IX. MYTH OF THE GOLDEN AGE

The tradition of a "Golden Age" is widespread over the

world, and it is not necessary to go at any length into the

story of the Garden of Eden and the other legends which in

almost every country illustrate this tradition. Without

indulging in sentiment on the subject we may hold it not unlikely

that the tradition is justified by the remembrance,

among the people of every race, of a pre-civilization period

of comparative harmony and happiness when two things,

which to-day we perceive to be the prolific causes of discord

and misery, were absent or only weakly developed--namely,

PROPERTY and SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.[1]

[1] For a fuller working out of this, see Civilisation: its Cause

and Cure, by E. Carpenter, ch. i.

During the first century B.C. there was a great spread

of Messianic Ideas over the Roman world, and Virgil's

4th Eclogue, commonly called the Messianic Eclogue,

reflects very clearly this state of the public mind. The expected

babe in the poem was to be the son of Octavian (Augustus)

the first Roman emperor, and a messianic halo surrounded

it in Virgil's verse. Unfortunately it turned out to

be a GIRL! However there is little doubt that Virgil did--

in that very sad age of the world, an age of "misery

and massacre," and in common with thousands of others

--look for the coming of a great 'redeemer.' It was only

a few years earlier--about B.C. 70--that the great revolt

of the shamefully maltreated Roman slaves occurred,

and that in revenge six thousand prisoners from Spartacus'

army were nailed on crosses all the way from Rome to

Capua (150 miles). But long before this Hesiod had

recorded a past Golden Age when life had been gracious

in communal fraternity and joyful in peace, when human

beings and animals spoke the same language, when death

had followed on sleep, without old age or disease, and

after death men had moved as good daimones or genii over

the lands. Pindar, three hundred years after Hesiod, had

confirmed the existence of the Islands of the Blest, where

the good led a blameless, tearless, life. Plato the same,[1]

with further references to the fabled island of Atlantis;

the Egyptians believed in a former golden age under

the god R<a^> to which they looked back with regret and

envy; the Persians had a garden of Eden similar to

that of the Hebrews; the Greeks a garden of the Hesperides,

in which dwelt the serpent whose head was ultimately

crushed beneath the heel of Hercules; and so on.

The references to a supposed far-back state of peace and

happiness are indeed numerous.

[1] See arts. by Margaret Scholes, Socialist Review, Nov. and

Dec. 1912.

So much so that latterly, and partly to explain their prevalence,

a theory has been advanced which may be

worth while mentioning. It is called the "Theory of

intra-uterine Blessedness," and, remote as it may at first

appear, it certainly has some claim for attention. The

theory is that in the minds of mature people there still remain

certain vague memories of their pre-natal days in

the maternal womb--memories of a life which, though full

of growing vigor and vitality, was yet at that time

one of absolute harmony with the surroundings, and of

perfect peace and contentment, spent within the body of

the mother--the embryo indeed standing in the same

relation to the mother as St. Paul says WE stand to God,

"IN whom we live and move and have our being"; and that

these vague memories of the intra-uterine life in the individual

are referred back by the mature mind to a past

age in the life of the RACE. Though it would not be easy

at present to positively confirm this theory, yet one may say

that it is neither improbable nor unworthy of consideration;

also that it bears a certain likeness to the former

ones about the Eden-gardens, etc. The well-known parallelism

of the Individual history with the Race-history,

the "recapitulation" by the embryo of the development of

the race, does in fact afford an additional argument for its

favorable reception.

These considerations, and what we have said so often in

the foregoing chapters about the unity of the Animals

(and Early Man) with Nature, and their instinctive and age-long

adjustment to the conditions of the world around them,

bring us up hard and fast against the following conclusions,

which I think we shall find difficult to avoid.

We all recognize the extraordinary grace and beauty,

in their different ways, of the (wild) animals; and not

only their beauty but the extreme fitness of their actions

and habits to their surroundings--their subtle and penetrating

Intelligence in fact. Only we do not generally use

the word "Intelligence." We use another word (Instinct)

--and rightly perhaps, because their actions are plainly not

the result of definite self-conscious reasoning, such as we use,

carried out by each individual; but are (as has been abundantly

proved by Samuel Butler and others) the systematic

expression of experiences gathered up and sorted

out and handed down from generation to generation in

the bosom of the race--an Intelligence in fact, or Insight,

of larger subtler scope than the other, and belonging

to the tribal or racial Being rather than to

the isolated individual--a super-consciousness in fact,

ramifying afar in space and time.

But if we allow (as we must) this unity and perfection

of nature, and this somewhat cosmic character of the

mind, to exist among the Animals, we can hardly refuse

to believe that there must have been a period when Man,

too, hardly as yet differentiated from them, did himself possess

these same qualities--perhaps even in greater degree than

the animals--of grace and beauty of body, perfection

of movement and action, instinctive perception and knowledge

(of course in limited spheres); and a period when

he possessed above all a sense of unity with his fellows

and with surrounding Nature which became the ground

of a common consciousness between himself and his tribe,

similar to that which Maeterlinck, in the case of the

Bees, calls the Spirit of the Hive.[1] It would be difficult,

nay impossible, to suppose that human beings on their

first appearance formed an entire exception in the process

of evolution, or that they were completely lacking

in the very graces and faculties which we so admire

in the animals--only of course we see that (LIKE the animals)

they would not be SELF-conscious in these matters, and what

perception they had of their relations to each other or to

the world around them would be largely inarticulate and

SUB-conscious--though none the less real for that.

[1] See The Life of the Bee by Maurice Maeterlinck; and for

numerous similar cases among other animals, P. Kropotkin's Mutual

Aid: a factor in Evolution.

Let us then grant this preliminary assumption--and it

clearly is not a large or hazardous one--and what follows?

It follows--since to-day discord is the rule, and

Man has certainly lost the grace, both physical and mental,

of the animals--that at some period a break must

have occurred in the evolution-process, a discontinuity--

similar perhaps to that which occurs in the life of a

child at the moment when it is born into the world. Humanity

took a new departure; but a departure which for the

moment was signalized as a LOSS--the loss of its former

harmony and self-adjustment. And the cause or accompaniment

of this change was the growth of Self-consciousness.

Into the general consciousness of the tribe (in relation

to its environment) which in fact had constituted the mentality

of the animals and of man up to this stage, there

now was intruded another kind of consciousness, a

consciousness centering round each little individual self

and concerned almost entirely with the interests of

the latter. Here was evidently a threat to the continuance

of the former happy conditions. It was like the appearance

of innumerable little ulcers in a human body--a

menace which if continued would inevitably lead to the

break-up of the body. It meant loss of tribal harmony and

nature-adjustment. It meant instead of unity a myriad

conflicting centres; it meant alienation from the spirit

of the tribe, the separation of man from man, discord,

recrimination, and the fatal unfolding of the sense of sin.

The process symbolized itself in the legend of the Fall. Man

ate of the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Sometimes people wonder why knowledge of any kind

--and especially the knowledge of good and evil--should

have brought a curse. But the reason is obvious. Into,

the placid and harmonious life of the animal and human

tribes fulfilling their days in obedience to the slow evolutions

and age-long mandates of nature, Self-consciousness

broke with its inconvenient and impossible query:

"How do these arrangements suit ME? Are they good

for me, are they evil for me? I want to know. I

WILL KNOW!" Evidently knowledge (such knowledge as we

understand by the word) only began, and could only

begin, by queries relating to the little local self. There

was no other way for it to begin. Knowledge and self-

consciousness were born, as twins, together. Knowledge

therefore meant Sin[1]; for self-consciousness meant sin

(and it means sin to-day). Sin is Separation. That is

probably (though disputed) the etymology of the word--

that which sunders.[2] The essence of sin is one's separation

from the whole (the tribe or the god) of which one is a

part. And knowledge--which separates subject from object,

and in its inception is necessarily occupied with the

'good and evil' of the little local self, is the great engine

of this separation. [Mark! I say nothing AGAINST this association

of Self-consciousness with 'Sin' (so-called) and

'Knowledge' (so-called). The growth of all three together

is an absolutely necessary part of human evolution,

and to rail against it would be absurd. But we

may as well open our eyes and see the fact straight instead of

blinking it.] The culmination of the process and the

fulfilment of the 'curse' we may watch to-day in the

towering expansion of the self-conscious individualized

Intellect--science as the handmaid of human Greed devastating

the habitable world and destroying its unworthy

civilization. And the process must go on--necessarily

must go on--until Self-consciousness, ceasing its vain

quest (vain in both senses) for the separate domination

of life, surrenders itself back again into the arms

of the Mother-consciousness from which it originally sprang

--surrenders itself back, not to be merged in nonentity, but

to be affiliated in loving dependence on and harmony with the

cosmic life.

[1] Compare also other myths, like Cupid and Psyche, Lohengrin

etc., in which a fatal curiosity leads to tragedy.

[2] German Sunde, sin, and sonder, separated; Dutch zonde, sin;

Latin sons, guilty. Not unlikely that the German root Suhn,

expiation, is connected; Suhn-bock, a scape-goat.

All this I have dealt with in far more detail in Civilization:

its Cause and Cure, and in The Art of Creation; but I have

only repeated the outline of it as above, because some such

outline is necessary for the proper ordering and understanding

of the points which follow.

We are not concerned now with the ultimate effects of

the 'Fall' of Man or with the present-day fulfilment of

the Eden-curse. What we want to understand is how the

'Fall' into self-consciousness led to that great panorama

of Ritual and Religion which we have very briefly described

and summarized in the preceding chapters of

this book. We want for the present to fix our attention

on the COMMENCEMENT of that process by which man lapsed

away from his living community with Nature and his

fellows into the desert of discord and toil, while the angels

of the flaming sword closed the gates of Paradise behind him.

It is evident I think that in that 'golden' stage when man

was simply the crown and perfection of the animals--

and it is hardly possible to refuse the belief in such a

stage--he possessed in reality all the essentials of Religion.[1]

It is not necessary to sentimentalize over him; he was

probably raw and crude in his lusts of hunger and of sex;

he was certainly ignorant and superstitious; he loved

fighting with and persecuting 'enemies' (which things of

course all religions to-day--except perhaps the Buddhist

--love to do); he was dominated often by unreasoning Fear,

and was consequently cruel. Yet he was full of that

Faith which the animals have to such an admirable degree

--unhesitating faith in the inner promptings of his OWN

nature; he had the joy which comes of abounding vitality,

springing up like a fountain whose outlet is free and

unhindered; he rejoiced in an untroubled and unbroken

sense of unity with his Tribe, and in elaborate social and

friendly institutions within its borders; he had a marvelous

sense-acuteness towards Nature and a gift in that direction

verging towards "second-sight"; strengthened by a

conviction--which had never become CONSCIOUS because

it had never been QUESTIONED-- of his own personal relation

to the things outside him, the Earth, the Sky, the Vegetation,

the Animals. Of such a Man we get glimpses in

the far past--though indeed only glimpses, for the simple

reason that all our knowledge of him comes through civilized

channels; and wherever civilization has touched these

early peoples it has already withered and corrupted them,

even before it has had the sense to properly observe them.

It is sufficient, however, just to mention peoples like some

of the early Pacific Islanders, the Zulus and Kafirs of

South Africa, the Fans of the Congo Region (of whom

Winwood Reade[2] speaks so highly), some of the Malaysian

and Himalayan tribes, the primitive Chinese, and even the

evidence with regard to the neolithic peoples of Europe,[3]

in order to show what I mean.

[1] See S. Reinach, Cults, Myths, etc., introduction: "The

primitive life of humanity, in so far as it is not purely animal,

is religious. Religion is the parent stem which has thrown off,

one by one, art, agriculture, law, morality, politics, etc."

[2] Savage Africa, ch. xxxvii.

[3] See Kropotkin's Mutual Aid, ch. iii.

Perhaps one of the best ideas of the gulf of difference

between the semi-civilized and the quite primal man is given

by A. R. Wallace in his Life (Vol. i, p. 288): "A most

unexpected sensation of surprise and delight was my first

meeting and living with man in a state of nature with

absolute uncontaminated savages! This was on the

Uaupes river. . . . They were all going about their own work

or pleasure, which had nothing to do with the white men

or their ways; they walked with the free step of the

independent forest-dweller . . . original and self-sustaining

as the wild animals of the forests, absolutely independent

of civilization . . . living their own lives in their

own way, as they had done for countless generations

before America was discovered. Indeed the true denizen

of the Amazonian forests, like the forest itself, is unique and

not to be forgotten." Elsewhere[3] Wallace speaks of the

quiet, good-natured, inoffensive character of these

copper-colored peoples, and of their quickness of hand and

skill, and continues: "their figures are generally superb;

and I have never felt so much pleasure in gazing at the

finest statue as at these living illustrations of the beauty of

the human form."

[3] Travels on the Amazon (1853), ch. xvii.

Though some of the peoples just mentioned may be said

to belong to different grades or stages of human evolution

and physically some no doubt were far superior

to others, yet they mostly exhibit this simple grace of

the bodily and mental organism, as well as that closeness of

tribal solidarity of which I have spoken. The immense

antiquity, of the clan organization, as shown by investigations

into early marriage, points to the latter conclusion.

Travellers among Bushmen, Hottentots, Fuegians, Esquimaux,

Papuans and other peoples--peoples who have been

pushed aside into unfavorable areas by the invasion of more

warlike and better-equipped races, and who have suffered

physically in consequence--confirm this. Kropotkin, speaking

of the Hottentots, quotes the German author P. Kolben

who travelled among them in 1275 or so. "He

knew the Hottentots well and did not pass by their defects

in silence, but could not praise their tribal morality

highly enough. Their word is sacred, he wrote, they know

nothing of the corruption and faithless arts of Europe. They

live in great tranquillity and are seldom at war with their

neighbors, and are all kindness and goodwill to one

another."[1] Kropotkin further says: "Let me remark that

when Kolben says 'they are certainly the most friendly,

the most liberal and the most benevolent people to one

another that ever appeared on the earth' he wrote a sentence

which has continually appeared since in the description

of savages. When first meeting with primitive races,

the Europeans usually make a caricature of their

life; but when an intelligent man has stayed among them

for a longer time he generally describes them as the

'kindest' or the 'gentlest' race on the earth. These

very same words have been applied to the Ostyaks, the

Samoyedes, the Eskimos, the Dyaks, the Aleuts, the

Papuans, and so on, by the highest authorities. I also

remember having read them applied to the Tunguses,

the Tchuktchis, the Sioux, and several others. The very

frequency of that high commendation already speaks volumes

in itself."[2]

[1] P. Kropotkin, Mutual Aid, p. 90. W. J. Solias also speaks in

terms of the highest praise of the Bushmen--"their energy,

patience, courage, loyalty, affection, good manners and artistic

sense" (Ancient Hunters, 1915, p. 425).

[2] Ibid, p. 91.

Many of the tribes, like the Aleuts, Eskimos, Dyaks,

Papuans, Fuegians, etc., are themselves in the Neolithic

stage of culture--though for the reason given above probably

degenerated physically from the standard of their

neolithic ancestors; and so the conclusion is forced upon

one that there must have been an IMMENSE PERIOD,[1] prior

to the first beginnings of 'civilization,' in which the

human tribes in general led a peaceful and friendly life

on the earth, comparatively little broken up by dissensions,

in close contact with Nature and in that degree of

sympathy with and understanding of the Animals which led to

the establishment of the Totem system. Though it would

be absurd to credit these tribes with any great degree

of comfort and well-being according to our modern

standards, yet we may well suppose that the memory of

this long period lingered on for generations and generations

and was ultimately idealized into the Golden Age,

in contrast to the succeeding period of everlasting warfare,

rancor and strife, which came in with the growth of Property

with its greeds and jealousies, and the accentuation of

Self-consciousness with all its vanities and

ambitions.

[1] See for estimates of periods ch. xiv; also, for the

peacefulness of these early peoples, Havelock Ellis on "The

Origin of War," where he says "We do not find the WEAPONS of

warfare or the WOUNDS of warfare among these Palaeolithic remains

. . . it was with civilization that the art of killing developed,

i. e. within the last 10,000 or 12,000 years when Neolithic men

(who became our ancestors) were just arriving."

I say that each tribe at this early stage of development

had within it the ESSENTIALS of what we call Religion--

namely a bedrock sense of its community with Nature, and of

the Common life among its members--a sense so intimate

and fundamental that it was hardly aware of itself (any

more than the fish is aware of the sea in which it lives),

but yet was really the matrix of tribal thought and the

spring of tribal action. It was this sense of unity which

was destined by the growth of SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS to come to light

and evidence in the shape of all manner of rituals and

ceremonials; and by the growth of the IMAGINATIVE INTELLECT to

embody itself in the figures and forms of all manner of deities.

Let us examine into this a little more closely. A lark

soaring in the eye of the sun, and singing rapt between

its "heaven and home" realizes no doubt in actual fact

all that those two words mean to us; yet its realization

is quite subconscious. It does not define its own experience:

it FEELS but it does not THINK. In order to come to

the stage of THINKING it would perhaps be necessary that

the lark should be exiled from the earth and the sky, and

confined in a cage. Early Man FELT the great truths and

realities of Life--often I believe more purely than we do

--but he could not give form to his experience. THAT

stage came when he began to lose touch with these realities;

and it showed itself in rites and ceremonials. The inbreak

of self-consciousness brought OUT the facts of his inner

life into ritualistic and afterwards into intellectual forms.

Let me give examples. For a long time the Tribe is

all in all; the individual is completely subject to the

'Spirit of the Hive'; he does not even THINK of contravening

it. Then the day comes when self-interest, as

apart from the Tribe, becomes sufficiently strong to drive

him against some tribal custom. He breaks the tabu;

he eats the forbidden apple; he sins against the tribe,

and is cast out. Suddenly he finds himself an exile,

lonely, condemned and deserted. A horrible sense of distress

seizes him--something of which he had no experience

before. He tries to think about it all, to understand the

situation, but is dazed and cannot arrive at any conclusion.

His one NECESSITY is Reconciliation, Atonement. He finds he

cannot LIVE outside of and alienated from his tribe. He

makes a Sacrifice, an offering to his fellows, as a seal of

sincerity--an offering of his own bodily suffering or precious

blood, or the blood of some food-animal, or some valuable

gift or other--if only he may be allowed to return. The

offering is accepted. The ritual is performed; and he

is received back. I have already spoken of this perfectly

natural evolution of the twin-ideas of Sin and Sacrifice,

so I need not enlarge upon the subject. But two things

we may note here: (1) that the ritual, being so concrete

(and often severe), graves itself on the minds of those

concerned, and expresses the feelings of the tribe, with

an intensity and sharpness of outline which no words

could rival, and (2) that such rituals may have, and probably

did, come into use even while language itself was in an infantile

condition and incapable of dealing with the psychological

situation except by symbols. They, the rituals,

were the first effort of the primitive mind to get beyond,

subconscious feeling and emerge into a world of forms

and definite thought.

Let us carry the particular instance, given above, a

stage farther, even to the confines of abstract Thought

and Philosophy. I have spoken of "The Spirit of the

Hive" as if the term were applicable to the Human as

well as to the Bee tribe. The individual bee obviously

has never THOUGHT about that 'Spirit,' nor mentally understood

what Maeterlinck means by it; and yet in terms

of actual experience it is an intense reality to the bee

(ordaining for instance on some fateful day the slaughter

of all the drones), controlling bee-movements and bee-

morality generally. The individual tribesman similarly

steeped in the age-long human life of his fellows has never

thought of the Tribe as an ordaining being or Spirit, separate

from himself--TILL that day when he is exiled and outcast

from it. THEN he sees himself and the tribe as two opposing

beings, himself of course an Intelligence or Spirit in his own

limited degree, the Tribe as a much greater Intelligence

or Spirit, standing against and over him. From that day

the conception of a god arises on him. It may be only

a totem-god--a divine Grizzly-Bear or what not--but still

a god or supernatural Presence, embodied in the life of

the tribe. This is what Sin has taught him.[1] This is

what Fear, founded on self-consciousness, has revealed to

him. The revelation may be true, or it may be fallacious (I

do not prejudge it); but there it is--the beginning of that

long series of human evolutions which we call Religion.

[1] It is to be noted, in that charming idyll of the Eden garden,

that it is only AFTER eating of the forbidden fruit that Adam and

Eve perceive the Lord God walking in the garden, and converse

with him (Genesis iii. 8).

[For when the human mind has reached that stage of

consciousness in which each man realizes his own 'self' as

a rational and consistent being, "looking before and

after," then, as I have said already, the mind projects

on the background of Nature similarly rational Presences

which we may call 'Gods'; and at that stage 'Religion'

begins. Before that, when the mind is quite unformed

and dream-like, and consists chiefly of broken and scattered

rays, and when distinct self-consciousness is hardly

yet developed, then the presences imagined in Nature are

merely flickering and intermittent phantoms, and their

propitiation and placation comes more properly under, the

head of 'Magic.']

So much for the genesis of the religious ideas of Sin

and Sacrifice, and the rites connected with these ideas--

their genesis through the in-break of self-consciousness

upon the corporate SUB-consciousness of the life of the

Community. But an exactly similar process may be observed

in the case of the other religious ideas.

I spoke of the doctrine of the SECOND BIRTH, and the rites

connected with it both in Paganism and in Christianity.

There is much to show that among quite primitive peoples

there is less of shrinking from death and more of certainty

about a continued life after death than we generally find

among more intellectual and civilized folk. It is, or has

been, quite, common among many tribes for the old and

decrepit, who are becoming a burden to their fellows,

to offer themselves for happy dispatch, and to take willing

part in the ceremonial preparations for their own extinction;

and this readiness is encouraged by their na<i:>ve and

untroubled belief in a speedy transference to "happy

hunting-grounds" beyond the grave. The truth is that

when, as in such cases, the tribal life is very whole and

unbroken--each individual identifying himself completely with

the tribe--the idea of the individual's being dropped out

at death, and left behind by the tribe, hardly arises. The

individual is the tribe, has no other existence. The

tribe goes on, living a life which is eternal, and only

changes its hunting-grounds; and the individual, identified

with the tribe, feels in some subconscious way the same about

himself.

But when one member has broken faith with the tribe,

when he has sinned against it and become an outcast--

ah! then the terrors of death and extinction loom large

upon him. "The wages of sin is death." There comes

a period in the evolution of tribal life when the primitive

bonds are loosening, when the tendency towards SELF-will and

SELF-determination (so necessary of course in the long

run for the evolution of humanity) becomes a real danger

to the tribe, and a terror to the wise men and elders of the

community. It is seen that the children inherit this

tendency--even from their infancy. They are no longer

mere animals, easily herded; it seems that they are born

in sin--or at least in ignorance and neglect of their tribal

life and calling. The only cure is that they MUST BE BORN

AGAIN. They must deliberately and of set purpose be adopted

into the tribe, and be made to realize, even severely,

in their own persons what is happening. They must go

through the initiations necessary to impress this upon them.

Thus a whole series of solemn rites spring up, different

no doubt in every locality, but all having the same object

and purpose. [And one can understand how the

necessity of such initiations and second birth may easily

have been itself felt in every race, at some stage of

its evolution--and THAT quite as a spontaneous growth, and

independently of any contagion of example caught from

other races.]

The same may be said about the world-wide practice of

the Eucharist. No more effective method exists for

impressing on the members of a body their community

of life with each other, and causing them to forget their

jangling self-interests, than to hold a feast in common.

It is a method which has been honored in all ages as

well as to-day. But when the flesh partaken of at the feast

is that of the Totem--the guardian and presiding genius of

the tribe--or perhaps of one of its chief food-animals--

then clearly the feast takes on a holy and solemn character.

It becomes a sacrament of unity--of the unity of all with

the tribe, and with each other. Self-interests and self-

consciousness are for the time submerged, and the common

life asserts itself; but here again we see that a

custom like this would not come into being as a deliberate

rite UNTIL self-consciousness and the divisions consequent

thereon had grown to be an obvious evil. The herd-

animals (cows, sheep, and so forth) do not have Eucharists,

simply because they are sensible enough to feed along the

same pastures without quarrelling over the richest tufts

of grass.

When the flesh partaken of (either actually or symbolically)

is not that of a divinized animal, but the flesh

of a human-formed god--as in the mysteries of Dionysus

or Osiris or Christ--then we are led to suspect (and of course

this theory is widely held and supported) that the rites

date from a very far-back period when a human

being, as representative of the tribe, was actually slain,

dismembered and partly devoured; though as time went

on, the rite gradually became glossed over and mitigated

into a love-communion through the sharing of bread and wine.

It is curious anyhow that the dismemberment or division

into fragments of the body of a god (as in the case of Dionysus,

Osiris, Attis, Praj<a'>pati and others) should be so

frequent a tenet of the old religions, and so commonly associated

with a love-feast of reconciliation and resurrection.

It may be fairly interpreted as a symbol of Nature-dismemberment

in Winter and resurrection in Spring; but we must

also not forget that it may (and indeed must) have stood

as an allegory of TRIBAL dismemberment and reconciliation--

the tribe, conceived of as a divinity, having thus suffered

and died through the inbreak of sin and the self-motive, and

risen again into wholeness by the redemption of

love and sacrifice. Whatever view the rank and file of the

tribe may have taken of the matter, I think it is incontestable

that the more thoughtful regarded these rites as full of

mystic and spiritual meaning. It is of the nature, as

I have said before, of these early symbols and ceremonies

that they held so many meanings in solution; and it is

this fact which gave them a poetic or creative quality,

and their great hold upon the public mind.

I use the word "tribe" in many places here as a matter

of convenience; not forgetting however that in some

cases "clan" might be more appropriate, as referring to a

section of a tribe; or "people" or "folk" as referring

to unions of SEVERAL tribes. It is impossible of course to

follow out all the gradations of organization from tribal up

to national life; but it may be remembered that while

animal totems prevail as a rule in the earlier stages, human-

formed gods become more conspicuous in the later developments.

All through, the practice of the Eucharist goes

on, in varying forms adapting itself to the surrounding

conditions; and where in the later societies a religion

like Mithraism or Christianity includes people of very

various race, the Rite loses quite naturally its tribal

significance and becomes a celebration of allegiance to a

particular god--of unity within a special Church, in fact.

Ultimately it may become--as for a brief moment in the history of

the early Christians it seemed likely to do--a celebration of

allegiance to all Humanity, irrespective of race or creed

or color of skin or of mind: though unfortunately that day

seems still far distant and remains yet unrealized. It

must not be overlooked, however, that the religion of

the Persian B<a^>b, first promulgated in 1845 to 1850--and

a subject I shall deal with presently--had as a matter of

fact this all embracing and universal scope.

To return to the Golden Age or Garden of Eden. Our

conclusion seems to be that there really was such a period

of comparative harmony in human life--to which later

generations were justified in looking back, and looking back

with regret. It corresponded in the psychology of human

Evolution to stage One. The second stage was

that of the Fall; and so one is inevitably led to the

conjecture and the hope that a third stage will redeem the

earth and its inhabitants to a condition of comparative

blessedness.Harvest Fields 373 Dundas St. Woodstock Ont. Canada