VIII. PAGAN INITIATIONS AND THE SECOND BIRTH

We have suggested in the last chapter how the conceptions

of Sin and Sacrifice coming down to us from an extremely

remote past, and embodied among the various peoples

of the world sometimes in crude and bloodthirsty rites,

sometimes in symbols and rituals of a gentler and more

gracious character, descended at last into Christianity and

became a part of its creed and of the creed of the

modern world. On the whole perhaps we may trace a

slow amelioration in this process and may flatter ourselves

that the Christian centuries exhibit a more philosophical

understanding of what Sin is, and a more humane conception

of what Sacrifice SHOULD be, than the centuries

preceding. But I fear tht any very decided statement

or sweeping generalization to that effect would be--to

say the least--rash. Perhaps there IS a very slow amelioration;

but the briefest glance at the history of the Christian

churches--the horrible rancours and revenges of the

clergy and the sects against each other in the fourth

and fifth centuries A.D., the heresy-hunting crusades at

Beziers and other places and the massacres of the Albigenses

in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the witch-findings

and burnings of the sixteenth and seventeenth, the hideous

science-urged and bishop-blessed warfare of the twentieth

--horrors fully as great as any we can charge to the account

of the Aztecs or the Babylonians--must give us pause.

Nor must we forget that if there is by chance a substantial

amelioration in our modern outlook with regard to these

matters the same had begun already before the advent

of Christianity and can by no means be ascribed to any

miraculous influence of that religion. Abraham was

prompted to slay a ram as a substitute for his son, long

before the Christians were thought of; the rather savage

Artemis of the old Greek rites was (according to Pausanias)[1]

honored by the yearly sacrifice of a perfect boy and girl,

but later it was deemed sufficient to draw a knife across their

throats as a symbol, with the result of spilling only a

few drops of their blood, or to flog the boys (with the

same result) upon her altar. Among the Khonds in old

days many victims (meriahs) were sacrificed to the gods,

"but in time the man was replaced by a horse, the horse by

a bull, the bull by a ram, the ram by a kid, the kid

by fowls, and the fowls by many flowers."[2] At one time,

according to the Yajur-Veda, there was a festival at which

one hundred and twenty-five victims, men and women,

boys and girls, were sacrificed; "but reform supervened,

and now the victims were bound as before to the stake,

but afterwards amid litanies to the immolated (god)

Narayana, the sacrificing priest brandished a knife and

--severed the bonds of the captives."[3] At the Athenian festival

of the Thargelia, to which I referred in the last chapter,

it appears that the victims, in later times, instead of being

slain, were tossed from a height into the sea, and after

being rescued were then simply banished; while at Leucatas

a similar festival the fall of the victim was

graciously broken by tying feathers and even living birds to

his body.[4]

[1] vii. 19, and iii. 8, 16.

[2] Primitive Folk, by Elie Reclus (Contemp. Science Series), p.

330.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Muller's Dorians Book II, ch. ii, par. 10.

With the lapse of time and the general progress of mankind, we

may, I think, perceive some such slow ameliorations

in the matter of the brutality and superstition of the old

religions. How far any later ameliorations were due to

the direct influence of Christianity might be a difficult

question; but what I think we can clearly see--and what

especially interests us here--is that in respect to its main

religious ideas, and the matter underlying them (exclusive

of the MANNER of their treatment, which necessarily has varied

among different peoples) Christianity is of one piece

with the earlier pagan creeds and is for the most part a

re-statement and renewed expression of world-wide doctrines

whose first genesis is lost in the haze of the past, beyond all

recorded history.

I have illustrated this view with regard to the doctrine of

Sin and Sacrifice. Let us take two or three other

illustrations. Let us take the doctrine of Re-birth or

Regeneration. The first few verses of St. John's Gospel are

occupied with the subject of salvation through rebirth or

regeneration. "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the

kingdom of God." . . . "Except a man be born of water

and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God."

Our Baptismal Service begins by saying that "forasmuch as all

men are conceived and born in sin; and that our Saviour Christ

saith, None can enter into the kingdom of God except he be

regenerate and born anew of water and the Holy Ghost"; therefore

it is desirable that this child should be baptized, "received

into Christ's Holy Church, and be made a lively member of the

same." That, is to say, there is one birth, after the

flesh, but a second birth is necessary, a birth after the

Spirit and into the Church of Christ. Our Confirmation

Service is simply a service repeating and confirming

these views, at an age (fourteen to sixteen or so) when the

boy or girl is capable of understanding what is being done.

But our Baptismal and Confirmation ceremonies combined

are clearly the exact correspondence and parallel

of the old pagan ceremonies of Initiation, which are or

have been observed in almost every primitive tribe over

the world. "The rite of the second birth," says Jane

Harrison,[1] "is widespread, universal, over half the savage

world. With the savage to be twice-born is the rule. By

his first birth he comes into the world; by his second he

is born into his tribe. At his first birth he belongs to his

mother and the women-folk; at his second he becomes

a full-fledged man and passes into the society of the

warriors of his tribe." . . . "These rites are very various,

but they all point to one moral, that the former things are

passed away and that the new-born man has entered upon

a new life. Simplest of all, and most instructive, is the

rite practised by the Kikuyu tribe of British East Africa,

who require that every boy, just before circumcision,

must be born again. The mother stands up with the boy

crouching at her feet; she pretends to go through all the

labour pains, and the boy on being reborn cries like a babe

and is washed."[2]

[1] Ancient Art and Ritual, p. 104.

[2] See also Themis, p. 21.

Let us pause for a moment. An Initiate is of course one

who "enters in." He enters into the Tribe; he enters into

the revelation of certain Mysteries; he becomes an associate

of a certain Totem, a certain God; a member

of a new Society, or Church--a church of Mithra, or Dionysus

or Christ. To do any of these things he must be

born again; be must die to the old life; he must pass

through ceremonials which symbolize the change. One

of these ceremonials is washing. As the new-born babe

is washed, so must the new-born initiate be washed; and

as by primitive man (and not without reason) BLOOD was

considered the most vital and regenerative of fluids, the

very elixir of life, so in earliest times it was common to

wash the initiate with blood. If the initiate had to be born

anew, it would seem reasonable to suppose that he must first

die. So, not unfrequently, he was wounded, or scourged,

and baptized with his own blood, or, in cases, one of

the candidates was really killed and his blood used

as a substitute for the blood of the others. No doubt

HUMAN sacrifice attended the earliest initiations. But later

it was sufficient to be half-drowned in the blood of a Bull as

in the Mithra cult,[1] or 'washed in the blood of the Lamb'

as in the Christian phraseology. Finally, with a growing

sense of decency and aesthetic perception among the

various peoples, washing with pure water came in the

initiation-ceremonies to take the place of blood; and our

baptismal service has reduced the ceremony to a mere

sprinkling with water.[2]

[1] See ch. iii.

[2] For the virtue supposed to reside in blood see Westermarck's

Moral Ideas, Ch. 46.

To continue the quotation from Miss Harrison: "More

often the new birth is stimulated, or imagined, as a death

and a resurrection, either of the boys themselves or of

some one else in their presence. Thus at initiation among

some tribes of South-east Australia, when the boys are

assembled an old man dressed in stringy bark-fibre lies

down in a grave. He is covered up lightly with sticks and

earth, and the grave is smoothed over. The buried man

holds in his hand a small bush which seems to be growing

from the ground, and other bushes are stuck in the

ground round about. The novices are then brought to the

edge of the grave and a song is sung. Gradually, as the

song goes on, the bush held by the buried man begins

to quiver. It moves more and more, and bit by bit the man

himself starts up from the grave."

Strange in our own Baptismal Service and just before the

actual christening we read these words, "Then shall the

Priest say: O merciful God, grant that old Adam in

this child may be so BURIED that the new man may

be raised up in him: grant that all carnal affections may

die in him, and that all things belonging to the Spirit may

live and grow in him!" Can we doubt that the Australian

medicine-man, standing at the graveside of the re-arisen old

black-fellow, pointed the same moral to the young initiates

as the priest does to-day to those assembled before

him in church--for indeed we know that among

savage tribes initiations have always been before all things

the occasions of moral and social teaching? Can we doubt

that he said, in substance if not in actual words: "As

this man has arisen from the grave, so you must also arise

from your old childish life of amusement and self-gratification

and, ENTER INTO the life of the tribe, the life of the

Spirit of the tribe." "In totemistic societies," to quote

Miss Harrison again, "and in the animal secret societies that

seem to grow out of them, the novice is born again

aS THE SACRED ANIMAL. Thus among the Carrier Indians[1]

when a man wants to become a Lulem or 'Bear,' however cold

the season he tears off his clothes, puts on a bear-skin

and dashes into the woods, where he will stay for three or

four days. Every night his fellow-villagers will go

out in search parties to find him. They cry out Yi!

Kelulem (come on, Bear), and he answers with angry growls.

Usually they fail to find him, but he comes back at last himself.

He is met, and conducted to the ceremonial lodge,

and there in company with the rest of the Bears dances

solemnly his first appearance. Disappearance and reappearance

is as common a rite in initiation as stimulated

killing and resurrection, and has the same object. Both

are rites of transition, of passing from one to another." In

the Christian ceremonies the boy or girl puts away

childish things and puts on the new man, but instead of

putting on a bear-skin he puts on Christ. There is not so

much difference as may appear on the surface. To be identified

with your Totem is to be identified with the

sacred being who watches over your tribe, who has given

his life for your tribe; it is to be born again, to be washed

not only with water but with the Holy Spirit of all your

fellows. To be baptized into Christ ought to mean to be

regenerated in the Holy Spirit of all humanity; and no

doubt in cases it does mean this, but too often unfortunately

it has only amounted to a pretence of religious sanction given

to the meanest and bitterest quarrels of the Churches and

the States.

[1] Golden Bough, Section 2, III, p. 438.

This idea of a New Birth at initiation explains the

prevalent pagan custom of subjecting the initiates to serious

ordeals, often painful and even dangerous. If one

is to be born again, obviously one must be ready to face

death; the one thing cannot be without the other. One

must be able to endure pain, like the Red Indian braves;

to go long periods fasting and without food or drink,

like the choupan among the Western Inoits--who, wanders

for whole nights over the ice-fields under the moon, scantily

clothed and braving the intense cold; to overcome the

very fear of death and danger, like the Australian novices

who, at first terrified by the sound of the bull-

roarer and threats of fire and the knife, learn finally

to cast their fears away.[1] By so doing one puts off

the old childish things, and qualifies oneself by firmness

and courage to become a worthy member of the society

into which one is called.[2] The rules of social life are taught

--the duty to one's tribe, and to oneself, truth-

speaking, defence of women and children, the care of cattle,

the meaning of sex and marriage, and even the mysteries of

such religious ideas and rudimentary science as the tribe

possesses. And by so doing one really enters into a new

life. Things of the spiritual world begin to dawn. Julius

Firmicus, in describing the mysteries of the resurrection of

Osiris,[3] says that when the worshipers had satiated themselves

with lamentations over the death of the god then

the priest would go round anointing them with oil and

whispering, "Be of good cheer, O Neophytes of the new-

arisen God, for to us too from our pains shall come

salvation."[4]

[1] According to accounts of the Wiradthuri tribe of Western

Australia, in their initiations, the lads were frightened by a

large fire being lighted near them, and hearing the awful sound

of the bull-roarers, while they were told that Dhuramoolan was

about to burn them; the legend being that Dhuramoolan, a powerful

being, whose voice sounded like thunder, would take the boys into

the bush and instruct them in all the laws, traditions and

customs of the community. So he pretended that he always killed

the boys, cut them up, and burnt them to ashes, after which he

moulded the ashes into human shape, and restored them to life as

new beings. (See R. H. Matthews, "The Wiradthuri tribes," Journal

Anthrop. Inst., vol. xxv, 1896, pp. 297 sq.)

[2] See Catlin's North-American Indians, vol. i, for initiations

and ordeals among the Mandans.

[3] De Errore, c. 22.

[4] <gr Qarreite, mustai ton qeou seswsmenou,>

<gr Estai gar hmin ek ponwn swthria.>

It would seem that at some very early time in the history

of tribal and priestly initiations an attempt was made to

impress upon the neophytes the existence and over-

shadowing presence of spiritual and ghostly beings. Perhaps

the pains endured in the various ordeals, the long fastings,

the silences in the depth of the forests or on the mountains

or among the ice-floes, helped to rouse the visionary faculty.

The developments of this faculty among the black and

colored peoples--East-Indian, Burmese, African, American-

Indian, etc.--are well known. Miss Alice Fletcher, who

lived among the Omaha Indians for thirty years, gives

a most interesting account[1] of the general philosophy of

that people and their rites of initiation. "The Omahas

regard all animate and inanimate forms, all phenomena,

as pervaded by a common life, which was continuous with

and similar to the will-power they were conscious of in

themselves. This mysterious power in all things they

called Wakonda, and through it all things were related

to man and to each other. In the idea of the continuity

of life a relation was maintained between the seen and

the unseen, the dead and the living, and also between

the fragment of anything and its entirety."[2] Thus an

Omaha novice might at any time seek to obtain Wakonda

by what was called THE RITE OF THE VISION. He would go out

alone, fast, chant incantations, and finally fall into a

trance (much resembling what in modern times has been called

COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS) in which he would perceive the inner

relations of all things and the solidarity of the least object

with the rest of the universe.

[1] Summarized in Themis, pp. 68-71.

[2] A. C. Fletcher, The Significance of the Scalp-lock, Journal

of Anthropological Studies, xxvii (1897-8), p. 436.

Another rite in connection with initiation, and common all

over the pagan world--in Greece, America, Africa, Australia,

New Mexico, etc.--was the daubing of the novice all

over with clay or chalk or even dung, and then after a

while removing the same.[1] The novice must have looked

a sufficiently ugly and uncomfortable object in this state;

but later, when he was thoroughly WASHED, the ceremony

must have afforded a thrilling illustration of the idea of

a new birth, and one which would dwell in the minds of

the spectators. When the daubing was done as not infrequently

happened with white clay or gypsum, and the

ritual took place at night, it can easily be imagined

that the figures of young men and boys moving about in

the darkness would lend support to the idea that they

were spirits belonging to some intermediate world--who

had already passed through death and were now waiting

for their second birth on earth (or into the tribe) which

would be signalized by their thorough and ceremonial

washing. It will be remembered that Herodotus (viii)

gives a circumstantial account of how the Phocians in

a battle with the Thessalians smeared six hundred of their

bravest warriors with white clay so that, looking like

supernatural beings, and falling upon the Thessalians by

night, they terrified the latter and put them to instant

flight.

[1] See A. Lang's Myth, Ritual and Religion, i, 274 sq.

Such then--though only very scantily described--were some

of the rites of Initiation and Second Birth celebrated in the

old Pagan world. The subject is far too large for adequate

treatment within the present limits; but even so

we cannot but be struck by the appropriateness in many

cases of the teaching thus given to the young, the concreteness

of the illustrations, the effectiveness of the symbols

used, the dramatic character of the rites, the strong

enforcement of lessons on the nature and duties of the

life into which the candidates were about to enter. Christianity

followed on, and inherited these traditions, but

one feels that in its ceremonies of Baptism and Confirmation,

which of course correspond to the Pagan Initiations,

it falls short of the latter. Its ceremonies

(certainly as we have them to-day in Protestant countries)

are of a very milk-and-watery character; all allusion to

and teaching on the immensely important subject of Sex

is omitted, the details of social and industrial morality are

passed by, and instruction is limited to a few rather commonplace

lessons in general morality and religion.

It may be appropriate here, before leaving the subject of

the Second Birth, to inquire how it has come about that

this doctrine--so remote and metaphysical as it might

appear--has been taken up and embodied in their creeds

and rituals by quite PRIMITIVE people all over the world,

to such a degree indeed that it has ultimately been adopted

and built into the foundations of the latter and more

intellectual religions, like Hinduism, Mithraism, and the

Egyptian and Christian cults. I think the answer to

this question must be found in the now-familiar fact that

the earliest peoples felt themselves so much a part of

Nature and the animal and vegetable world around them

that (whenever they thought about these matters at all)

they never for a moment doubted that the things which

were happening all round them in the external world were

also happening within themselves. They saw the Sun,

overclouded and nigh to death in winter, come to its birth

again each year; they saw the Vegetation shoot forth

anew in spring--the revival of the spirit of the Earth;

the endless breeding of the Animals, the strange

transformations of Worms and Insects; the obviously new life

taken on by boys and girls at puberty; the same at a later

age when the novice was transformed into the medicine-

man--the choupan into the angakok among the Esquimaux,

the Dacotah youth into the wakan among the Red

Indians; and they felt in their sub-conscious way the

same everlasting forces of rebirth and transformation working

within themselves. In some of the Greek Mysteries

the newly admitted Initiates were fed for some time

after on milk only "as though we were being born

again." (See Sallustius, quoted by Gilbert Murray.) When

sub-conscious knowledge began to glimmer into direct

consciousness one of the first aspects (and no doubt one of

the truest) under which people saw life was just thus: as

a series of rebirths and transformations.[1] The most modern

science, I need hardly say, in biology as well as

in chemistry and the field of inorganic Nature, supports

that view. The savage in earliest times FELT the truth of

some things which we to-day are only beginning intellectually

to perceive and analyze.

[1] The fervent and widespread belief in animal metamorphoses

among early peoples is well known.

Christianity adopted and absorbed--as it was bound

to do--this world-wide doctrine of the second birth. Passing

over its physiological and biological applications, it

gave to it a fine spiritual significance--or rather it insisted

especially on its spiritual significance, which (as we have

seen) had been widely recognized before. Only--as I

suppose must happen with all local religions--it narrowed

the application and outlook of the doctrine down to a special

case--"As in Adam all die, so in CHRIST shall all be

made alive." The Universal Spirit which can give rebirth

and salvation to EVERY child of man to whom it

comes, was offered only under a very special form--that of

Jesus Christ.[1] In this respect it was no better than the

religions which preceded it. In some respects--that is,

where it was especially fanatical, blinkered, and hostile to

other sects--it was WORSE. But to those who perceive

that the Great Spirit may bring new birth and salvation

to some under the form of Osiris, equally well as to others

under the form of Jesus, or again to some under the form

of a Siberian totem-Bear equally as to others under the

form of Osiris, these questionings and narrowings fall

away as of no importance. We in this latter day can see

the main thing, namely that Christianity was and is just

one phase of a world-old religion, slowly perhaps expanding

its scope, but whose chief attitudes and orientations have been

the same through the centuries.

[1] The same happened with regard to another great Pagan doctrine

(to which I have just alluded), the doctrine of transformations

and metamorphoses; and whereas the pagans believed in these

things, as the common and possible heritage of EVERY man, the

Christians only allowed themselves to entertain the idea in the

special and unique instance of the Transfiguration of Christ.

Many other illustrations might be taken of the truth of

this view, but I will confine myself to two or three more.

There is the instance of the Eucharist and its exceedingly

widespread celebration (under very various forms) among

the pagans all over the world--as well as among Christians.

I have already said enough on this subject, and need not

delay over it. By partaking of the sacramental meal, even

in its wildest and crudest shapes, as in the mysteries

of Dionysus, one was identified with and united to the

god; in its milder and more spiritual aspects as in the Mithraic,

Egyptian, Hindu and Christian cults, one passed behind

the veil of maya and this ever-changing world, and entered

into the region of divine peace and power.[1]

[1] Baring Gould in his Orig. Relig. Belief, I. 401,

says:--"Among the ancient Hindus Soma was a chief deity; he is

called the Giver of Life and Health. . . . He became incarnate

among men, was taken by them and slain, and brayed in a mortar [a

god of corn and wine apparently]. But he rose in flame to heaven

to be 'the Benefactor of the World' and the 'Mediator between God

and Man!' Through communion with him in his sacrifice, man (who

partook of this god) has an assurance of immortality, for by that

sacrament he obtains union with his divinity."

Or again the doctrine of the Saviour. That also is one

on which I need not add much to what has been said already.

The number of pagan deities (mostly virgin-born and

done to death in some way or other in their efforts to

save mankind) is so great[1] as to be difficult to keep

account of. The god Krishna in India, the god Indra

in Nepaul and Thibet, spilt their blood for the salvation

of men; Buddha said, according to Max Muller,[2] "Let all

the sins that were in the world fall on me, that the world

may be delivered"; the Chinese Tien , the Holy One--"one

with God and existing with him from all eternity"--died

to save the world; the Egyptian Osiris was called Saviour,

so was Horus; so was the Persian Mithras; so was

the Greek Hercules who overcame Death though his body

was consumed in the burning garment of mortality, out of

which he rose into heaven. So also was the Phrygian

Attis called Saviour, and the Syrian Tammuz or Adonis

likewise--both of whom, as we have seen, were nailed

or tied to a tree, and afterwards rose again from their

biers, or coffins. Prometheus, the greatest and earliest

benefactor of the human race, was NAILED BY THE HANDS and

feet, and with arms extended, to the rocks of Mount

Caucasus. Bacchus or Dionysus, born of the virgin Semele

to be the Liberator of mankind (Dionysus Eleutherios

as he was called), was torn to pieces, not unlike Osiris. Even

in far Mexico Quetzalcoatl, the Saviour, was born of a virgin,

was tempted, and fasted forty days, was done to death, and

his second coming looked for so eagerly that (as is well known)

when Cortes appeared, the Mexicans, poor things, greeted

HIM as the returning god![3] In Peru and among the American

Indians, North and South of the Equator, similar legends

are, or were, to be found.

[1] See for a considerable list Doane's Bible Myths, ch. xx.

[2] Hist. Sanskrit Literature, p. 80.

[3] See Kingsborough, Mexican Antiquities, vol. vi.

Briefly sketched as all this is, it is enough to prove quite

abundantly that the doctrine of the Saviour is world-wide

and world-old, and that Christianity merely appropriated

the same and (as the other cults did) gave it a special

color. Probably the wide range of this doctrine would

have been far better and more generally known, had not the

Christian Church, all through, made the greatest of efforts

and taken the greatest precautions to extinguish and

snuff out all evidence of pagan claims on the subject.

There is much to show that the early Church took this

line with regard to pre-Christian saviours;[1] and in later times

the same policy is remarkably illustrated by the treatment

in the sixteenth century of the writings of Sahagun

the Spanish missionary--to whose work I have already referred.

Sahagun was a wonderfully broad-minded and

fine man who, while he did not conceal the barbarities

of the Aztec religion, was truthful enough to point out

redeeming traits in the manners and customs of the

people and some resemblances to Christian doctrine and

practice. This infuriated the bigoted Catholics of the

newly formed Mexican Church. They purloined the manuscripts

of Sahagun's Historia and scattered and hid them

about the country, and it was only after infinite labor

and an appeal to the Spanish Court that he got them

together again. Finally, at the age of eighty, having translated

them into Spanish (from the original Mexican) he

sent them in two big volumes home to Spain for safety;

but there almost immediately THEY DISAPPEARED, and could

not be found! It was only after TWO CENTURIES that they

ultimately turned up (1790) in a Convent at Tolosa in

Navarre. Lord Kingsborough published them in England

in 1830.

[1] See Tertullian's Apologia, c. 16; Ad Nationes, c. xii.

I have thus dwelt upon several of the main doctrines of

Christianity--namely, those of Sin and Sacrifice, the Eucharist,

the Saviour, the Second Birth, and Transfiguration--as

showing that they are by no means unique in

our religion, but were common to nearly all the religions

of the ancient world. The list might be much further extended,

but there is no need to delay over a subject which is

now very generally understood. I will, however, devote a

page or two to one instance, which I think is very remarkable,

and full of deep suggestion.

There is no doctrine in Christianity which is more

reverenced by the adherents of that religion, or held in higher

estimation, than that God sacrificed his only Son for the

salvation of the world; also that since the Son was not

only of like nature but of the SAME nature with the

Father, and equal to him as being the second Person of

the Divine Trinity, the sacrifice amounted to an immolation

of Himself for the good of mankind. The doctrine

is so mystical, so remote, and in a sense so absurd

and impossible, that it has been a favorite mark through

the centuries for the ridicule of the scoffers and enemies

of the Church; and here, it might easily be thought, is a

belief which--whether it be considered glorious or whether

contemptible--is at any rate unique, and peculiar to that

Church.

And yet the extraordinary fact is that a similar belief

ranges all through the ancient religions, and can be traced

back to the earliest times. The word host which is used

in the Catholic Mass for the bread and wine on the Altar,

supposed to be the transubstantiated body and blood of

Christ, is from the Latin Hostia which the dictionary

interprets as "an animal slain in sacrifice, a sin-offering." It

takes us far far back to the Totem stage of folk-life,

when the tribe, as I have already explained, crowned a

victim-bull or bear or other animal with flowers, and

honoring it with every offering of food and worship,

sacrificed the victim to the Totem spirit of the tribe, and

consumed it in an Eucharistic feast--the medicine-man

or priest who conducted the ritual wearing a skin of the

same beast as a sign that he represented the Totem-

divinity, taking part in the sacrifice of 'himself to himself.'

It reminds us of the Khonds of Bengal sacrificing their

meriahs crowned and decorated as gods and goddesses;

of the Aztecs doing the same; of Quetzalcoatl pricking

his elbows and fingers so as to draw blood, which he offered

on his own altar; or of Odin hanging by his own desire upon

a tree. "I know I was hanged upon a tree shaken by

the winds for nine long nights. I was transfixed by

a spear; I was moved to Odin, myself to myself." And

so on. The instances are endless. "I am the oblation,"

says the Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita,[1] "I am the

sacrifice, I the ancestral offering." "In the truly orthodox

conception of sacrifice," says Elie Reclus,[2] "the consecrated

offering, be it man, woman or virgin, lamb or

heifer, cock or dove, represents tHE DEITY HIMSELF. . . .

Brahma is the 'imperishable sacrifice'; Indra, Soma, Hari and

the other gods, became incarnate in animals to the

sole end that they might be immolated. Perusha, the

Universal Being, caused himself to be slain by the Immortals,

and from his substance were born the birds of the

air, wild and domestic animals, the offerings of butter

and curds. The world, declared the Rishis, is a series

of sacrifices disclosing other sacrifices. To stop them

would be to suspend the life of Nature. The god Siva, to

whom the Tipperahs of Bengal are supposed to have sacrificed

as many as a thousand human victims a year, said to the

Brahamins: 'It is I that am the actual offering; it is I that

you butcher upon my altars.' "

[1] Ch. ix, v. 16.

[2] Primitive Folk, ch. vi.

It was in allusion to this doctrine that R. W. Emerson,

paraphrasing the Katha-Upanishad, wrote that immortal verse

of his:-

     If the red slayer thinks he slays,

          Or the slain thinks he is slain,

     They know not well the subtle ways

          I take, and pass, and turn again.

I say it is an astonishing thing to think and realize that

this profound and mystic doctrine of the eternal sacrifice

of Himself, ordained by the Great Spirit for the creation

and salvation of the world--a doctrine which has attracted

and fascinated many of the great thinkers and nobler minds

of Europe, which has also inspired the religious teachings

of the Indian sages and to a less philosophical degree the

writings of the Christian Saints--should have been seized

in its general outline and essence by rude and primitive

people before the dawn of history, and embodied in their

rites and ceremonials. What is the explanation of this fact?

It is very puzzling. The whole subject is puzzling. The

world-wide adoption of similar creeds and rituals (and,

we may add, legends and fairy tales) among early peoples,

and in far-sundered places and times is so remarkable

that it has given the students of these subjects

'furiously to think'[1]--yet for the most part without great

success in the way of finding a solution. The supposition

that (1) the creed, rite or legend in question has

sprung up, so to speak, accidentally, in one place, and

then has travelled (owing to some inherent plausibility)

over the rest of the world, is of course one that commends

itself readily at first; but on closer examination the

practical difficulties it presents are certainly very great.

These include the migrations of customs and myths in quite

early ages of the earth across trackless oceans and continents,

and between races and peoples absolutely incapable

of understanding each other. And if to avoid

these difficulties it is assumed that the present human

race all proceeds from one original stock which radiating

from one centre--say in South-Eastern Asia[2]--overspread the

world, carrying its rites and customs with it, why, then we

are compelled to face the difficulty of supposing this radiation

to have taken place at an enormous time ago (the continents

being then all more or less conjoined) and at a period

when it is doubtful if any religious rites and customs

at all existed; not to mention the further difficulty of

supposing all the four or five hundred languages now existing

to be descended from one common source. The far

tradition of the Island of Atlantis seems to afford a possible

explanation of the community of rites and customs between

the Old and New World, and this without assuming

in any way that Atlantis (if it existed) was the

original and SOLE cradle of the human race.[3] Anyhow it

is clear that these origins of human culture must be of

extreme antiquity, and that it would not be wise to be

put off the track of the investigation of a possible common

source merely by that fact of antiquity.

[1] See A. Lang's Myth, Ritual and Religion, vol. ii.

[2] See Hastings, Encycl. Religion and Ethics, art. "Ethnology."

[3] E. J. Payne, History of the New World called America (vol. i,

p. 93) says: "It is certain that Europe and America once formed a

single continent," but inroads of the sea "left a vast island or

peninsula stretching from Iceland to the Azores--which gradually

disappeared." Also he speaks (i. 93) of the "Miocene Bridge"

between Siberia and the New World.

A second supposition, however, is (2) that the natural

psychological evolution of the human mind has in the various

times and climes led folk of the most diverse surroundings

and heredity--and perhaps even sprung from separate

anthropoid stocks--to develop their social and religious

ideas along the same general lines--and that even to the

extent of exhibiting at times a remarkable similarity in

minute details. This is a theory which commends itself

greatly to a deeper and more philosophical consideration;

but it brings us up point-blank against another

most difficult question (which we have already raised),

namely, how to account for extremely rude and primitive

peoples in the far past, and on the very borderland

of the animal life, having been SUSCEPTIBLE to the germs

of great religious ideas (such as we have mentioned) and

having been instinctively--though not of course by any process

of conscious reasoning--moved to express them in

symbols and rites and ceremonials, and (later no doubt)

in myths and legends, which satisfied their FEELINGS and

sense of fitness--though they may not have known WHY--

and afterwards were capable of being taken up and embodied

in the great philosophical religions.

This difficulty almost compels us to a view of human

knowledge which has found supporters among some able

thinkers--the view, namely, that a vast store of knowledge

is already contained in the subconscious mind of man

(and the animals) and only needs the provocation of outer

experience to bring it to the surface; and that in the second

stage of human psychology this process of crude and

piecemeal externalization is taking place, in preparation for

the final or third stage in which the knowledge will be

re-absorbed and become direct and intuitional on a high and

harmonious plane--something like the present intuition of

the animals as we perceive it on the animal plane. However

this general subject is one on which I shall touch

again, and I do not propose to dwell on it at any length now.

There is a third alternative theory (3)--a combination

of (1) and (2)--namely, that if one accepts (2) and the

idea that at any given stage of human development there

is a PREDISPOSITION to certain symbols and rites belonging to

that stage, then it is much more easy to accept theory (1)

as an important factor in the spread of such symbols

and rites; for clearly, then, the smallest germ of a custom

or practice, transported from one country or people

to another at the right time, would be sufficient to wake

the development or growth in question and stimulate it into

activity. It will be seen, therefore, that the important point

towards the solution of this whole puzzling question is the

discussion, of theory (2)--and to this theory, as illustrated

by the world-wide myth of the Golden Age, I will now turn.