideal, to see precisely what it means in its practical application, and to see how deep it is rooted in the structure of reality.
This is the historic quest of religion for righteousness and truth. In pursuing it ourselves we shall next briefly review the way in which religion has, in the past, faced some of the chief problems involved. It is a quest that has been pursued with as much vigor in the Orient as in the Occident, but for reasons of space we shall confine ourselves chiefly to our own tradition, growing out of Egypt, Palestine and Greece into the Christian forms with which we are today familiar. At the same time this review of some of the historic answers man has given to the problems raised by his religious experience will help to confirm the accuracy of the analysis we have made of the essential nature of that experience.
For example, the scattered groups of Negritos are found as far apart as central and south Africa, the Andaman Islands (Bay of Bengal) and the Philippine Islands; and small groups or traces of Australoids still exist in India, Ceylon, the Malay Peninsula and the Celebes Islands. ↩︎
B. Malinowski: Foundations of Faith and Morals (New York: Oxford University Press, 1936) , p. 1. ↩︎
P. Radin: Primitive Religion (New York: Viking Press, 1937) . ↩︎
E. B. Tylor: Primitive Culture (7th ed.; New York: Brentano’s, 1924) . ↩︎
E. Durkheim: Elementary Forms of the Religious Life translated by Joseph Ward Swain (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1915) , pp. 59-60. ↩︎
In The Todas (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1906) . ↩︎
In The Threshold of Religion (1st cd.; London: Methuen & Co., 1914) . ↩︎
E. W. Hopkins: The Religions of India (Boston: Ginn & Co., 1895) , ↩︎
Op. cit. ↩︎
Ibid, p. 47. ↩︎
A. A. Goldenweiser: Early Civilization (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1922) . ↩︎
R. H. Lowie: Primitive Religion (New York: Boni & Liveright, 1924) . ↩︎
This is emphatically the opinion of Professor A. P. Elkin, of the University of Sydney, who probably knows the aborigines better than any other living authority. See his The Australian Aborigines: How to Understand Them (Sydney, Australia: Angus Sc Robertson, 1938) , pp. 159, 198, 200 ff. ↩︎
A. N. Whitehead: Religion in the Making (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1926) . ↩︎
For a very thorough critique of the theories of Durkhcim and his school in this connection see C. C. J. Webb: Group Theories of Religion (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1916) . ↩︎
A less ambiguous term would be “naturistic,” for in the ordinary philosophical sense such theories as those of Tylor and Durkheim are also naturalistic." ↩︎
E. Westermarck: Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas (a vols.; New York: The Macmillan Co., 1906-8) , II, 584. ↩︎
For an illuminating account of the usage of the word see H. I, Hogbin: “The Word ‘Mana’: A Linguistic Study, Oceania, Sept. 1938. ↩︎
Quoted from private correspondence of Professor A. P. Elkin, anthropologist at the University of Sydney and editor of Oceania. See also his The Australian Aborigines; How to Understand Them, especially chaps. 7, 8. ↩︎
Malinowski: Foundations of Faith and Morals, p. 7. ↩︎
Translated by John W. Harvey under the title, The Idea of the Holy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1925) . ↩︎
Ibid., p. 140. ↩︎
Ibid, The rational is, for Otto, the moral, and the nonrational is the nonmoral; both are elements in the holy. ↩︎
Marett; The Threshold of Religion, chaps, i, 4. ↩︎
Marett: Faith, Hope and Charity in Primitive Religion (1932) , pp. 12-15 passim. By permission of The Clarendon Press, Oxford. ↩︎
Ibid., pp. 18-19. ↩︎
Ibid., p. ii. ↩︎
Malinowski: Foundations of Faith and Morals, p. viii. ↩︎