I.                INTRODUCTORY

The subject of Religious Origins is a fascinating one, as

the great multitude of books upon it, published in late

years, tends to show. Indeed the great difficulty to-day

in dealing with the subject, lies in the very mass of the

material to hand--and that not only on account of the

labor involved in sorting the material, but because the

abundance itself of facts opens up temptation to a student

in this department of Anthropology (as happens also in

other branches of general Science) to rush in too hastily

with what seems a plausible theory. The more facts,

statistics, and so forth, there are available in any

investigation, the easier it is to pick out a considerable number

which will fit a given theory. The other facts being neglected

or ignored, the views put forward enjoy for a

time a great vogue. Then inevitably, and at a later time,

new or neglected facts alter the outlook, and a new perspective

is established.

There is also in these matters of Science (though many

scientific men would doubtless deny this) a great deal of

"Fashion". Such has been notoriously the case in Political

Economy, Medicine, Geology, and even in such definite

studies as Physics and Chemistry. In a comparatively recent

science, like that with which we are now concerned, one

would naturally expect variations. A hundred and fifty

years ago, and since the time of Rousseau, the "Noble

Savage" was extremely popular; and he lingers still in

the story books of our children. Then the reaction from

this extreme view set in, and of late years it has been

the popular cue (largely, it must be said, among "armchair"

travelers and explorers) to represent the religious

rites and customs of primitive folk as a senseless mass

of superstitions, and the early man as quite devoid of

decent feeling and intelligence. Again, when the study of

religious origins first began in modern times to be seriously

taken up--say in the earlier part of last century--

there was a great boom in Sungods. Every divinity in

the Pantheon was an impersonation of the Sun--unless

indeed (if feminine) of the Moon. Apollo was a sungod,

of course; Hercules was a sungod; Samson was a sungod;

Indra and Krishna, and even Christ, the same.

C. F. Dupuis in France (Origine de tous les Cultes, 1795),

F. Nork in Germany (Biblische Mythologie, 1842), Richard

Taylor in England (The Devil's Pulpit,[1] 1830), were among

the first in modern times to put forward this view. A little

later the PHALLIC explanation of everything came into

fashion. The deities were all polite names for the organs

and powers of procreation. R. P. Knight (Ancient Art

and Mythology, 1818) and Dr. Thomas Inman (Ancient

Faiths and Ancient Names, 1868) popularized this idea in

England; so did Nork in Germany. Then again there was

a period of what is sometimes called Euhemerism

--the theory that the gods and goddesses had actually once

been men and women, historical characters round whom

a halo of romance and remoteness had gathered. Later

still, a school has arisen which thinks little of sungods,

and pays more attention to Earth and Nature spirits,

to gnomes and demons and vegetation-sprites, and to the

processes of Magic by which these (so it was supposed)

could be enlisted in man's service if friendly, or exorcised

if hostile.

[1] This extraordinary book, though carelessly composed and

containing many unproven statements, was on the whole on the

right lines. But it raised a storm of opposition--the more so

because its author was a clergyman! He was ejected from the

ministry, of course, and was sent to prison twice.

It is easy to see of course that there is some truth in

ALL these explanations; but naturally each school for

the time being makes the most of its own contention. Mr.

J. M. Robertson (Pagan Christs and Christianity and

Mythology), who has done such fine work in this field,[1]

relies chiefly on the solar and astronomical origins, though

he does not altogether deny the others; Dr. Frazer, on

the other hand--whose great work, The Golden Bough, is

a monumental collection of primitive customs, and will

be an inexhaustible quarry for all future students--is

apparently very little concerned with theories about the Sun

and the stars, but concentrates his attention on the

collection of innumerable details[2] of rites, chiefly magical,

connected with food and vegetation. Still later writers, like

S. Reinach, Jane Harrison and E. A. Crowley, being mainly

occupied with customs of very primitive peoples, like

the Pelasgian Greeks or the Australian aborigines, have

confined themselves (necessarily) even more to Magic and

Witchcraft.

[1] If only he did not waste so much time, and so needlessly, in

slaughtering opponents!

[2] To such a degree, indeed, that sometimes the connecting clue

of the argument seems to be lost.

Meanwhile the Christian Church from these speculations

has kept itself severely apart--as of course representing a

unique and divine revelation little concerned or interested

in such heathenisms; and moreover (in this country

at any rate) has managed to persuade the general public

of its own divine uniqueness to such a degree that few

people, even nowadays, realize that it has sprung from just

the same root as Paganism, and that it shares by far the

most part of its doctrines and rites with the latter. Till

quite lately it was thought (in Britain) that only secularists

and unfashionable people took any interest in sungods; and

while it was true that learned professors might point to a

belief in Magic as one of the first sources of Religion, it

was easy in reply to say that this obviously had nothing to

do with Christianity! The Secularists, too, rather spoilt

their case by assuming, in their wrath against the Church,

that all priests since the beginning of the world have been

frauds and charlatans, and that all the rites of religion

were merely devil's devices invented by them for the

purpose of preying upon the superstitions of the ignorant,

to their own enrichment. They (the Secularists)

overleaped themselves by grossly exaggerating a thing that

no doubt is partially true.

Thus the subject of religious origins is somewhat complex,

and yields many aspects for consideration. It

is only, I think, by keeping a broad course and admitting

contributions to the truth from various sides, that valuable

results can be obtained. It is absurd to suppose

that in this or any other science neat systems can be found

which will cover all the facts. Nature and History do not

deal in such things, or supply them for a sop to Man's

vanity.

It is clear that there have been three main lines, so far,

along which human speculation and study have run. One

connecting religious rites and observations with the movements

of the Sun and the planets in the sky, and leading to

the invention of and belief in Olympian and remote gods

dwelling in heaven and ruling the Earth from a distance;

the second connecting religion with the changes

of the season, on the Earth and with such practical things

as the growth of vegetation and food, and leading to or

mingled with a vague belief in earth-spirits and magical

methods of influencing such spirits; and the third connecting

religion with man's own body and the tremendous force

of sex residing in it--emblem of undying life and all

fertility and power. It is clear also--and all investigation

confirms it--that the second-mentioned phase of religion

arose on the whole BEFORE the first-mentioned--that is,

that men naturally thought about the very practical questions

of food and vegetation, and the magical or other

methods of encouraging the same, before they worried themselves

about the heavenly bodies and the laws of THEIR

movements, or about the sinister or favorable influences the

stars might exert. And again it is extremely probable that

the third-mentioned aspect--that which connected religion

with the procreative desires and phenomena of human

physiology--really came FIRST. These desires and physiological

phenomena must have loomed large on the primitive

mind long before the changes of the seasons or of the sky

had been at all definitely observed or considered. Thus we

find it probable that, in order to understand the sequence of

the actual and historical phases of religious worship, we must

approximately reverse the order above-given in which they

have been STUDIED, and conclude that in general the

Phallic cults came first, the cult of Magic and the propitiation

of earth-divinities and spirits came second, and

only last came the belief in definite God-figures residing

in heaven.

At the base of the whole process by which divinities and

demons were created, and rites for their propitiation and

placation established, lay Fear--fear stimulating the

imagination to fantastic activity. Primus in orbe deos

fecit Timor. And fear, as we shall see, only became a mental

stimulus at the time of, or after, the evolution

of self-consciousness. Before that time, in the period of

SIMPLE consciousness, when the human mind resembled

that of the animals, fear indeed existed, but its nature was

more that of a mechanical protective instinct. There

being no figure or image of SELF in the animal mind, there

were correspondingly no figures or images of beings who

might threaten or destroy that self. So it was that the

imaginative power of fear began with Self-consciousness, and

from that imaginative power was unrolled the whole panorama

of the gods and rites and creeds of Religion down the

centuries.

The immense force and domination of Fear in the first

self-conscious stages of the human mind is a thing which

can hardly be exaggerated, and which is even difficult for

some of us moderns to realize. But naturally as soon

as Man began to think about himself--a frail phantom and

waif in the midst of tremendous forces of whose nature

and mode of operation he was entirely ignorant--he was

BESET with terrors; dangers loomed upon him on all sides.

Even to-day it is noticed by doctors that one of the chief

obstacles to the cure of illness among some black or native

races is sheer superstitious terror; and Thanatomania is the

recognized word for a state of mind ("obsession of

death") which will often cause a savage to perish from a

mere scratch hardly to be called a wound. The natural

defence against this state of mind was the creation of an

enormous number of taboos--such as we find among

all races and on every conceivable subject--and these taboos

constituted practically a great body of warnings which

regulated the lives and thoughts of the community, and

ultimately, after they had been weeded out and to some

degree simplified, hardened down into very stringent

Customs and Laws. Such taboos naturally in the beginning

tended to include the avoidance not only of acts which

might reasonably be considered dangerous, like touching a

corpse, but also things much more remote and fanciful

in their relation to danger, like merely looking at a mother-

in-law, or passing a lightning-struck tree; and (what is

especially to be noticed) they tended to include acts which

offered any special PLEASURE or temptation--like sex or

marriage or the enjoyment of a meal. Taboos surrounded

these things too, and the psychological connection is easy

to divine: but I shall deal with this general subject later.

It may be guessed that so complex a system of regulations

made life anything but easy to early peoples; but,

preposterous and unreasonable as some of the taboos were,

they undoubtedly had the effect of compelling the growth

of self-control. Fear does not seem a very worthy motive,

but in the beginning it curbed the violence of the purely

animal passions, and introduced order and restraint among

them. Simultaneously it became itself, through the gradual

increase of knowledge and observation, transmuted and

etherealized into something more like wonder and awe

and (when the gods rose above the horizon) into reverence.

Anyhow we seem to perceive that from the early beginnings

(in the Stone Age) of self-consciousness in Man there has been a

gradual development--from crass superstition,

senseless and accidental, to rudimentary observation,

and so to belief in Magic; thence to Animism

and personification of nature-powers in more or less human

form, as earth-divinities or sky-gods or embodiments of

the tribe; and to placation of these powers by rites like

Sacrifice and the Eucharist, which in their turn became

the foundation of Morality. Graphic representations made

for the encouragement of fertility--as on the walls of Bushmen's

rock-dwellings or the ceilings of the caverns of Altamira--

became the nurse of pictorial Art; observations of

plants or of the weather or the stars, carried on by tribal

medicine-men for purposes of witchcraft or prophecy, supplied

some of the material of Science; and humanity emerged

by faltering and hesitating steps on the borderland of those

finer perceptions and reasonings which are supposed to be

characteristic of Civilization.

The process of the evolution of religious rites and ceremonies

has in its main outlines been the same all over the

world, as the reader will presently see--and this whether

in connection with the numerous creeds of Paganism

or the supposedly unique case of Christianity; and now

the continuity and close intermixture of these great

streams can no longer be denied--nor IS it indeed denied

by those who have really studied the subject. It is

seen that religious evolution through the ages has been

practically One thing--that there has been in fact a World-

religion, though with various phases and branches.

And so in the present day a new problem arises, namely

how to account for the appearance of this great Phenomenon,

with its orderly phases of evolution, and its own spontaneous[1]

growths in all corners of the globe--this phenomenon

which has had such a strange sway over the

hearts of men, which has attracted them with so weird

a charm, which has drawn out their devotion, love and

tenderness, which has consoled them in sorrow and affliction,

and yet which has stained their history with such horrible

sacrifices and persecutions and cruelties. What has

been the instigating cause of it?

[1] For the question of spontaneity see chap. x and elsewhere.

The answer which I propose to this question, and which

is developed to some extent in the following chapters, is

a psychological one. It is that the phenomenon proceeds

from, and is a necessary accompaniment of, the growth of

human Consciousness itself--its growth, namely, through

the three great stages of its unfoldment. These stages

are (1) that of the simple or animal consciousness, (2) that

of SELF-consciousness, and (3) that of a third stage of

consciousness which has not as yet been effectively named, but

whose indications and precursive signs we here and there

perceive in the rites and prophecies and mysteries of

the early religions, and in the poetry and art and literature

generally of the later civilizations. Though I do not

expect or wish to catch Nature and History in the careful

net of a phrase, yet I think that in the sequence from

the above-mentioned first stage to the second, and then

again in the sequence from the second to the third,

there will be found a helpful explanation of the rites and

aspirations of human religion. It is this idea, illustrated

by details of ceremonial and so forth, which forms the main

thesis of the present book. In this sequence of growth,

Christianity enters as an episode, but no more than an episode.

It does not amount to a disruption or dislocation of evolution.

If it did, or if it stood as an unique or unclassifiable

phenomenon (as some of its votaries contend), this would

seem to be a misfortune--as it would obviously rob us of

at any rate one promise of progress in the future. And

the promise of something better than Paganism and better

than Christianity is very precious. It is surely time

that it should be fulfilled.

The tracing, therefore, of the part that human self-

consciousness has played, psychologically, in the evolution

of religion, runs like a thread through the following chapters,

and seeks illustration in a variety of details. The idea

has been repeated under different aspects; sometimes,

possibly, it has been repeated too often; but different aspects

in such a case do help, as in a stereoscope, to give

solidity to the thing seen. Though the worship of Sun-gods

and divine figures in the sky came comparatively late

in religious evolution, 1 have put this subject early in

the book (chapters ii and iii), partly because (as I have

already explained) it was the phase first studied in modern

times, and therefore is the one most familiar to present-

day readers, and partly because its astronomical data

give great definiteness and "proveability" to it, in rebuttal

to the common accusation that the whole study of religious

origins is too vague and uncertain to have much value.

Going backwards in Time, the two next chapters (iv and v)

deal with Totem-sacraments and Magic, perhaps the earliest

forms of religion. And these four lead on (in chapters vi

to xi) to the consideration of rites and creeds common to

Paganism and Christianity. XII and xiii deal especially

with the evolution of Christianity itself; xiv and xv explain

the inner Meaning of the whole process from the beginning;

and xvi and xvii look to the Future.

The appendix on the doctrines of the Upanishads may,

I hope, serve to give an idea, intimate even though inadequate,

of the third Stage--that which follows on the

stage of self-consciousness; and to portray the mental attitudes

which are characteristic of that stage. Here in this

third stage, it would seem, one comes upon the real FACTS of

the inner life--in contradistinction to the fancies and figments

of the second stage; and so one reaches the final point

of conjunction between Science and Religion.