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,p^

EPILEGOMENA TO THE STUDY OF GREEK RELIGION

CAMBRIDGE IJNIVEESITY PEESS

C. F.

CLAY, Manager

LONDON

FETTER LANE.

E.G. 4

NEW YORK THE MACMILLAN

:

CO.

BOMBAY
CALCUTTA

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MACMIILAN AND

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CO. OP CANADA, Ltd. MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA
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LEGOMENA TO THE ^ OF GEEEK EELIGION

BY

JANE ELLEN HARRISON

Hon. D.Litt. (Durham), Hon. LL.D. (Aberdeen)
fellow and lecturer of newnham college, cambridge

author of
Prolegomena, Themis, Alpha arid Omega,
etc.

CAMBRIDGE AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS

1921

<

TO

HOPE
IN EEMEMBRANCE OF SPANISH NIGHTS AND DAYS

[^^ JU.

edJaa. ^<i

J 5^51^

PREFACE
X HESE
Epilegomena are the sequel to

my two books
many years'

Prolegomena and Themis. I have tried here to summarize as briefly as possible the results of

work on the

origins of

Greek Religion, and to indicate

the bearing of these results on religious questions of

to-day.

For the new material offered

to the psychological

am

largely indebted

work

of

Jung and Freud and to

the

less well

known

writings of the greatest of Russian

philosophers Vladimir Soloviov.

J.

E. H.

Newnham

College. July 29, 1921.

CONTENjTS
PAGE
I

Primitive Ritual

II

Primitive Theology

....
...

27

III

The Religion of to-day

35

PRIMITIVE RITUAL
e(t)YrON

KAKON eypON AM6IN0N

Xhe
place,

little

township of Chaeronea in Boeotia, Plutarch's birth-

saw enacted year by year a strange and very ancient ceremoniaP. It was called " The Driving out of Famine "2. A household slave was driven out of doors with rods of agnus castus, a willow" Out with like plant, and over him were pronounced the words Famine, in with Health and Wealth." The Archon for the year performed the ceremony at the Common Hearth which was in intent the Town Hall of the community and each householder
performed ifc separately for his own house. Plutarch himself performed it at the Common Hearth when he was Archon. There was present, he tells us, a large concourse of people and when all was over he and his friends discussed the matter at dinner. I have chosen this ceremony out of thousands of others because it expresses with singular directness and simphcity what is, I think,

The religious impulse is directed, if I am right, primarily to one end and one only, the conservation and promotion of life. This end is served in two ways, one negative, one positive, by the riddance of whatever is conceived to be hostile and by the enhancement of whatever is
the very pith and

marrow

of primitive religion.

conceived of as favourable to hfe. Religious rites are primarily of two kinds and two only, of expulsion and impulsion. Primitive

man

has before him, in order that he may hve, the old dual task to get rid of evil, to secure good. Evil is to him of course mainly hunger and barrenness. Good is food and fertihty. The Hebrew

word for "good" meant originally good to eat 3. The word was primarily appUed to ripe fruits it meant luscious, succulent. Hunger and barrenness he tries by endless varpng rites to carry out, to expel, to kill; he curses it, he mourns over it, he has ceremonies
;

1 *

Plut.

Symp.

VI. 8. 1.

" KaXelrai de ^ovXifjLov e|Aa(ris." BovXifios is sometimes translated "Oxhunger," but from Plutarch's discussion with his friends it is clear that this

may be mere popular etymology. They agreed however that the strange archaic word meant a great and public famine.
3

See

J.

E. Harrison, Themis, pp. 139, 280.

1

H. E.

2
of death

PRIMITIVE RITUAL
and lamentation
[TrevOea).

Food and fertility and growth

he welcomes, he rejoices over; he has ceremonies of workings

producing, exerting (opyia).

But, and this

rather
like

is

important, the two notions are never very

glance, looks

sharply sundered, they are but two faces of the same thought, or
will,

the "will to hve." Beating, at the

of evil

first

mere expulsion child'. But certain

you "beat the mischief out of" a ritual prescriptions show another face. In Lithuania^ the Easter Beating must be inflicted with a twig or branch of birch on which the green leaves have just sprouted. Endless care is taken to secure this. If the birch branches do not
if in time the birch rods are kept in warm water for days even then they do not bud they are artificially heated in a stove pipe. In Orlagau in Thuringia the custom is called "whipping with fresh green," and the spoken words tell the same tale " Good

bud

morning! Fresh Green! Long life! You must give us a bright thaler." All is to be fresh, new, bright, hving. It is the induction by contagion of new vitality and fertility. In Plutarch's ceremony, be it noted, the slave is beaten with rods of agnus castus, a plant much in use in ancient "medicine" as a fertiUty charm.
This double-edged aspect of ritual comes out rather beautifully
in the bonfire festivals that survive to-day. Leaping over a bonfire,

dancing round posed to bring

it, is still

fertility,

by the peasantry of modern Europe supor as they would say " Good luck, " to
is

man and

beast and crops. In Franche-Comte^ a bonfire

of

Hghted

on the Eve

Twelfth Night and while the bonfire blazes the

it

Good Year come back Bread and Here we have it would seem pure *mpulsion, the bringing in of good. But behind lurks expulsion. The word " bonfire " is not, as used to be held, bon-feu, good fire, feu de joie it is bane or bone fire, a fire for burning up old bones and rubbish of every kind. Purification and the rubbish-heap first, and only later, because of the splendid blaze, a glow hke the hfe-giving sun, jollification, fertihty, impulsion. Humanity, thank God! seems
people dance round
!
!

crying "

Wine come back

"

See

2 ^

Frazer, Golden Bough, Part VI,

188, 336.

E. Harrison, Prolegomena, p. 100 ff. "The Scapegoat," p. 271. "Scapegoat,'' p. 316; and for fertilizing action of bonfires see Balder the
J.
i.

Beautiful,

RITUAL OF RIDDANCE AND INDUCTION

never satisfied to rest in negation. Out of riddance springs inevitably and almost instantly magical induction out of destruction, construction; out of purification and abstinence, sanctifica;

tion.

fear to faith
shift

The history of man's rehgious development from superstitious and hope and charity is largely the history of the
from hone fire to hon-feu.

Aristotle^ with his inspired

amazing insight saw and said that

poetry had two forms: praise which issued in hymns and heroic poetry {ijKcofMia), blame which yielded iambic satire (ylroyovi). Aristotle could not and did not know that these two modes arose

out of two ritual forms. The ritual of expulsion, riddance, cursing and finally purification issues in the literature of blame, the ritual
of induction, of blessing, of magical fertilization in the hterature " Out with of praise. It is all summed up in the old ritual formula
:

Famine, in with Health and Wealth." We analyse and distinguish, but at bottom is the one double-edged impulse, the impulse towards life.

The twofold aspect of ritual, negative and positive, for expulsion and impulsion, is very clearly seen in two ritual implements in use among the Greeks, the Gorgoneion and the Liknon or Winnowing Fan. The Gorgoneion^
ritual
is

there before the beast. This Gorgoneion

the head of a Gorgon, but the head was is in fact nothing but a

mask, a grinning face with glaring eyes, protruding beastlike tusks and pendent tongue. The Greek used the Gorgoneion for what he called "prophylactic" purposes, that is to scare away all evil things, his enemies in the flesh and his ghostly foes. He placed it over his house, hung it over his oven and wore it on his though here for the Greeks precise evidence shield, doubtless
fails

us

he danced with

anthropological

it as a mask in his ritual dances. Most museums contain specimens of Gorgoneion-hke

masks used by savages for ritual dances; such masks have the characteristic tusks and protrudmg pendent tongue. The protruding tongue is but the gesture of the street-boy of to-day by which he marks contempt and disgust. The origin is not so much
1 *

Poet. IV. 7.

Hastings, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics,

s.v.

"Gorgoneion."

12

PEIMITIVE RITUAL
we
give
is

the idea of showing disgust as of ejecting a hurtful substance from the mouth.
If
it its

Greek name
a constant

it is

apoptuic rather than

apotropaic, its gist

to get rid of rather than to avert.

is

The Gorgon

with

its

upstanding hair
it is

monument

of the rehgion

of Fear,

Terror incarnate.

Very different in its functions was the liknon^ or winno wing-fan. Yet in origin it was closely analogous. The word in Greek for the winnowing-fan is tttvov, i.e. the spitter, that which throws up, disgorges, rejects the chaff and keeps the grain. Theliknon became to the Greeks the great symbol and vehicle of purification physical and spiritual. But unlike the Gorgoneion it was wholly alien to the emotions of aversion and fear. It purified in order to promote growth and fertihty. Its association with grain made this symbohsm easy and natural. Its shape it was a shoe-shaped basket helped. The shoe-shaped basket was used not only for actual winnowing but, shovel-Hke, for the carrying of both grain and fruits. It was a purifier because it was a winnower; it was a fertihty charm because it was a basket for first-fruits. Hence we find it used as a cradle for the new-born child, we find it held over the head of the initiate at the Eleusinian mysteries, we find it carried in marriage processions. At Athenian weddings a boy, both of whose parents were alive, carried a liknon full of loaves and pronounced the words: "Bad have I fled, better have I found "2. In fact as an old lexicographer^ tells us the liknon is serviceable for every rite of initiation and every sacrifice. It must needs be so, for it embodies as the marriage formulary shows the essence of all ritual expulsion and impulsion. It is probable that at this point an objection may arise in the mind of the reader. The ceremony at Chaeronea is, he will say, a curious old rite or custom, interesting in its way but not rehgious in the sense in which we use the word now. The objection is partly vahd. In the sense in which we use the word now the rite of Chaeronea is not religious, that is to say it is not worship ad-

dressed to a god, it is not worship conducted by a priest, not worship held in a church. The object of this discussion
^

it is is

to

J.

E. Harrison, "Mystica
(1903) 292-324, and
s.v.

xxm.
*

lacchi," in Journal of Hellenic Studies, xxiv. (1904) 241-254, resumed in Hastings, Encyclo^

Vannus

paedia,

"Fan."
Harpocration,
s.v.

Ps. Plut. Prov. Alec. xvi.

"XiKvov."

RITUAL OF RIDDANCE AND INDUCTION

show the constantly
being,
if

shifting nature of the notion of religion which,

my contention be right,
shifts

a function of our

human
is

nature,

grows and

with

human

growth. But, and this

important,

Plutarch an educated Greek regarded the Chaeronea rite as rehgious. He calls it a sacrifice (Ovala), a sacred act, a word that

came

in late Greek to cover any and every rehgious doing. Now Plutarch was not only a highly educated but a deeply religious man. A great deal of his strenuous life was devoted to the study

and elucidation

of religious thought

and

practice, his greatest

woman

friend Clea

was a

priestess of Isis

and

all his life

remained profoundly pious. What Plutarch called a " sacrifice was we may be sure in his eyes religious. The Chaeronea rite then was to Plutarch religious, yet it contained and implied no god. The kindred
rite

long he "

at Athens, the expul" associated with " the

sion of the pharmakoi or scapegoats, became

worship of Apollo, but Apollo is no integral part of it. Pretty well all over the world we find rites of expulsion and impulsion, but they involve no divinity. We must face at the outset the fact that
if we confine ourclaims perhaps Buddhism selves to modern times, is plain enough. Mahomedmore than religion, more worshippers than any other No one denies Christianity. more than anism, more than Judaism, is godless, pure Buddhism religion, yet to Buddhism the name of its purposes popular and for strength atheism. It is at once its

religion does not presuppose a god. This, even

weakness.

That the Chaeronea rite is as godless as priestless is clear enough. The civil officer, the Archon, expels the slave and pronounces the expulsion of Famine and the incoming of Health and Wealth that is all. The action is what we call "magical," it is the attempt directly to control natural facts and forces without appeal to any
;

supposed divine being for his intervention. Plutarch, intimately acquainted with the worship of the gods, surrounded by the imposing figures of the Olympians, yet does not hesitate to call a magical ceremony rehgious, and we hold him to be right. Is there then no distinction between religion and magic? There
a distinction very simple but all important; reUgion is magic is or may be individual, religion is of the group however small, magic of the single unit. The methods of all very
is,

and

it is

social,

PRIMITIVE RITUAL
i.e.

early religions are necessarily magical,

godless,

but they are

consecrated,

made

religious

by

their being practised for the comis

mon

weal.

The

essence of magic

the opus operatum, the act

effective in itself. Baptism and the consecration of the elements in the Eucharist are rites primarily magical, though much contaminated by theological sanction; they are rehgious because they

are social, practised openly for the common weal. By this definition the Chaeronea rite is seen to be magical and hence atheistic,

but though atheistic it is deeply religious. The Archon practises it at the Common Hearth for the whole township the householder at home for his family. In both cases we are concerned with a group and a group functionthe action is social.
;

The discovery of its social origin^ is perhaps the greatest advance yet made in the scientific study of reHgion. The notion of social origin upsets so many modern individuaUstic convictions and prejudices that it is sure to meet with some hostihty. The discovery has been a long slow process and was only made possible by recent scientific examination of rehgious phenomena among primitive peoples. The new and unexpected facts disclosed by this examination facts which have bit by bit revolutionized our whole outlook

may conveniently be grouped under four heads

(1) (2) (3) (4)

Totem, Tabu and Exogamy.

Initiation Ceremonies.

The Medicine-Man and King-God. The Fertility-Play or Year-Drama.

By

a brief examination of these groups of facts it will become clear (1) that religion is a social factor and can only properly be studied in relation to social structure; (2) that the idea of a

god

is

a bye-product arising out of

rites

and
;

sanctities, a bye-

product of high importance but non-essential (3) that the function of rehgion is to conserve the common hfe physical and spiritual, this function being sometimes aided sometimes hindered by the
idea of a god.
1

The discovery was

first

formulated by the genius of Emil Durkheim in his

brief paper,

"De

la definition des

logique of 1898. His theory has been since

of the Religious Life,

phenomenes religieux," in the Annee Socioexpanded in his The Elementary Forme English edition, by J. W. Swain.

TOTEM, TABU AND

(1)

EXOGAMY

Totem, Tabu and Exogamy.

The word
kinship of

totem}-

group or tribe.

It

man

or animal but simply family, important to grasp tbis clearly as the supposed with various plants and animals is a fact so odd
is

means not plant

that

it

has arrested undue attention and tended to obscure the

also used for a family
is

real significance of the totem. Besides the idea of family or

the word totem

or badge.

is

group mark. Thus the primal

notion of a totem

a group distinguished by a
is

common

label

The totem animal

always a group of animals not an

individual animal, the totem relation is always the relation of a group of men to a group of animals or plants, the primary gist of totemism is the distinction of groups.

How
it IS

this distinction of

groups came to be of such intense

rehgious significance

we

shall see in

a moment. For the present

interesting to note that as the

animal

totem animal the tribal long precedes the animal god, so in Greek religion Moirais

partition^ preceded

Totemism
the group
is

and overruled the whole Olympian system. then mainly and primarily an affirmation of group

unity. Primitive

man thinlvs

or rather feels in terms of his group

So much perhaps our latter-day parochiahsm or patriotism might teach us. Totems are not worshipped, they are not definite deities propitiated with prayer and sacrifice, but it is easy to see that from the focus of attention on the totem animal or plant they may be the stuff of which pagan divinity is made. The "making of a god" is a stage at which we have not yet arrived. It is enough to note for the present that the totem is the collective symbol, the badge of distinction, the representahis universe.
^ For the whole subject of Totemism see Dr Frazer's Totemism, 1887, and his Totemism and Exogamy, 4 vols., 1910; E. Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religioiis Life; S. Frexid, Totem und Tabu, 1913. DrFrazer holds that exogamy arose independently of totemism and that totemism is the earlier of the two; he gives up the hope of discovering the origin of exogamy and believes he has caught the secret of totemism. Dr Durkheim holds that totemism and exogamy are inextricably intertwined: that the one cannot exist save as an unmeaning survival without the other. He stresses here as elsewhere the group aspect. Dr Freud adopts mainly the same position as Dr Durkheim, stressing and more fully explaining the tabu element. The view here expressed is based on Durkheim and Freud. ^ For Moira in relation to social organization see F. M. Comf ord, From Religion

to

Philosophy.

PRIMITIVE RITUAL

tion of a family or group unity as distinct from other unities, a totem marks out, separates, differentiates. That such a badge or

mark may become an intense emotional focus is self-evident we have only to think of the passionate devotion inspired to-day by the colours. Once chosen and set up, such a badge is an emotional focus but we are left with the further question, where was the need of such a badge, the vital necessity of distinction, separation.
;

Primitive

and
its

has no natural need for social order, for division what made him invent a totem and elaborate attendant irksome system of tabus ? The need must have been
classification;
life.

man

intense, imperative, essential to the conservation of

this

To

find

need we must go back to the beginning of society. Human society with all its ci^dhzation is based on the family, the "promiscuous herd" as starting point is a theorist's dream. This primal family consisted of an adult male, one or more females

and their children. This same primal family is observable even among the higher quadrupeds. With gorillas one adult male only is
observable in each band.
well,

So long as the children are young

all is

the children were females no difiiculty would arise. The father simply marries his daughters as he married their mother.
if all

and
is

There
tive

man

no "natural" instinct of repulsion against incest. Primihas no hygienic conscience for the next generation. In-

deed, be the stock healthy, no need for such conscience exists. It is when the young male offspring grow up to maturity that

trouble begins.

The

single oldest or strongest

dominant male

is

confronted by his
does not,

knowledge of the fact of but they are young males, inevitable rivals. If he is to keep his wives to himself he must kill these rivals or expel them. His rule is no other male to touch the females of his camp, the result expulsion of adolescent sons, i.e. exogamy.
his sons,
late,

own sons know them to be

is

as rivals^.

He may

not, probably

fatherhood

comparatively

It seems an imfasse. Perpetual reiterated expulsion of all the young forces of the family. In time it is true the young males may and do conquer, the old father grows old and weak, the sons band together and slay him, but it is only themselves to retell
1

Descent of

Andrew Lang, "The Family," Man, ii. 362.

in

Custom and Myth, 1884,

p. 245.

Darwin,


TOTEM, TABU AND
tlie
is

EXOGAMY
Advance

9
in civilization

old hideous story of sexual jealousy.

is

forbidden for cooperation

impossible.

But there were other

father,

forces at work.

The mother counted

for

something, the young males were to her not merely as to their

young males, they were sons. The higher quadrupeds have and this would foster affection even in the father. The eldest son not very much younger than his father would have little chance, he would be surely killed or expelled, but the youngest born when his father's passions were ebbing might have better luck. Moreover man is a social animal and his brain is highly developed, he must have vaguely hungered after peace and consequent plenty, kilhng your sons would pall after a time. The next step, the crucial step, the beginning of all our morality was taken man began to impose tabus, and thereby arrived at a sort of social
longer infancy
contract.

Tabu
pulsion,

is

never an

artificial

strengthening of an instinctive reIt is

it

cuts clean across individual desire.

of the first tabu. It

easy to see

was made in the interests of the Father. Weary at last of the expulsion and slaying of sons, conscious that the day would come when they would in turn slay or disable him, he made terms with them on the basis of a tabu. You may stay at home on condition that you do not touch my wives or at least certain of my wives, your mother and your sisters or some of them are to you tabu. And if tabu they must be marked as such, they must carry on their bodies a totem badge or mark of avoidance. This system of distinction once started branched out of course into endless complexities with which we are not concerned. The primal cardinal fact is that totemism consists in group dis-

what was the nature

tinction, that

it

functions through tabu

and that

it

takes

its rise

in perhaps the strongest or at least the fiercest of

human

impulses

in sex jealousy. Here, as so often elsewhere, the fabric of

and State^

rests

Church on a basis of savage animal impulse, crossed by

have
left their

the dawnings of a social impulse.

The tabus
^

of the primal family

traces in the
It

curious survivals
See
J.

among savages known

as Avoidance^.

seems

G. Frazer, Psyche's Task, passim. ^ See J. J. Atkinson, Primal Law, 1903. The theory of the origin of exogamy in the jealousy of the Sire is due to Mr Atkinson, but he does not connect this with totemism.


10

PEIMITIVE RITUAL

even see

odd and inexplicable to us that a brother may not speak to or his sister. The arrangement is, among the houseless nomads of Australia, inconvenient and to our thinlcing absolutely senseless. But in the hght of the primal tabu on all sisters it is clear enough. The sister if she catch sight of her brother by accident in the bush is well advised to fall flat on her face. Moreover, and this is an interesting point, we find the echo of
the old savage primal family in Greek mythology.
reigned there was an older dynasty

Before Zeus

that

of

Kronos, and before

Kronos was Ouranos the Heaven, mated to Gaia the Earth. Ouranos
i

hated his children and slew them, but Kronos the youngest son conspired against his father and emasculated him and reigned in

The story repeats itseK in varying form from generation Kronos in his turn devours his own children as fast as they are born, knowing that he was fated to be deprived of his kingdom by one of them. Rhea the mother devised a plan by
his stead.

to generation.

which she might save her youngest horn Zeus, who reigned
after in his father's stead.
is

there-

In these stories

it is

the kingship that

emphasized, but

it is

clear that behind lies the jealousy of the Sire.

This explanation of the totem as essentially a group badge

adopted to mark exclusions and

facilitate tabus made necessary by the Sire's jealousy clears up much that has long been mysterious. The totem animal once chosen may as a rule not be killed and eaten, but on certain solemn occasions by common consent he is killed and he is eaten. From that solemn slaving is traceable all

the long series of sacrifices and sacraments. Just so the father

for

whom indeed the totem animal is in a

sense surrogate

cannot

and may not be slain. But in the old family system, as we have seen, by common consent and insurrection of the brothers he was slain. This slaying, at first an inevitable outrage, may well have crystalUzed into a custom. "Whether the old Sire was ever eaten by way of incorporating his exceptional powers may remain uncertain. But in the slaying of the father we have at least the germ
of the later sacrifice of the king-god.
is thrown by this explanation on the curious mind towards the totem, which Freud^ has called Ambivalenz, the attitude that is of mingled attraction and repul-

Further, light

attitude of

Op.

cit.,

the term

was originated hy

Bleuler.

TOTEM, TABU AND

sion, desire

EXOGAMY
marrow

11
of

and shrinking, which

is

is

the very gist and

tabu. This Ambivalenz

to the father,

characteristic of the feeling of the son

and

of all savages

towards tabued objects.

It disappears

It is

the attitude of obedience to a non- natural prohibition, the desire

remaining while the prohibition holds.

rationality of a prohibition
is

when the

but it survives in diseased neurotic consciences charged with the atmosphere of refully recognized,

pressed desire.

Tabu

is

the

first

categorical imperative

and

is

the

parent of sanctity, that sanctity which long preceded divinity.

Holiness has just this character of Ambivalenz; the thing that
sacer as
is

Robertson Smith long ago recognized is impure as well as pure, a danger as well as a safeguard, it attracts and repels. Now-a-days we think of things holy as things divine, either gods themselves or things especially associated with divinity, but sanctity to primitive man meant something quite other, it meant the thing tabued, whether person or plant or animal, the tabu being

imposed by the group protecting

itself

against the individual.

Sin, sanctity, repentance, purification, all the notions

we

feel to
rise at

be so intensely and characteristically rehgious took their

least in tabu.

Especially does this conjoint notion of tabu

plain the sanctity of animals

and totemism exand plants and the rise of plant and

it is

animal gods.

On any

other showing

not easy to understand

why a man
time

should worship the plant or animal which he can any

kill and eat. He might admire it, and feel curiosity as to its wondrous ways, he might if it were fierce and strong feel fear of it, but he would not feel that special blend of awe and attraction which we call worship. But given that an animal or plant has been chosen as a totem, all becomes simple. It may have been quite accidentally that the thing chosen was plant or animal. The choice was natural as man's attention is much engaged by plants and animals but it was not essential, as is shown by the fact that almost any natural object may become a totem, and even some objects that are artificial. Given then that an animal or plant is chosen as a totem, it becomes the sign manual of tabu, it is hedged round with prohibitions, it becomes a thing apart, marked by the group with sanctity, remote from daily use. It is not the plant or animal that is useful to him or that feeds him that the savage

12
will

PRIMITIVE RITUAL

tend to worship. It is the plant or animal tabued. From the tabued animal or plant to the sacred animal or plant and from
the sacred to the divine the steps are easy.

Moreover plants and animals are of high, indeed the highest importance in totemistic rites. So high is this importance that it has led some observers to see in these plant and animal rites the actual origin of the sanctity of the totem. This we beUeve to be
mistaken, sanctity arises primarily in tabu.

Turning to totemistic rites their object is clear enough. They are uniformly what we have called impulsive or inductive. Their object is to produce and enhance life, the multiplication of such totem plants and animals as are good for food. The ceremonies

known among some Australians as Intichimna^ and this name has become current. They are also known as mbatgalkatiuma, which
are

means "to fecundate" chiuma are celebrated

or to

"put

in

good condition." The

Intiis

just before the rainy season. The rain

important because the savage has grasped the all important fact that life depends on moisture. This life-giving moisture will be

sought and found in various ways according to physical conditions. In Egypt rehgious ceremonial will centre not on rain-making but on the Nile. In Greece we shall have rain-making ceremonies and the cult of springs and small rivers. In AustraUa as soon as the rains arrive, vegetation springs up as though by magic and animals
multiply. It
is

the great religious season of the year.

The

rites celebrated are

world, in the magico-rehgious stage, primitive

mainly mimetic dances. All over the man dances where

is

we should pray
prising.
act directly

or praise. This

inevitable

though at

first sur-

He cannot

knows of no one to pray to. He must try to get what he wants by doing it. His dances
pray, he

are in the main, in so far as they are not merely the outlet of

done.

pent up emotion, mimetic. He does in pantomime what he wishes He wants to multiply his totem, so he imitates the actions totem he jumps like a kangaroo, he screeches like a bat, this of

he croaks like a Only a kangaroo

frog,

he imitates the birth of a Witchetty grub.

man can cause kangaroos to multiply and though

1 The best summary and analysis of the Intichiuma rites is found in Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, p. 326, based of course on Spencer and Gillen and Strehlow's investigations.

TOTEM, TABU AND

EXOGAMY

13

he may not, save in solemn sacrament, eat kangaroo himself, he performs the kangaroo ceremonies that other totem groups may eat and they will do the like for him. Rain is often imitated and caused by the sprinkling of drops of blood or the shaking of white
noted. These have all one object, the promotion of Ufe bv means of food, but they are separable into two groups, the one purely imitative, just described, the other imitative but also commemorative. The one looks forward, the other back^. The commemorative rite looks back to the ancestors of the tribe and re-

down to simulate clouds. And here a point of great importance must be

rites

pantomimic

enacts their doings,

it

represents the mythical history of the tribe.

The past

is

made

to live again

by means
is

of a veritable dramatic

representation.

Now
is

here the intent

manifestly not the direct

of sohdarity.

impulsion of

fertility

but the strengthening

So im-

portant however
solidarity that to

the indirect action of this strengthening of

of the ancestor rites

omit the performance

would
func-

inevitably bring bad luck. There could be no better instance of

the intense religious importance of the group.

tion with its full force unless
it

No group can

invokes tradition. Here in these

the

commemorative ancestor
of

rites

we have

dawn

of true rehgious

notions of high importance, the idea of immortality, the idea

group immortality as preceding individual immortality, the

is

idea of ancestor worship which springs straight out of ancestor

commemoration and

a powerful factor in the making of the

anthropomorphic god. Totemism and tabu have given us in embryo our main religious
conceptions, the ideas of sanctity, of sacrament, of sin, of sacrifice,
of

animal and plant worship, of immortality and ancestor worship.

We have seen them emerge in close conjunction with social structure,

and
life

this

no longer surprises

us.

If

rehgious impulse be the

Ufe,

impulse to the conservation and promotion of the group

that

and

depends for its conservation on some sort of social contract, the dependence of religion on social structure is inherent and
both commemorative and " On the Dithyramb, the Spw/xevov and the Drama," and more simply, Ancient Art and Ritual, chapter n, "Pantomime Dances."
^

For the detailed psychological analysis

of rites

anticipative, see J. E. Harrison, Themis, chapter

rr,

14
essential.

PRIMITIVE RITUAL
Rites not only procure the

means

of life

but they are

itself.

the means whereby the social group periodically reaffirms

To watch the

further development of these

embryo notions we

pass to our second head.

(2)

Initiation Ceremonies.

Initiation ceremonies are but a speciaUzed

form of the

fertility

ceremonies described under the name Intichiuma. When the novices

are initiated a series of ceremonies are performed before

them

which reproduce even in minute particulars the rites of the Intichiuma. The mechanism of the rites is often identical, but the
initiation rites are
all

marked

off

by two
(1)

peculiarities

which
is

it

is

important to note. These are

the initiation rite

into the
(2)

tribe, it is of far

wider import than the totem ceremony;

the

initiation rite is concerned

it

with the

human

element in the tribe,

has not for

its

direct object the fertilization of either animal

is,

or plant. Its object

as the savage himself frequently says, "to

make
The

or manufacture a

man."
and cannot be
the rite
gist of

detailed ceremonies of initiation are variable

discussed here^.

We

can only emphasize the main

and this has been well summed up in the formulary rite de passage, rite of transition from one stage to another. It has been ably
observed^ that
of
all

ceremonies concerned directly with the welfare

alike in

man have

this transition character, ceremonies of birth, of

all

puberty, of marriage and of death are

all facilitate

mechanism, they
all

the passage from one state to another, they are

and impulsion, they ward off the dangers of the transit and enhance its benefits. The rite de passage on which primitive man focussed his attention was emphatically the rite of puberty or maturity, his transit from childhood when he was a useless encumbrance to manhood when he took upon himself the two main duties of savage maturity, he became a warrior and a father, he defended the present generation and engendered the
of expulsion

next.
^

collection convenient for the general reader will be

Societies,

found

Webster, Secret

1908,

and

see the article "Initiation,"

Button by Goblet
in

d'Alviella in Hastings, Encyclopaedia of Religion

and

Ethics,

and H. Schurtz,

AUersklassen imd Mdnnerbunde, 1902.

2

Van Gennep,

Rites de passage, 1909.

INITIATION CEREMONIES
The attention
rites,

15
to
initiation

of explorers

was at

first

drawn

mainly because of the horrible sufferings endured by the novices. These sufferings were in part tests of endurance such as are imposed now-a-days by boys when they initiate a new schoolfellow. More important and indeed cardinal is the fact that in initiation ceremonies the death of the novice is almost always simulated and sometimes actually caused. This death is followed
rection^, often bloody

mummeries of death and resurand disgusting enough, simulate and therefore to the savage mind stimulate the passage from the old hfe to the new. But the simulated death has another aim, distinctly social, that is to emphasize the soUdarity of the tribe, only by his simulated death can the boy be brought into contact and made one with his ancestors. They it is who instruct him in the tribal secrets, the old men of the tribe who initiate him are often positively disguised as ancestors. Thus vv^e see in Initiation as in the Intichiuma the two elements, commemoration of ancestors as

by a

resurrection. All the various

well as magical mimesis.

InitiatioUj it will

In initiation the youth

be remembered, is of the tribe not of the totem. is brought into relation with a larger imit,
is

and

this larger unit

figured to

him by a Great

Spirit^, a

very

near approach to what

we

call

a god. If the totem replaces the

old Sire so this Great Spirit replaces for the time his pecuhar totem

and

is

figured as the father of all the

who

constitute the tribe.

members of different totems Thus among the Euahlayi the Great

Spirit is called

Baiame and in this tribe it is related that the various

totems were only the names given to the different parts of Baiame's body and this is but a simple figurative way of saying that the Great Spirit is the synthesis of all tlie totems and consequently

a sort
were,

of presentation of the idea or rather sentiment of tribal

unity. These Great Spirits found

it

among so many primitive peoples

was at first thought, mere borrowings from Christianity taken over from missionaries. But the fact that the Great Spirit is found uniformly not in totem rites but in tribal initiations shows clearly that the Great Spirit is the outcome and expression of a special social structure. He had his origin in those rites which it was his function to represent.
1 *

Frazer, Cfolden Bough, xi. 225,

"The Ritual
p.

of

Death and Resurrection."

Durkheim, Elementary Forms,

294

fE.

16
Initiation

PRIMITIVE RITUAL
was to the savage
all

the rite of

paramount importance.
rite.

Other man's

rites
life

de passage were performed at the other crises of a

but they

paled before the maturity

Birth was

scarcely accounted an event for religious sanction, marriage fol-

passage,

lowed as a corollary from initiation and death itself was a rite de when the dead man passed over to join the dead members of his tribe in another world ^. Moreover death itself is not a crisis so clearly marked as with us, a man dies socially when he ceases to be able to dance his tribal dances. The notion of death as an initiation has left manifest traces in Greek rehgion. That to die is to be initiated into the "Higher Mysteries" was to the Greek a literal fact. This initiation Avas consummated by a Sacred
Marriage with the Earth Mother. Hence
as Artemidorus^ observes: "if sick
it is

not surprising that

of marriage it is

men dream

foreboding of death," for "all the accompaniments of marriage are

exactly the same as those of death," and again, "marriage and

death have universally been held by mankind to be 'fulfilments' (reX??)." The Greek word for initiation (reXer?;) tells its owd tale,
it

means not entering

its

in,

but completion, accompUshment,

fulfil-

ment,

cognate (reXeto?) means "grown up." The great Eleusinian mysteries were primarily the rite of man's maturity side by side with rites to promote the maturity of earth's fruits^.
Birth, puberty, marriage, death were to the savage
large

and
to

in

measure to the whole ancient world

but he
felt it

all crises of life

be

attended by
of rites
all

rites of initiation, rites de passage.

He
it

did not formusimilarity

late their similarity

;

and expressed

by the

were the occasion of rites of expulsion, to free hf e from evil, and even more of impulsion, to promote hfe's welfare. But before we pass to the next point we must emphasize the pecuhar social structure out of which initiation rites sprang. We have left behind us the old family group with the dominant sire and even the totem group which succeeded it is less prominent. We have

advanced to the tribe. The important social feature in tribal initiation is the band of young men confronted by the band of elder men, as initiators. We have an oligarchy rather than an
1

R. Hertz, "La Representation Collective de

la

Mort," in Annee Sociologique,

X. (1905-06) 88.

Oneirocr. ii. 49 and 65; for the whole subject of the analogy of death and marriage rites, see J. C. Lawson, Modern Greek Folk Lore, 1910, p. 590. ' Hastings, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, "Initiation" (Greek).
='

INITIATION CEREMONIES
autocracy.
It

17

Moreover, whereas totem-rites focus on nutrition,

on sex. was long a puzzle in Greek religion why Dionysos should always be attended by a thiasos, a band of dancing revellers. Zeus and the other Olympian divinities had no such attendants. The question was only made more complex yet more pressing by the discovery that this band of revellers of yoimg men dancing was closely paralleled in other cults. Greece had not only Satyrs, it had also Kouretes, Korybantes, Titanes, Seilenoi, Bacchoi, Rome had its dancing priests, its Sahi, far-off India had its dancing Maruts, half daimon half man^. The riddle was read for Greece by the discovery in Crete of the Hymn to the Kouretes^, a ritual hymn containing very early material; it is sung by a band of armed dancers and they invoke their leader, the Greatest Kouros, to come for the year and to leap for fields of fruit and for fleecy flocks and for young citizens. The Kouretes are the young men just come to maturity, just initiated into the fertihty dance of their tribe they invoke their leader as lord of moisture and life, or as they say, "Lord of all that is wet and gleaming." The band of initiate youths are the prototypes of all the Satyrs and Seilenoi, the Salii and Maruts of Europe and Asia, they too are the parents of the still surviving mummers and sword-dancers of village feasts^. The cult of the Kouretes was at home in Crete and the great central worship of the Mother goddess. In the bridal chamber {daXdfieufia) of Crete the young men, before they might win their earthly brides, were initiated to the Mountain Mother* and became
initiation rites focus
;

symbohcally her consorts or husbands. Marriage is the mystery par excellence. The ceremony was of prime importance as securing
alike her fertility
reflect

and theirs. Thus it will be seen that the Kouretes a matrihnear social structure, the condition that naturally

when parentage is precarious and often untraceable. Such a social structure focuses its attention on Mother and Child rather
arises

than on Father. The Child grows up into the young initiated

^

man

Hastings, Encyclopaedia, "Kouretes andKorybantes " ; Leopold v. Schroeder,

Mysterium und Mimus im Rig-Veda, 1908. ^ J. E. Harrison, Themis, pp. 1^9. 3 E. K. Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage, pp. 182-204.
*

A. B. Cook, Zeus, 1913, p. 650; Hastings, Encyclopaedia,

"Mountain
2

Mother."
H. E.

18

PRIMITIVE RITUAL

and the young initiated man becomes the consort of the perennial mother. The Kouretes in the Hymn tend the holy child and this is with magical intent, they marry that the land may be fertile, they tend the child that their own children may be nurtured. Then as the rehgious instinct develops they project from their own body a leader, a Greatest Kouros, to whom they hand over the functions they themselves performed. But this process will become more
clear at a later stage in the argument. In like fashion the religious
rites of

the Satyrs centre round the Mother Semele, the Phrygo-

their

like fashion the Satyrs project from band the arch-satyr Dionysos the thiasos is before the god. So far we have seen that the social factor which shaped and conditioned religious notions was the group, first the totem-group then the tribal-group. We have now to watch the emergence and development of the individual as social factor and to mark its influence on ritual and rehgious thinking. This brings us to our
;

Thracian Earth goddess, and in

third stage.
(3)

The Medicine-Man and King-God.

The

old Byzantine scholar Tzetzes has bequeathed to a tardily

thankful posterity this remarkable statement

Zeuses the ancients used to call their kings.

He

feels it to
it

be noteworthy

for, in slightly altered

words, he
it

repeats

six several times.

fossil.

Yet

for eight centuries

lay,

neglected

Scholars of course were conscious of a doctrine

known as the "divine right of kings." They remembered that Dr Johnson was taken to Queen Anne, was touched by Queen Anne for scrofula. Virgil they knew tells how the mad and blasof Thessaly was blasted because he dared to counterfeit the thunder and hghtning. But it occurred to no one^ that Salmoneus qua king was doing his regular business, that in the eyes of his people he was Zeus and had to make the

phemous Salmoneus King

weather.

What

then

is

this divinity that

"doth hedge a king"?

is

How
and
found

could the notion arise

when

kings are born and die and sleep

wake and eat and drink like the rest of us? The answer

^ Attention was, I believe, first called to the passage in Tzetzes and the true explanation given by Mr A. B. Cook, Classical Review, 1903-1904.

THE MEDICINE-MAN AND KING-GOD

in the origin of the kingship.

19

How

did kings come to be?

is

The

answer
tribe.

may seem

obvious.

The king
is

the strongest

man
is

of the

This simple solution like so

many

obvious answers

wrong

or at least not wholly right. It

calls

the answer of what

Dr Frazer^

not of the

the "armchair philosopher with his feet on the fender," and man who seeks his facts among the savages of to-day in
in Malay, in Central Austraha, in Japan.

Uganda,
a strong

Here and there

man by

sheer physical force

may

nance, but mere strength will not suffice

ruled rather

enjoy a certain domifor a king, the savage is

by hope and fear than force, the king must have magic behind him. The personality of king and god alike develop out
head medicine-man, and the business of the head medicinewe have seen is to be food-producer and rain-maker. The king then is the head medicine-man and, deUghtful corollary, his
of the

man

as

fetishes are the regaha, the possession of which, as for

example

among the Southern

Celebes, carries with

it

the right to the throne.

These regaha may be almost anything, a weapon, a bit of stone or wood, or queer shaped fruit, best of all a hit of the body of a former king Uke the rehc of a saint.
In the Austrahan ceremonies of the Intichiuma,
bered, the ancestors of the tribe were
it will be

remem-

commemorated

in panto-

When the magical functions of the tribe are focused on one individual, the king, the ancestors are not forgotten. Among the Matabeles of South Africa^ the king each year ofEers sacrifices
mime.
at the festival of the

new

fruits

which ends the annual

to the spirits

tribal

dances.

On these occasions

"he prays

of his forefathers

to his own spirit." There is, it will be noted, no god involved, only the forefathers and himself the head medicine-man. In

and

Southern Nigeria^ one of the petty kings gave this account of himself and certainly he does not figure as "the strong man." "The whole town forced me to be head chief. They hanged the big
juju (or fetish of the buffalo's horns) round my neck It is an old custom that the head-chief here shall never leave his compound. I have been shut up ten years, but being an old man I don't miss my freedom. I am the oldest man of the town and they
^

My

instances are

all

taken from Dr Frazer's Lectures on

3

the

Early History

of the Kingship, 1905. 2 Frazer, op. cit. p. 32.

Qp

^U. p. 118.

20
keep

PRIMITIVE RITUAL me
here to look after the jujus and to conduct the rites

celebrated

when women

are about to give birth to children,

and

other ceremonies of the same kind.

By

the observance and per-

formance of these ceremonies I bring game to the hunter, cause the young crop to be good, bring fish to the fisherman, and make rain to fall. So they bring me meat, yams, fish. To make rain, I drink water and squirt it out and pray to our big deities. If I were to go outside this compound I should fall down dead on returning to the hut. My wives cut my hair and nails and take great care of the parings." Here the mention of the "big deities" shows the dawn of the priestly go-between, but otherwise we have just an old medicine-man, a centre of tribal sanctities. These puppet kings though intensely divine are really rather the slaves and tools of their people than their lords. This is shown not only by their tedious trammelled lives hedged round by tabus but in poignant fashion by their tragic deaths^. In his Hfe he must be what the Greeks called a/xv/xav, "blameless," that is flawless in his physical hfe, because on his integrity and vitality depended the hfe of his people and of all those natural things on which that people's Ufe depended. Fertility, flocks and herds, rain and sunshine depended on the king's life, if that life waned pestilence and famine would certainly ensue. So by inexorable savage logic, the king must never be allowed to grow enfeebled, he must, if needs be, be put to death to save his life. Sometimes the king himself is put to death by common consent of the tribe like the ancient Sire, sometimes by proxy it is the king's son, sometimes a sacred beast in whom the king is incarnate survival of the totem, sometimes a chance stranger regarded as a kind of divine apparition, sometimes merely a representative puppet. In some form or another "it is expedient that one man shall die for the people" and to be efficacious that man must be sacred, divine. Hence all the manifold rites of death and burial of the gods which puzzled the

pious Plutarch^ so sadly.

Rites of "tearing to pieces," "resurrec-

and dismemberments," rites which he knew took place not only in Egypt or Asia Minor but in connection with his own god Dionysos. Plutarch would fain
tions," "regenerations," of "deaths
1

Frazer, Golden Bough,

iii.

"The Dying God."

x>e I side et Osiride, 69-71.

THE MEDICINE-MAN AND KING-GOD

tliink of his

21

being an honest

gods as Olympians, serene, beneficent, immortal, but man he cannot blink facts. He is like some kindly

Anghcan

called

upon suddenly on Ash Wednesday

to curse his

neighbours instead of blessing them. The sanctity of the king-god's life, the supreme importance of conserving it, survives in the ritual of the Roman Church to-day,

custom of burning Incense. Ask a Roman priest, or indeed any educated person, what is the significance of Incense^. He will tell you it is part of the regular ritual of the Mass, that it is a symbol of purification, of consecration that Incense mounts like prayer to heaven and, what not. All this Incense has come to mean, but the use of Incense dates from the time of the Pharaohs,
in the

and to the priest of Pharaoh's time Incense spelt something simpler and more substantial. The Egyptian wanted to keep his king ahve. The king had been his benefactor during life, why lose his benefactions by death ? To keep the king alive the Egyptian mummified the corpse, and also made portrait statues of exact and marvellous simihtude. But something was wanting. The statue lacked
the moisture, the juices of
life, the aroma, the smell of the Uving withhisliberaluse of unguents Egyptian mana smell of which the conscious. To supply the deficiency of vividly and perfumes was give the aroma he burnt Hbations, to poured out moisture he over the whole civilized nigh spread well custom Incense and his

world.
It

may seem

at

first

sight to be of

little

consequence whether
of initiated

magical functions were distributed

among a group

men

or focused in the "person of a single king."

Possibly even

loss. For the dominance of a demogrown men we substitute a single autocrat. History has however shown everywhere that real freedom begins with the emergence of the gifted individual, the democracy of the whole tribe is but a democracy in name, it is really the tyranny of a gerontocracy, of the old men who initiate the young men and forcibly impose the tradition of the tribe. With the medicine-king

the transition might seem a

cratic

body

of full

arose a certain though very hmited scope for the forces of personality

and

also, as the

medicine-man was the depository of such

experimental science as the tribe possessed, his elevation to the

1

G. Elliot Smith, The Evolution of the Dragon. Manchester University Press.

22

PRIMITIVE RITUAL
in

kingsMp was
of research.

some sense the

first

beginning of

"endowment"

momentous step taken by the institution was that henceforward sanctities tended to become personaUties, The notions of tabu and sanctity became incarnate the king as incarnate tabu and magic is undoubtedly in a person the father of the pagan god. We shall later see that our modern notion of divinity, though owing much of its anthropomorphism
But
for religion the

of the kingship

to

pagan gods, has

also other roots. This notion that the sacred,

is

the divine, was human-shaped

taken.

perhaps the most momentous

step, for better for worse, that the reUgious imagination

has ever

such a step came to be taken, that is how the god developed out of the human king, will be best seen when we examine our last stage or stratum, the Fertility Play or Year

How

Drama.
(4)

The Fertility Play or Year Drama.

some
eight hours to the

At

Viza, the ancient Bizue in Thrace,

of

Sahnydessus on the Black Sea, may still be seen^ a folk-play which by its very simphcity and even baldness makes singularly clear its original magical intent. The masqueraders assemble early in the morning. They are two men wearing masks,

North

goat-skin caps and bells, one of them sometimes differentiated by a blackened face, two boys disguised as girls, an old woman carrying a baby in a basket and a sort of chorus of gipsies and

gendarmes. The masqueraders after the fashion of mummers in England and elsewhere go from house fco house demanding food and money and singing songs of blessing on the generous householders.

One

of

them

carries

the doors.

All the characters dance together,

a phallos with which he knocks at some brandishing

drawn swords, and an obscene pantomime is acted on straw heaps in front of the house by two men, one disguised as a woman. Then
follows a sort of preliminary act, the

mock forging of a ploughshare by the "smith" and his wife, the yoking of the plough which is drawn round the village square and the sowing of seed. Next comes the play proper. The old woman Babo comes in 1 It was seen by Mr R. M. Dawkins in 1906; see "The Modem Carnival in
Thrace and the Cult of Dionysos," J.H.S. xxvi. (1906) 191, and A. "North Greek Festivals," B.S.A. xvi. (1909-1910) 232.
J. B.

Wace,

THE FEETILITY PLAY OR YEAR DRAMA

with the baby in the likno or cradle-basket.

23

"the baby
appetite,

is

getting too big for the basket."

drinli

She declares that The child has a huge

a wife.

demands food and

and

finally calls for

One

of the girls is

then pursued by one of the

men and brought

to the child,

now grown to maturity, as bride. At this point comes a notable interruption; before the wedding can take place, the second man comes in as antagonist to hinder the wedding. A fight
ensues and ultimately the antagonist
is

shot

down by the

original

bridegroom. The slayer traces a hne round the supposed slain

indicating a grave.

He then pretends to flay the dead man. Mean-

time the other bride raises a loud lament and throws herself over the prostrate body. In the lament the slayer and the rest of the actors
join.

Then

follows the parody of a Christian funeral. Suddenly

to

the dead

man comes

The play proper

the plough prelude.

is

up and the play proper ends. by a plough ceremony similar to This time the two brides are yoked to the
life,

gets

followed

plough and drag

plough
is

it

twice round the village square.

While the

being dragged chorus and spectators cry aloud:

May

wheat he ten piastres the bushel! Rye, five piastres the

three piastres the bushel!

basJcet! Barley,

Amen,

God, that the poor

may

eat! Yea,

God, thai poor folk be filled!

The intent of the whole ritual could not be clearer, it is a fertility drama "that the poor may eat." The central notion is the same as that of the rite at Chaeronea, "Out with Hunger, in with Health and Wealth," only the primary notion has become amphfied and humanized, it has become a cycle of the hfe of man and the life
of the year.

In that cycle two events are cardinal. The Fight (agon) and the Death swiftly followed by the Resurrection. The Fight in variant
forms is world-wide and the Fight of Summer and Winter variously disguised, the Fight of the Old Year and the New, of Darkness and Light, the Fight of the Old King with the Young, of the

Father with the Son,

of the

Agon

dwindles

down

into a

Hero with the Monster. The great Tug of War widely practised as a

magical Fertihty Rite. The Death and Resurrection have the Uke magical intent, and
here the essential
rite is

the Resurrection, the Death

is

but the

necessary preliminary. Sometimes as in the rites of

Tammuz and

24

PRIMITIVE RITUAL

Adonis^ the lamentations over the death develop so portentously that they tend to obscure the rite of resurrection, but the rite is

always there, witness the ritual

lamentation comes:

hymn

to Adonis

after the long

Where grass was not, there grass is eaten, Where water was not, water is drunk,
WTiere cattle sheds are not, cattle sheds are built.

For those who see in these Year-Daimons or Vegetation Spirits only actual men, definite heroes who died and were buried in iparticular tombs, these resurrection rites present a serious difficulty; the actual historical hero does die

not

rise again. If the rites of

and is buried, he does the folk-drama are purely commemoraIf these rites

tive then
are, as

why

introduce a resurrection ceremony?

we believe them to be^,

the utterance of man's ardent desire

and the commemoration with magical intent of nature's annual doings, all is clear. The annual course of nature knows an annual resurrection and on its happening all man's life and prosperity
depend.

Of recent years research over the most widespread areas has brought to light in very singular and convincing fashion the tenacity and vitality of the Folk-Play or Fertility Drama^. It
survives not only in children's games and peasant festivals but in the forms or moulds that it has lent to literature. Among the

Rig- Veda
dialogue

hymns

for

example

it

has been shown* that certain

to a primitive form of ritual drama, the intent here, as elsewhere, being purely magical, the stimulation of powers of fertility in man and cattle, or the letting loose for the like purpose of the powers of rain and moisture of springs and rivers. Behind the literary hymn form he the fertility dances of the armed da imons, the Salii, the Maruts of ancient India. More familiar and perhaps to us more convincing is the fact that Greek Tragedy owes to this Fertility Drama not indeed its material but the form in which that material is cast. After a detailed examination of the plays and fragments Professor
Langdon, Tammuz and Ishtar, p. 23. We do not for a moment deny that the rites often and indeed usually crystallize about an historical kernel as e.g. in the Christian religion 3 For the whole subject see E. K. Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage, for May Games, Sword Dances and Mummers' Play, vol. i. pp. 160-227. Clarendon
^ 2

poems go back undoubtedly

Press, 1903.
*

Leopold von Schroeder, Mysierium und

Mimus im Rig-

Veda. Leipzig,

908.


THE FERTILITY PLAY OR YEAR DRAMA
Murray^ has come to the conclusion
25

and few now gainsay him

that while the contents of the plots come from the heroic saga the ritual forms in which that content is cast derive straight from

the dromena the doings of the Year-Daimon. Such forms are the Prologue, the Agon, the Pathos, the Messenger's Speech, the Thre-

nos or Lamentation, the Anagnorisis or Recognition and the

final

Theophany. Certain
in the Sacred in

of these forms, notably the

Agon, survive

Games

of the Greeks, but here for the

shadowy fashion

since they are well nigh

most part submerged by a

growing athleticism. Tragedy which took its plots, its content from the heroic saga, from the lives and struggles of individual heroes, ended in death, because in this world the human individual knows no resurrection. Comedy^ is nearer to the original folkplay and finds its consummation in a revel and a marriage. Still more strange is it to find the ritual mould surviving even in the plays of Shakespeare^. The Hamlet-saga Hke the Orestessaga has behind it the ancient and world-wide battle of Summer and Winter, of the Old King and the New, of Life and Death, of Fertility and Barrenness behind the tragic fooling, as behind the Old King Oedipus is the figure of the scapegoat, the whole tragic katharsis rests on the expulsion of evil in the ritual of the spring Renouveau. The examination of the elder Eddie poems'* shows
;

that the theory of their origin in primitive ritual

Finally and perhaps most strangely of

drama

correlates

a number of facts which else appear meaningless and unrelated.

all it has recently been shown^ that the legend of the Holy Grail has a hke ritual foundation. In the Grail literature "we possess a unique example of the restatement of an ancient and august Ritual in terms of imperishable Romance." The question of the influence of folk-plays and fertility dramas on various forms of literature has now long passed beyond the
1

"Excursus on the Ritual Forms preserved

in

Greek Tragedy," in Themis,

p. 341.
2 F. M. Comford, The Origin of Attic Com.edy, 1914, and "The Origin of the Olympic Games," being chapter vn of Themis. ^ Hamlet and Orestes. The Annual Shakespeare Lecture before the British Academy, 1914. Gilbert Murray. * Bertha S. Phillpotts, The Elder Edda and Ancient Scandinavian Drama, p. 198. Cambridge University Press, 1920. ^ Jessie L. Weston, From Ritual to Romance, Cambridge University Press,

1920.

26
region of conjecture.

PEIMITIVE EITUAL
It
is

firmly based on fact

it

and widely

ac-

cepted. It would be a delight to follow

into further fields^ but

the task before us

to

now

is

quite other.

We

have to note not the

evolution of literature but the primitive beginnings of theology,

mark how the god

The
ritual

rose out of the rite.

dance then is dead, but its ghost still lives on in and wakes to a feeble fluttering life three times a year. At the Festival of Corpus Christi, during the Octave of the Immaculate Conception and during the three days of Carnival (when I had the good fortune to see it) the ritual dance is danced in the Holy of Holies behind the great gold grille immediately in front of the High Altar. It is danced by the so-called Seises or groups of choristers. Their number has now dwindled to
Seville Cathedral^

two groups

of five.

This dance of the Seises has been to the Church the cause of no small embarrassment and she has frequently but so far vainly

sought to aboUsh it. She admits that its origin is "perdue dans la nuit des temps." It is frankly pagan and we can scarcely avoid the conjecture that it took its origin in the dances of the Kouretes in Crete in honour of the Mother and the Son. At Carnival, when I saw it, the dance took place after Vespers.

The song with which the dance was accompanied was a prayer to the Sun, but it was to the setting, not as with the Kouretes the rising Sun. It was a prayer for light and healing. The dance

now attenuated to a single formal step. It is decorous even prim in character. But the fading light, the wondrous setting, above all, the harsh plangent Spanish voices of the boy singers are strangely moving. It is a sight once seen never forgotten. Great Pan is dead but his ghost still dances.
is
1 I would here record my conviction which I hope to establish in another connection that the widespread legend, Don Juan, arose from a fertility ritual. As a similar survival may be noted the Passion play of Hasan and Husain, still annually enacted in Persia and India. Taking its rise undoubtedly in a historical

fact, it is cast in the

2

form

of a ritual

drama.
is

All that

is

known

of the history of this strange survival

set

down by

de la Rosa y Lopez in his Los Seises de la Catedral de Sevilla, 1904. The modern music which now accompanies the dance is published in Baile de Seises en la Catedral de Sevilla, para piano con letra por D. Hilarion Eslava,
Sevilla.

Don Simon

II

PRIMITIVE THEOLOGY
"God
is

my

desire."

Tolstoi.

In all the primitive ritual so far examined, in the rites of Totemism,

of Initiation Ceremonies, the

King-God and the

Fertility

Drama,

one surprising fact stands out clean and clear; we have nothing that we in our modern sense of the words could call the worship
of a

god

of sanctity

closely there are Yet all the while if present elements which must and did go to the making of a god. Only it is important to grasp at the outset firmly this fact, that
it is

we have abundance, of we examine the matter

divinity nothing.

"

possible to

have a

living

and vigorous rehgion without a

an image-maker i.

theology.

Man, the psychologists

tell us, is essentially

He

cannot perform the simplest operation without forming of it sort of correlative idea. It has been much disputed whether the mylh arises out of the rite or the rite out of the myth, whether a man thinks something because he does it or does it because he

some

thinks

it.

As a matter

of fact the

two operations arose together

animal
first

and are

practically inseparable.

An

perceives, peris

ception immediately sets

up

reaction, that reaction

two-fold,

perception sets

up action

in the body, representation in the mind.

not of course the same as a simple action. A rite is it must never be forgotten an action redone (commemorative) or predone (anticipatory and magical). There is therefore always in

A
a

rite is

a certain tension either of remembrance or anticipation and this tension emphasizes the emotion and leads on to representation 2. It is moreover, psychology tells us, mainly from delayed rerite

who act from what or at least swiftly on immediately we call instinct action follows system is more comnervous where the perception, but in man
actions that representation springs. In animals

plex perception
^

is

not immediately transformed into action, there

' '

For the analysis of magic and its dependence on free ideas see my Alpha and Omega, pp. 187-195. 2 1 have elsewhere analysed the psychology of the dpu)ixvov or rite. See Themis, pp. 42-49, and my Ancient Art and Ritual, in the Home University
Library, pp. 35-44.

28
is

PRIMITIVE THEOLOGY

an interval for choice between several possible courses. Percepis pent up and, helped by emotion, becomes conscious representation. In this momentary halt between perception and reaction all our images, ideas, in fact our whole mental life, is built up. If we were a mass of well combined instincts, that is if the cycle of perception and action were instantly fulfilled, we should have no representation and hence no art and no theology. In fact in a word religious presentation, mythology or theology, as we like to call it, springs like ritual from arrested, unsatisfied desire^. We
tion
figure to ourselves

what we want, we
is

create an image

and that

image is our god. A god so projected

part of the worshipper and

is felt

and

realized as such; divinity has not yet separated off

from humanity.

The dancer

in the sacred rite cannot be said to worship his god, he hves him, experiences him. The worshipper at this stage might communicate with his god, he would not offer him sacrificial gifts

by what process did severance take but two points suggest themselves. The process of personification led to severance and personification was undoubtedly helped by two things: (1) the existence of a leader to the band of worshippers, (2) the making of puppets and images.
or prayer.
arises,

The question

place?

We cannot answer with certainty,

Collective group-emotion is strong, but, dominant though it be, might never be strong enough to induce personification but for a nucleus of actual fact. The band of dancers has a leader, that leader is in a sense separate and about him emotion focuses. Once elected as representative spokesman and chief-dancer, he is in a
it

sense insulated
tion

the rest of the band regard

is

and some

incipient awe, he

sacred and on the

him with contemplaway to become

is what the Greeks called a Baciuovcov daimons, and not far from being the accompUshed theos or god. In this matter we are on safe ground for in

separately divine.

He

ayov/xevo<;, leader of

Hymn of the Kouretes Zeus himself as chief dancer is addressed as Greatest Kouros or Young Man, head of the initiate band^.
the famous
1 This remains equally true if, with the new psychological school of "Behaviourists," we regard the primitive element in desire as an impulse away from the actual rather than an attraction towards the ideal. See Bertrand Russell, Analysis of Mind, p. 68. 2

See Themis, pp. 30-49.

COLLECTIVE GROUP-EMOTION
The seasonal character
recurrent
is

29

of all these rites helped

on the process
is

of personification that led to severance.

perception that

apt to lead on to a conception. The plural generates

the abstract. The recurrent May-Kings and Jack-o'-the-Greens

and Deaths get a kind of permanent separate life of their own and become separate beings. In this way they help to beget a kind of daimon or spirit; from being annual they became a sort
of perennial

though not yet immortal god.

We

are apt to think

Death as " personifying the Spirit of Vegetation" or of Death. But primitive man does not first conceive an abstraction and then embody it. The process is the reverse. He first joerceives the actual leader and then helped by frequent repetitions conceives a daimon of the dance. There is another practical help to the determination and stability of his image. We find in many rites an actual puppet or animal refashioned or rechosen from year to year. The puppet or animal is a nucleus, a focus for emotions and floating conceptions. If the puppet be a human doll the daimon will take human form, if an animal the god will be theriomorphic. Out of the puppet arose the idol and to the idol certainly among the Greeks the gods owe much of the beauty and the fixity of their forms. Moreover the puppet necessarily fosters the notion of separateness. You may

and speak

of the

King

of the

May

or the

identify yourself with the leader of the band, the

common dance

and song compel that, but, though the puppet is the focus of your emotion, you know it is not you, you are outside it, you contemplate it and you may ultimately worship it. " Le dieu c'est
le

desir exteriorise, personnifie"^.

This analysis of the making of a god lends to our outlook on

religion generally a singular unity

and

clarity.

Primitive ritual

we saw concerned
life,

itself

with the conservation and furtherance of

in action of the will to Uve, the " desire

with the nurture of the individual and the reproduction of the

race. It

was the expression

to have hfe and to have

it

more abundantly." What

ritual ex-

presses in action theology utters in concomitant representation,

the gods are images of desire.

aspects
is

Religion then in these its two no longer an attitude towards the unseen and unknown but an emotion towards the known and experienced; it is the
1

E. Doutte, Magie

et

Religion, 1909, p. 601.

30

PRIMITIVE THEOLOGY
human
will

offspring not of fear but of desire, the gods are

and

passion incarnate. It
rite that

is

only

when the god

sterile,

is

separated from the

he dies down into a

immobile perfection i.

The daimon is born of the rite and with the rite which begat him he is doomed. The gradual dwindUng and death of the rite is inevitable. Magic is found again and again to be a failure. It does not bring the expected help and bit by bit it is discredited.
it is out of this discrediting of magic that Finding himself helpless in the face of natural powers man tries to pull the strings of higher powers and so obtain control. He imagines gods and tries to influence them by prayer and sacrifice. More recent psychology would state the

According to Dr Frazer
reUgion
is

born.

case otherwise.
rite

The

rite fails

but the daimon projected from the

remains. The presentation once

made

still

holds the imaginais

tion.

But because
were cut

of the failure of the rite the presentation

dehumanized daimon bit by bit develops the god. He is segregated aloof from the worshipper, but he is made in the image of that worshipper, so must be approached by human means, known by experience to be valid with other human beings, and such are prayer, praise and
it

as

loose.

Out

of this desolate,

sacrifice.

This separation of god from worshipper, this segregation of the image from the imagination that begot it, is manifestly a late and
artificial stage, but in most religions it develops into a doctrine and even hardens into something of a dogma. Man utterly forgets that his gods are man-begotten and he stresses the gulf that separates him from his own image and presentation. This is very notable in Greek rehgion. The Greeks being a people of high imaginative power are at the mercy of their own imaginations. Pindar is instant in stressing the gulf that separates humanity from divinity. To seek to become even like the gods to him as a Greek savoured of insolence. " Strive not thou to become a god "2. "Desire not thou soul of mine, life of the immortals "^ And yet oddly enough the old reahty and actuahty even in Greek religion again and again crops up. Man hungers to be one again with the image he has himself made. The old kinship pulls at
^ 2

somewhat

See Themis, chapter x. "The Olympians."

Find. 01. V. 58.
a

Find. Pyth. in. 59.

BIOLOGICAL FUNCTION OF THEOLOGY

31

him. So in the mystery religions the goal is always reunion with the divine. To the initiate it is said at last: "Thou art become God from Man"^. Nothing short of this contents him.

At first it would seem as if this stage of religion in which the image of the god is completely projected and segregated, a stage which for convenience sake we may call Olym'pianism^, is, even if inevitable, a set back. These projected "Olympians" though they are ideals are by no means ideal; they reflect the passions of their worshippers and not infrequently lag behind them in morality. Jahweh is even more unbridled, hcentious, vengeful than his people. The average Athenian would have been ashamed to emulate the amours of Zeus. Moreover the fact that these Olympians are
completely segregated, that they are the vehicles of
all sorts of

primitive tabus and sanctities, even the detail that they are

lodged in separate and sacred houses, removes them from

of

all

chance

wholesome

criticism

" Shall not the

Judge

of all the

world do

right?"

What then
in

is

the biological function of this theology?

of Ufe?

Does

it

any way serve the purposes

Recent psychology
is

ready with an answer simple and

illu-

minating. In this way.

We recognize now-a-days two types of thinking. The first which

is what we normally mean by and seeks to direct it." It is exhausting and is the sort of thinking employed in all scientific research; it looks for adaptations and creates innovations. With that type of thought, which is comparatively late in development, though in embryo it may have existed from the outset, we have little to do in reUgion. The second kind of thought is what is called " dream or phantasythinking." It turns away from reality and sets free subjective

Jung 2

calls

"directed thinking"

thinking.

It "imitates reality

wishes. In regard to adaptation, because of its neglect of reaUty,

it is
it is

wholly unproductive. Giving free rein to impulse as

not exhausting. Freud
calls this sort of
it is

it

does,

mind-functioning the

"pleasure and pain principle,"

^

ontogenetically older than

Orphic Gold Tablet. See Prolegomena, p. 663. ^ For a detailed analysis of Olympianism and its contrast with daimonworship see two chapters, ix. and x., in Themis, "From Daimon to Olympian" and "The Olympians." ^ Psychology of the Unconscious, translated by B. M. Hinkle, 1919.

32
directed tMnking,

PRIMITIVE THEOLOGY
it is typified

and savages and by those

of adults in their dreams, reveries

by the mental operations of children and

mental disorders. It is from this early infantile type of dream or phantasythinking engendered by the fertility rite that primitive theology and mythology spring. They do not seek adaptation to fact, they turn away from reality and utter unfulfilled desire. "The gods are libido," says Jung boldly. If we may be allowed to substitute
for the

word libido with its offensive and misleading connotations some such term as "vital impulse," Jung's proposition may be accepted of all the primitive divinities^. We imagine what we lack, the "dying resurrected gods and heroes are but the projected hopes and fears of humanity." The older mind still buried in all of us, the mind of dream-fantasies is, and always has been, incessantly weaving dream-images of imaginary wish fulfilment. The soul in self-defence, unable as yet to adapt itself to its en-

vironment, finding that Fate withholds satisfaction in the visible

world, would fain

grasp
And

this sorry

scheme

of things entire
it

And having
Remould
it

shattered

to bits

nearer to the heart's desire.

is

the imaged agent of this remoulding

the god, "our

own

vast image, glory crowned." In like manner arises the myth. The

myth

is

not an attempted

explanation of either facts or

thinking,"
it is

rites.

Its origin

is

not in "directed
is

not rationalization.

The myth

a fragment of

the soul life, the dream-thinking of the people, as the dream is the myth of the individual^. As Freud says, "it is probable that myths correspond to the distorted residue of the wish phantasies
of

whole nations, the secularized dreams of young humanity." Mythical tradition it would seem does not set forth any actual account of old events that is the function of legend but rather m5rth acts in such a way that it always reveals a wish-thought

common to humanity and constantly rejuvenated. What then is the biological function of theology and myth? We hear much now-a-days of the danger of " suppressed com1

In every divinity two factors are observable

(1

the "vital impulse "

common
John

to all nature-^, (2) the projection of human desire. 2 See W. H. E.. Rivers, "Dreams and Primitive Culture" in Bulletin of

Rylands Library, Manchester, vol

iv.

3 and 4, p. 387.

BIOLOGICAL FUNCTION OF THEOLOGY

plexes." It
is

33

indeed in the discovery of the danger of these

complexes and the methods of their cure that the main originality of the Freudian school consists. Man finds himself in inevitable conflict with some and often many elements of his environment he shirks the conflict. Just because it is harassing and depressing

he forcibly drives
life is
flict

it

out of his conscious

life.

But

his unconscious

beyond his control. Into that unconscious stratum the consinks and Uves there an uninterrupted life. Now the function
is

of reUgion
of conflict.

to prevent, to render needless just this suppression

Man

has

made

for himself representations of beings

stronger and more splendid than himself, he has lost all sense that they are really projections of his own desire and to these beings

he hands over his

conflict,

he no longer needs to banish the

conflict into the unconscious but gods will see to it and fight on his side: " God is our refuge and strength," "Casting all your care

upon Him

for

He

careth for you."

The function

of theology

is

to keep the conflict that would be submerged

in the sphere of

the conscious and prevent

its

development into a mischievous

subliminal complex. Theology thus is seen to have high biological value. Probably but for its aid man long before he developed
sufficient reason to

adapt himself to his environment must have

gone under.
be seen that for this purpose of refuge a god of type serves best, A god of the daimon type is too the Olympian relief. The more completely segregated is for intimate near, too serves as safety valve. Modern psychology he better the the god
It will readily

has in truth dived deep into the "ocean of insanity upon which "i, and knowing the Uttle barque of human reason insecurely floats this insecurity and this frailty modern psychology teaches us to

be careful how we Ughtly tamper with the faiths of others, how we try to rid a man of what may seem to us a burden unbearable but may be to him an incalculable solace and reUef And further the new psychology sets theology in a new and kinder light. Those of us who are free-thinkers used to think of it rationahstically as a bundle of dead errors, or at best as a subject dead and dry. But conceive of it in this new fight and theology becomes a subject
.

Bertrand Russell, The practice and theory of Bolshevism,

127.

H.B.

34
of passionate

PRIMITIVE THEOLOGY
and absorbing
interest, it is the science of the

images

of

human

desire, impulse, aspiration.

Our consideration
fact

of primitive theology has

then led to the same

conclusion as our consideration of primitive ritual.

They

are in

but two faces or modes of the same impulse

the impulse to
is

the conservation of Ufe. Personification, theology

inevitable utterance of

but a natural,
it

human

desire.

As Shakespeare had

long ago
Such
That,
It
tricks
if it

hath strong imagination,

would but apprehend some joy, comprehends some bringer of that joy.

It is not surprising therefore that recent writers

on

religion should

tend to define religion itself in terms no longer of knowledge and behef but in terms of hfe. Thus in The Tree of Life^ Ernest Crawley writes, the permanent source of rehgion is " the instructive

and again, "the primary function of rehgion and consecrate life." Religion "consecrates also the it surrounds with an insulation of taboo those means of hfe critical moments and periods in which the sources of hfe are in danger birth, puberty, marriage, sickness and death." God is in very hteral truth the Desire of the Nations^. "In its widest sense," says a recent American writer^, "religion means for any species that degree of interest that it can experience in what makes for its own continuity," and more exphcitly "Rehgion is the greatest thing in the world of hving men. Twentieth century reli'Qion is an enlightened consciousness of the impulse that makes for species continuity, and an intelligent concern for all the values
affirmation of hfe,"
is

to affirm

that minister to this end."

How

far such a statement

is

adequate

we have now
1 2

to consider.

Pp. 258 and 270. I do not propose here even to resume my discussion of mana in Themis, pp. 65-69, and Alpha and Omega, pp. 167-173. It is sufficiently obvious that Freud's libido and primitive mana are roughly commensurate. To primitive man the as to the new psychostuff of the worid is neither mental nor material but a neutral stuff or force out of which both are compounded. See logists Beriirand Russell, Analysis of Mind, passim a book which only appeared

when
3

these sheets were in proof.

Oriando 0. Norris in

"What is

Religion," from The American Schoolmaster,

Jan. 1919. YpsUanti, Michigan.

Ill

THE RELIGION OF TO -DAY

VIA CRUCIS, VIA LUCIS

Initiation Ceremonies, of Fertility Dramas, is

RiMiTiVE RITUAL, the ritual of Totemism, of King-Gods, of dead to-day or lingers

on only among remote savages and in obscure country haunts. It has been driven out inch by inch by science, by "directed" as opposed to phantasy thinking. The ritual even of sacrifice that once played so large a part in man's life is dead and even the
custom
of prayer for material

goods languishes. In

like fashion

primitive divinities, daimons of the year, have died with the rites

that begot them, and divinities of the " Olympian" type are losing

They are seen for what they are, objets d'art, creations man's imagination, they no longer are incumbent on man's life, imposing an obligation of obedience as ideals they may command adoration, they can no longer compel worship^. Jahweh is seen
their hold. of
;

to be a projection of

side with Zeus, Poseidon

Hebrew and

desire

and takes
Is this

his place side

by
Is

Apollo.

then the end?

our twentieth century religion only an " enhghtened consciousness of the impulse that makes for species continuity," and as such is
it

best rechristened Science?

The

essence of

Modernism the Pope himself has

told us

is

Im-

manence, and the statement is instructive. Immanence is of course no new thing, it is as old as S. Augustine^. " I have gone astray," he says, "hke a Sheep that was lost, seeking thee with great anxiety without, when yet thou art witlun, and dwelleth in my soul, if it desire thy presence. I wandered about the
Villages

and Streets of the City of this world, enquiring for thee everywhere, and found thee not because I expected to meet that
:

abroad which

all

the while I had at

consulting the creatures abroad, " I

1

home came home

" at

And
last,
'

thus, after

descended
Heretics
'

Some
For

portion of this chapter was read before the Society of

on

Feb. 27, 1921.

-

this distinction

between art and

religion, see

my Ancient Art and Ritual,

p. 227.
3

Meditations, trans. Stanhope, 1704, p. 224.

36
into myself,"

THE RELIGION OF TO-DAY

and at
last,

" Thanks to that hght, which discovered

thee to Me and
I find

Me to myself. For in finding and in knowing myself

lives

and know thee." There

the City of Mansoul.

no mystic who has not exis

perienced Immanence, and assuredly to S. Augustine the City of

God

is

So now-a-days God

no longer

envisaged as external, as Creator, King, Judge, Ruler, Lawgiver, or

even as Father and Saviour, nor even as the "Friend behind phenomena," He has gone inward, He has become the "undying human memory, the increasing human will." Henceforth the

Kingdom

of

God

is

within us^.

For the new Immanentist, creeds have become all but insignificant, they are to him not living expressions of truth apprehended but ancient barriers, dams artificially built to stem the inrush of living waters. The whole centre of gravity has in fact shifted from authority to experience. The new Immanence is nearer akin to the old daimon-dance than to any ordered Olympian ritual of prayer and sacrifice. It is very near to that primal mystery, the impulse of life, which it was the function of primitive rehgion to conserve. Are we then to accept this solution that the Immanent God is nothing but the mystery of the whole of things and that
the function of

modem

rehgion

is

the realization of
if

self

within

the limits of the community?

And

so

why

seek for god rather

within the limits of the

answer

is

that only there can

human self than in external nature? The we find him. In the natural world

we

find

the biological world

mystery enough, but also laws appeaUng to our minds, in we find a law which is eternal change, in the

human spirit alone we find the functions of value and and these functions are rehgious. Primitive rehgion aimed at the impulsion and conservation of life; the rehgion of to-day aims at the bettering of hfe, by the exercise of the function of choice and the practice of asceticism. After this fashion. The core and essence of rehgion to-day is the practice of asceticism. Concerned as we have been hitherto with rehgion as the impulsion of hfe this may seem almost a paradox it is really a very simple and obvious truth. Physical hfe once secured by civihzation and the general advance of science, rehgion turns not
world of the
choice
;

See

J.

E. Harrison, Rationalism and Reaction,

Conway Memorial

Lecture,

1919, p. 19.

ASCETICISM
to the impulsion of
life

37

but to

its

betterment, and the betterment

evil.

of life involves asceticism

the

expulsion of

And

be

it re-

membered

asceticism as

we have

already seen Ues at the very-

form of tabu. Tabu in primitive days was imposed by the group in the interests of the group^, tabu to-day in the form of asceticism is imposed by the individual
basis of primitive reUgion ia the
in the interests of his

own

spiritual hfe, of

what we

call his soul.

Perhaps

it

needed a Russian philosopher writing in the Russian

this simple truth

tongue to see

and get at the true

biological

function of asceticism, for language always thinks ahead of conscious ratiocination. The Russians have two ways of making the

am ashamed." They say either "to me is shame," Uterally, "to me is cold shuddering," or "to me is consciousness "2, "I am conscious." To the Russian and to the
simple statement, "I
greatest of their philosophers, Soloviov,
of

shame

is

the sign manual

human consciousness and shame issues in asceticism. The normal animal save where artificialized by man knows no shame. Bodily
facts,

whether of nutrition or sex, have for him no embarrassment. Of such facts man is and perennially has been ashamed, not because they are morally wrong, i.e. non-social they are in fact highly social and necessary ^but simply because they are of his

animal body, they are what S. Paul calls "carnal." Shame is to man at once his means of salvation and his high prerogative.
This

new

reUgion, this bettering of

life,

involves conflict.

It is

the setting of the will towards what Bergson calls the "ascending wave" of the elan vital against the descending wave which he calls matter. We belong in part to that descending wave, hence the conflict,
its pull is

and

spirit.

The

conflict

conscious part of us.

always upon us even to the rending of flesh cannot be avoided. It belongs to the Psycho-analysis has its work to do. But,

1 The social character of religion has been well brought out and possibly somewhat over-emphasized in a recent book by George Willis Cooke, The Social

Evolution of Religion. Boston, 1920. 2 MHt, CTHJtHO or MH-fe COBiCTHO.

life

A good general account and philosophy which have had immense influence in Russia

of Soloviov's
will

be found

in J. B. Severac, Vladimir Soloviov, in the series Grands philosophes fran^ais et etrangers, published by Louis Michaud. One important work appears in English

under the title of The Justification of the Good, translated by Natalie A. Duddington.
Constable.

38

THE RELIGION OF TO-DAY

all all

when
and

your suppressed complexes have been dragged to Ught your subconscious dunghill is spaded out in front of you,
self

your conscious
lower. It
evil, i.e.
is

has

still

to choose the higher

and refuse the

useless to

deny

like

a Christian Scientist the fact that

the lesser good, exists we must frankly face its existence and refuse participation. But why should the flesh be shameful? This is the cardinal question. Simply because there is in man something else which is rarer, finer, what we call "better," than the flesh that is the spirit. Simply because in the eternal nature of things the better is the enemy of the good, the better is ashamed of the good. Simply

because

we

are, as

human

beings, conscious of a scale of values,

a lower and a higher, a better and a worse. This scale of values

we find not in external nature but in our own souls, and own souls henceforth is our religion our conduct towards

in our

others

is

matter for our moraUty. Asceticism

is

the setting out of the

to us now, at least

soul towards the higher value. ReHgion

means

to me, not cosmology, not a story told to account for

are,

how

things

not ritual or theology, the various projections of our

own

unsatisfied desire; religion

means a way

of life possible because

we

are not only animals but

that you and I are good but that

and that
is

in order to

human animals; it means the sense we can and mean to be better, be better we will if need be and need

practise asceticism, suffer sharp pain

and desolation

in the

death, the crucifixion of animal desires.

is

All religion in all time

concerned with hfe, the religion of to-day with the betterment

life.

of

But, thank Heaven, asceticism

sing thing, negation.

is

not

all

or chiefly that depres-

The negations of the Decalogue died with the jealous God who dictated them died, that is, as rehgious impulses. The new Immanence is vital, creative, it says: "you, that is the best in you, is one with God, is God, your work is the divine activity, 'whatsoever thy hand findeth to do do it with thy might.' " In the old days most rehgiously minded people were troubled by the thought that they were not " devoting themselves to others" self-sacrifice was felt to be incumbent, the only road to peace. Hence the constant itch for philanthropy. Now religion says all things are possible and permissible, only remember

ASCETICISM
there
is

39

a better as well as a good. The instincts are good and remain the prime motors to thought. The personal emotions are good, the best of which the spiritually undeveloped are capable,

But

yet in the exercise of these you but strengthen your selfhood. in science, that is the disinterested search after truth, in art
is

which

creative self-absorption,

bigger and

you lose yourself in something more permanent and these henceforth rank as of the
is

highest rehgious value.

Asceticism

it is also, it is chiefly,

then not only resistance to the descending wave, the rising on the upward wave, buoyant,

triumphant. To the Greek asceticism is " the attuning of an instrument," not the mortification of the flesh. It is just the "training
or discipUne that
for
is necessary for eminence in art, in athletics as eminence in virtue. The Greek words acrK7]cn<^, a per/) level

these distinctions "1.

To conclude,
tells of

it is

in the spirit of the purest reUgion that a poet

the ascetic

poet

who

at least for a time renounced

human

for discarnate joy Keats, who, to quote the words of a recent critic^^ was " great in his actual poetic achievement, great
all,

in his possession of the rarest faculty of

the power and the

desire to

make

his nature single, to refine his

own

being, in the

words of Anton Chehov, 'to squeeze the slave out of himself.'" Keats writes to his sister-in-law:
Notwithstanding your happiness and your recommendations I hope I Though the most beautiful creature were waiting for me at the end of a journey or a walk, though the carpet were of silk, the curtain of the morning clouds, the chairs stuffed with cygnets' down, the food manna, the wine above claret, the windows opening on Winandermere, I should not feel or rather my happiness would not be so fine, as
shall never marry.

my

solitude

is

sublime.

me home. The

There, instead of what I have described, there is a sublimity to welcome roaring of the wind is my wife and the stars through my

window-pane are

I feel more and more every day, as my children imagination strengthens, that I do not live in this world alone, but in a thousand worlds. No sooner am I alone than shapes of epic greatness are stationed around me and serve my spirit the ofiice which is equivalent

my

to a king's bodyguard.

1 J.
2

Mr

A. K. Thomson, Greeks and Barbarians, p. 110. Middleton Murry, Nation and Athenaeum, Feb. 26, 1921.

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