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+Produced by Donald Lainson
+
+
+
+
+
+MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION
+
+Volume One
+
+
+By Andrew Lang
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  PREFACE TO NEW IMPRESSION.
+
+  PREFACE TO NEW EDITION.
+
+  CHAPTER I.--SYSTEMS OF MYTHOLOGY.
+
+  Definitions of religion--Contradictory evidence--"Belief in
+  spiritual beings"--Objection to Mr. Tylor's definition--Definition
+  as regards this argument--Problem: the contradiction between
+  religion and myth--Two human moods--Examples--Case of Greece--
+  Ancient mythologists--Criticism by Eusebius--Modern mythological
+  systems--Mr. Max Muller--Mannhardt.
+
+
+  CHAPTER II.--NEW SYSTEM PROPOSED.
+
+  Chapter I. recapitulated--Proposal of a new method: Science of
+  comparative or historical study of man--Anticipated in part by
+  Eusebius, Fontenelle, De Brosses, Spencer (of C. C. C., Cambridge),
+  and Mannhardt--Science of Tylor--Object of inquiry: to find
+  condition of human intellect in which marvels of myth are parts of
+  practical everyday belief--This is the savage state--Savages
+  described--The wild element of myth a survival from the savage
+  state--Advantages of this method--Partly accounts for wide
+  DIFFUSION as well as ORIGIN of myths--Connected with general
+  theory of evolution--Puzzling example of myth of the water-
+  swallower--Professor Tiele's criticism of the method--
+  Objections to method, and answer to these--See Appendix B.
+
+
+  CHAPTER III.--THE MENTAL CONDITION OF SAVAGES--CONFUSION WITH
+                  NATURE--TOTEMISM.
+
+  The mental condition of savages the basis of the irrational element
+  in myth--Characteristics of that condition: (1) Confusion of all
+  things in an equality of presumed animation and intelligence;
+  (2) Belief in sorcery; (3) Spiritualism; (4) Curiosity; (5) Easy
+  credulity and mental indolence--The curiosity is satisfied, thanks
+  to the credulity, by myths in answer to all inquiries--Evidence for
+  this--Mr. Tylor's opinion--Mr. Im Thurn--Jesuit missionaries'
+  Relations--Examples of confusion between men, plants, beasts and
+  other natural objects--Reports of travellers--Evidence from
+  institution of totemism--Definition of totemism--Totemism in
+  Australia, Africa, America, the Oceanic Islands, India, North Asia--
+  Conclusions: Totemism being found so widely distributed, is a proof
+  of the existence of that savage mental condition in which no line
+  is drawn between men and the other things in the world.  This
+  confusion is one of the characteristics of myth in all races.
+
+
+  CHAPTER IV.--THE MENTAL CONDITION OF SAVAGES--MAGIC--
+                 METAMORPHOSIS--METAPHYSIC--PSYCHOLOGY.
+
+  Claims of sorcerers--Savage scientific speculation--Theory of
+  causation--Credulity, except as to new religious ideas--"Post hoc,
+  ergo propter hoc"--Fundamental ideas of magic--Examples:
+  incantations, ghosts, spirits--Evidence of rank and other
+  institutions in proof of confusions of mind exhibited in magical
+  beliefs.
+
+
+  CHAPTER V.--NATURE MYTHS.
+
+  Savage fancy, curiosity and credulity illustrated in nature myths--
+  In these all phenomena are explained by belief in the general
+  animation of everything, combined with belief in metamorphosis--Sun
+  myths, Asian, Australian, African, Melanesian, Indian, Californian,
+  Brazilian, Maori, Samoan--Moon myths, Australian, Muysca, Mexican,
+  Zulu, Macassar, Greenland, Piute, Malay--Thunder myths--Greek and
+  Aryan sun and moon myths--Star myths--Myths, savage and civilised,
+  of animals, accounting for their marks and habits--Examples of
+  custom of claiming blood kinship with lower animals--Myths of
+  various plants and trees--Myths of stones, and of metamorphosis
+  into stones, Greek, Australian and American--The whole natural
+  philosophy of savages expressed in myths, and survives in folk-lore
+  and classical poetry; and legends of metamorphosis.
+
+
+  CHAPTER VI.--NON-ARYAN MYTHS OF THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD AND OF MAN.
+
+  Confusions of myth--Various origins of man and of things--Myths of
+  Australia, Andaman Islands, Bushmen, Ovaherero, Namaquas, Zulus,
+  Hurons, Iroquois, Diggers, Navajoes, Winnebagoes, Chaldaeans,
+  Thlinkeets, Pacific Islanders, Maoris, Aztecs, Peruvians--
+  Similarity of ideas pervading all those peoples in various
+  conditions of society and culture.
+
+
+  CHAPTER VII.--INDO-ARYAN MYTHS--SOURCES OF EVIDENCE.
+
+  Authorities--Vedas--Brahmanas--Social condition of Vedic India--
+  Arts--Ranks--War--Vedic fetishism--Ancestor worship--Date of Rig-
+  Veda Hymns doubtful--Obscurity of the Hymns--Difficulty of
+  interpreting the real character of Veda--Not primitive but
+  sacerdotal--The moral purity not innocence but refinement.
+
+
+  CHAPTER VIII.--INDIAN MYTHS OF THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD AND OF MAN.
+
+  Comparison of Vedic and savage myths--The metaphysical Vedic
+  account of the beginning of things--Opposite and savage fable of
+  world made out of fragments of a man--Discussion of this hymn--
+  Absurdities of Brahmanas--Prajapati, a Vedic Unkulunkulu or Qat--
+  Evolutionary myths--Marriage of heaven and earth--Myths of Puranas,
+  their savage parallels--Most savage myths are repeated in Brahmanas.
+
+
+  CHAPTER IX.--GREEK MYTHS OF THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD AND MAN.
+
+  The Greeks practically civilised when we first meet them in Homer--
+  Their mythology, however, is full of repulsive features--The
+  hypothesis that many of these are savage survivals--Are there other
+  examples of such survival in Greek life and institutions?--Greek
+  opinion was constant that the race had been savage--Illustrations
+  of savage survival from Greek law of homicide, from magic,
+  religion, human sacrifice, religious art, traces of totemism, and
+  from the mysteries--Conclusion: that savage survival may also be
+  expected in Greek myths.
+
+
+  CHAPTER X.--GREEK COSMOGONIC MYTHS.
+
+  Nature of the evidence--Traditions of origin of the world and man--
+  Homeric, Hesiodic and Orphic myths--Later evidence of historians,
+  dramatists, commentators--The Homeric story comparatively pure--The
+  story in Hesiod, and its savage analogues--The explanations of the
+  myth of Cronus, modern and ancient--The Orphic cosmogony--Phanes
+  and Prajapati--Greek myths of the origin of man--Their savage
+  analogues.
+
+
+  CHAPTER XI.--SAVAGE DIVINE MYTHS.
+
+  The origin of a belief in GOD beyond the ken of history and of
+  speculation--Sketch of conjectural theories--Two elements in all
+  beliefs, whether of backward or civilised races--The Mythical and
+  the Religious--These may be coeval, or either may be older than the
+  other--Difficulty of study--The current anthropological theory--
+  Stated objections to the theory--Gods and spirits--Suggestion that
+  savage religion is borrowed from Europeans--Reply to Mr. Tylor's
+  arguments on this head--The morality of savages.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE TO NEW IMPRESSION.
+
+
+When this book first appeared (1886), the philological school of
+interpretation of religion and myth, being then still powerful in
+England, was criticised and opposed by the author. In Science, as on the
+Turkish throne of old, "Amurath to Amurath succeeds"; the philological
+theories of religion and myth have now yielded to anthropological
+methods. The centre of the anthropological position was the "ghost
+theory" of Mr. Herbert Spencer, the "Animistic" theory of Mr. E. R.
+Tylor, according to whom the propitiation of ancestral and other spirits
+leads to polytheism, and thence to monotheism. In the second edition
+(1901) of this work the author argued that the belief in a "relatively
+supreme being," anthropomorphic was as old as, and might be even older,
+than animistic religion. This theory he exhibited at greater length, and
+with a larger collection of evidence, in his Making of Religion.
+
+Since 1901, a great deal of fresh testimony as to what Mr. Howitt
+styles the "All Father" in savage and barbaric religions has accrued. As
+regards this being in Africa, the reader may consult the volumes of the
+New Series of the Journal of the Anthropological Institute, which are
+full of African evidence, not, as yet, discussed, to my knowledge, by
+any writer on the History of Religion. As late as Man, for July, 1906,
+No. 66, Mr. Parkinson published interesting Yoruba legends about Oleron,
+the maker and father of men, and Oro, the Master of the Bull Roarer.
+
+From Australia, we have Mr. Howitt's account of the All Father in his
+Native Tribes of South-East Australia, with the account of the All
+Father of the Central Australian tribe, the Kaitish, in North Central
+Tribes of Australia, by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen (1904), also The
+Euahlayi Tribe, by Mrs. Langley Parker (1906). These masterly books are
+indispensable to all students of the subject, while, in Messrs. Spencer
+and Gillen's work cited, and in their earlier Native Tribes of Central
+Australia, we are introduced to savages who offer an elaborate animistic
+theory, and are said to show no traces of the All Father belief.
+
+The books of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen also present much evidence as
+to a previously unknown form of totemism, in which the totem is not
+hereditary, and does not regulate marriage. This prevails among the
+Arunta "nation," and the Kaitish tribe. In the opinion of Mr. Spencer
+(Report Australian Association for Advancement of Science, 1904) and
+of Mr. J. G. Frazer (Fortnightly Review, September, 1905), this is
+the earliest surviving form of totemism, and Mr. Frazer suggests an
+animistic origin for the institution. I have criticised these views in
+The Secret of the Totem (1905), and proposed a different solution of the
+problem. (See also "Primitive and Advanced Totemism" in Journal of the
+Anthropological Institute, July, 1906.) In the works mentioned will be
+found references to other sources of information as to these questions,
+which are still sub judice. Mrs. Bates, who has been studying the
+hitherto almost unknown tribes of Western Australia, promises a book
+on their beliefs and institutions, and Mr. N. W. Thomas is engaged on
+a volume on Australian institutions. In this place the author can only
+direct attention to these novel sources, and to the promised third
+edition of Mr. Frazer's The Golden Bough.
+
+A. L.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE TO NEW EDITION.
+
+
+The original edition of Myth, Ritual and Religion, published in 1887,
+has long been out of print. In revising the book I have brought it
+into line with the ideas expressed in the second part of my Making of
+Religion (1898) and have excised certain passages which, as the book
+first appeared, were inconsistent with its main thesis. In some cases
+the original passages are retained in notes, to show the nature of the
+development of the author's opinions. A fragment or two of controversy
+has been deleted, and chapters xi. and xii., on the religion of the
+lowest races, have been entirely rewritten, on the strength of more
+recent or earlier information lately acquired. The gist of the book as
+it stands now and as it originally stood is contained in the following
+lines from the preface of 1887: "While the attempt is made to show that
+the wilder features of myth survive from, or were borrowed from, or were
+imitated from the ideas of people in the savage condition of
+thought, the existence--even among savages--of comparatively pure, if
+inarticulate, religious beliefs is insisted on throughout". To that
+opinion I adhere, and I trust that it is now expressed with more
+consistency than in the first edition. I have seen reason, more
+and more, to doubt the validity of the "ghost theory," or animistic
+hypothesis, as explanatory of the whole fabric of religion; and I
+present arguments against Mr. Tylor's contention that the higher
+conceptions of savage faith are borrowed from missionaries.(1) It is
+very possible, however, that Mr. Tylor has arguments more powerful than
+those contained in his paper of 1892. For our information is not yet
+adequate to a scientific theory of the Origin of Religion, and probably
+never will be. Behind the races whom we must regard as "nearest the
+beginning" are their unknown ancestors from a dateless past, men as
+human as ourselves, but men concerning whose psychical, mental and moral
+condition we can only form conjectures. Among them religion arose, in
+circumstances of which we are necessarily ignorant. Thus I only venture
+on a surmise as to the germ of a faith in a Maker (if I am not to say
+"Creator") and Judge of men. But, as to whether the higher religious
+belief, or the lower mythical stories came first, we are at least
+certain that the Christian conception of God, given pure, was presently
+entangled, by the popular fancy of Europe, in new Marchen about the
+Deity, the Madonna, her Son, and the Apostles. Here, beyond possibility
+of denial, pure belief came first, fanciful legend was attached after.
+I am inclined to surmise that this has always been the case, and, in the
+pages on the legend of Zeus, I show the processes of degeneration, of
+mythical accretions on a faith in a Heaven-God, in action. That "the
+feeling of religious devotion" attests "high faculties" in early man
+(such as are often denied to men who "cannot count up to seven"), and
+that "the same high mental faculties... would infallibly lead him,
+as long as his reasoning powers remained poorly developed, to various
+strange superstitions and customs," was the belief of Mr. Darwin.(2)
+That is also my view, and I note that the lowest savages are not yet
+guilty of the very worst practices, "sacrifice of human beings to a
+blood-loving God," and ordeals by poison and fire, to which Mr. Darwin
+alludes. "The improvement of our science" has freed us from misdeeds
+which are unknown to the Andamanese or the Australians. Thus there was,
+as regards these points in morals, degeneracy from savagery as society
+advanced, and I believe that there was also degeneration in religion.
+To say this is not to hint at a theory of supernatural revelation to the
+earliest men, a theory which I must, in limine disclaim.
+
+
+(1) Tylor, "Limits of Savage Religion." Journal of the Anthropological
+Institute, vol. xxi.
+
+(2) Descent of Man, p. 68, 1871.
+
+
+In vol. ii. p. 19 occurs a reference, in a note, to Mr. Hartland's
+criticism of my ideas about Australian gods as set forth in the Making
+of Religion. Mr. Hartland, who kindly read the chapters on Australian
+religion in this book, does not consider that my note on p. 19 meets the
+point of his argument. As to the Australians, I mean no more than that,
+AMONG endless low myths, some of them possess a belief in a "maker
+of everything," a primal being, still in existence, watching conduct,
+punishing breaches of his laws, and, in some cases, rewarding the
+good in a future life. Of course these are the germs of a sympathetic
+religion, even if the being thus regarded is mixed up with immoral or
+humorous contradictory myths. My position is not harmed by such myths,
+which occur in all old religions, and, in the middle ages, new myths
+were attached to the sacred figures of Christianity in poetry and
+popular tales.
+
+Thus, if there is nothing "sacred" in a religion because wild or wicked
+fables about the gods also occur, there is nothing "sacred" in almost
+any religion on earth.
+
+Mr. Hartland's point, however, seems to be that, in the Making of
+Religion, I had selected certain Australian beliefs as especially
+"sacred" and to be distinguished from others, because they are
+inculcated at the religious Mysteries of some tribes. His aim, then, is
+to discover low, wild, immoral myths, inculcated at the Mysteries, and
+thus to destroy my line drawn between religion on one hand and myth or
+mere folk-lore on the other. Thus there is a being named Daramulun, of
+whose rites, among the Coast Murring, I condensed the account of Mr.
+Howitt.(1) From a statement by Mr. Greenway(2) Mr. Hartland learned
+that Daramulun's name is said to mean "leg on one side" or "lame". He,
+therefore, with fine humour, speaks of Daramulun as "a creator with a
+game leg," though when "Baiame" is derived by two excellent linguists,
+Mr. Ridley and Mr. Greenway, from Kamilaroi baia, "to make," Mr.
+Hartland is by no means so sure of the sense of the name. It happens to
+be inconvenient to him! Let the names mean what they may, Mr. Hartland
+finds, in an obiter dictum of Mr. Howitt (before he was initiated), that
+Daramulun is said to have "died," and that his spirit is now aloft.
+Who says so, and where, we are not informed,(3) and the question is
+important.
+
+
+(1) J. A. I., xiii. pp. 440-459.
+
+(2) Ibid., xxi. p. 294.
+
+(3) Ibid., xiii. p. 194.
+
+
+For the Wiraijuri, IN THEIR MYSTERIES, tell a myth of cannibal conduct
+of Daramulun's, and of deceit and failure of knowledge in Baiame.(1)
+Of this I was unaware, or neglected it, for I explicitly said that I
+followed Mr. Howitt's account, where no such matter is mentioned. Mr.
+Howitt, in fact, described the Mysteries of the Coast Murring, while
+the narrator of the low myths, Mr. Matthews, described those of a
+remote tribe, the Wiraijuri, with whom Daramulun is not the chief, but
+a subordinate person. How Mr. Matthews' friends can at once hold that
+Daramulun was "destroyed" by Baiame (their chief deity), and also that
+Daramulun's voice is heard at their rites, I don't know.(2) Nor do I
+know why Mr. Hartland takes the myth of a tribe where Daramulun is "the
+evil spirit who rules the night,"(3) and introduces it as an argument
+against the belief of a distant tribe, where, by Mr. Howitt's account,
+Daramulun is not an evil spirit, but "the master" of all, whose abode
+is above the sky, and to whom are attributed powers of omnipotence
+and omnipresence, or, at any rate, the power "to do anything and to
+go anywhere.... To his direct ordinances are attributed the social and
+moral laws of the community."(4) This is not "an evil spirit"! When Mr.
+Hartland goes for scandals to a remote tribe of a different creed
+that he may discredit the creed of the Coast Murring, he might as well
+attribute to the Free Kirk "the errors of Rome". But Mr. Hartland does
+it!(5) Being "cunning of fence" he may reply that I also spoke loosely
+of Wiraijuri and Coast Murring as, indifferently, Daramulunites. I did,
+and I was wrong, and my critic ought not to accept but to expose my
+error. The Wiraijuri Daramulun, who was annihilated, yet who is "an evil
+spirit that rules the night," is not the Murring guardian and founder of
+recognised ethics.
+
+
+(1) J. A. I., xxv. p. 297.
+
+(2) Ibid., May, 1895, p. 419.
+
+(3) Ibid.
+
+(4) Ibid., xiii. pp. 458, 459.
+
+(5) Folk-Lore, ix., No. iv., p. 299.
+
+
+But, in the Wiraijuri mysteries, the master, Baiame, deceives the women
+as to the Mysteries! Shocking to US, but to deceive the women as to
+these arcana, is, to the Australian mind in general, necessary for the
+safety of the world. Moreover, we have heard of a lying spirit sent
+to deceive prophets in a much higher creed. Finally, in a myth of
+the Mystery of the Wiraijuri, Baiame is not omniscient. Indeed, even
+civilised races cannot keep on the level of these religious conceptions,
+and not to keep on that level is--mythology. Apollo, in the hymn to
+Hermes, sung on a sacred occasion, needs to ask an old vine-dresser
+for intelligence. Hyperion "sees all and hears all," but needs to be
+informed, by his daughters, of the slaughter of his kine. The Lord, in
+the Book of Job, has to ask Satan, "Whence comest thou?" Now for the
+sake of dramatic effect, now from pure inability to live on the level of
+his highest thought, man mythologises and anthropomorphises, in Greece
+or Israel, as in Australia.
+
+It does not follow that there is "nothing sacred" in his religion. Mr.
+Hartland offers me a case in point. In Mrs. Langloh Parker's Australian
+Legendary Tales (pp. 11, 94), are myths of low adventures of Baiame. In
+her More Australian Legendary Tales (pp. 84-99), is a very poetical
+and charming aspect of the Baiame belief. Mr. Hartland says that I will
+"seek to put" the first set of stories out of court, as "a kind of
+joke with no sacredness about it". Not I, but the Noongahburrah tribe
+themselves make this essential distinction. Mrs. Langloh Parker says:(1)
+"The former series" (with the low Baiame myths) "were all such legends
+as are told to the black picaninnies; among the present are some they
+would not be allowed to hear, touching as they do on sacred things,
+taboo to the young". The blacks draw the line which I am said to seek to
+draw.
+
+
+(1) More Legendary Tales, p. xv.
+
+
+In yet another case(1) grotesque hunting adventures of Baiame are
+told in the mysteries, and illustrated by the sacred temporary
+representations in raised earth. I did not know it; I merely followed
+Mr. Howitt. But I do not doubt it. My reply is, that there was
+"something sacred" in Greek mysteries, something purifying, ennobling,
+consoling. For this Lobeck has collected (and disparaged) the evidence
+of Pindar, Sophocles, Cicero and many others, while even Aristophanes,
+as Prof. Campbell remarks, says: "We only have bright sun and cheerful
+life who have been initiated and lived piously in regard to strangers
+and to private citizens".(2) Security and peace of mind, in this world
+and for the next, were, we know not how, borne into the hearts of Pindar
+and Sophocles in the Mysteries. Yet, if we may at all trust the Fathers,
+there were scenes of debauchery, as at the Mysteries of the Fijians
+(Nanga) there was buffoonery ("to amuse the boys," Mr. Howitt says of
+some Australian rites), the story of Baubo is only one example, and, in
+other mysteries than the Eleusinian, we know of mummeries in which an
+absurd tale of Zeus is related in connection with an oak log. Yet surely
+there was "something sacred" in the faith of Zeus! Let us judge the
+Australians as we judge Greeks. The precepts as to "speaking the
+straightforward truth," as to unselfishness, avoidance of quarrels,
+of wrongs to "unprotected women," of unnatural vices, are certainly
+communicated in the Mysteries of some tribes, with, in another,
+knowledge of the name and nature of "Our Father," Munganngaur. That a
+Totemistic dance, or medicine-dance of Emu hunting, is also displayed(3)
+at certain Mysteries of a given tribe, and that Baiame is spoken of
+as the hero of this ballet, no more deprives the Australian moral and
+religious teaching (at the Mysteries) of sacred value, than the stupid
+indecency whereby Baubo made Demeter laugh destroys the sacredness of
+the Eleusinia, on which Pindar, Sophocles and Cicero eloquently dwell.
+If the Australian mystae, at the most solemn moment of their lives, are
+shown a dull or dirty divine ballet d'action, what did Sophocles see,
+after taking a swim with his pig? Many things far from edifying, yet the
+sacred element of religious hope and faith was also represented. So it
+is in Australia.
+
+
+(1) J. A. I., xxiv. p. 416.
+
+(2) Religion in Greek Literature, p. 259. It is to be regretted that the
+learned professor gives no references. The Greek Mysteries are treated
+later in this volume.
+
+(3) See A picture of Australia, 1829, p. 264.
+
+
+These studies ought to be comparative, otherwise they are worthless. As
+Mr. Hartland calls Daramulun "an eternal Creator with a game leg" who
+"died," he may call Zeus an "eternal father, who swallowed his wife,
+lay with his mother and sister, made love as a swan, and died, nay, was
+buried, in Crete". I do not think that Mr. Hartland would call Zeus "a
+ghost-god" (my own phrase), or think that he was scoring a point against
+me, if I spoke of the sacred and ethical characteristics of the Zeus
+adored by Eumaeus in the Odyssey. He would not be so humorous about
+Zeus, nor fall into an ignoratio elenchi. For my point never was
+that any Australian tribe had a pure theistic conception unsoiled and
+unobliterated by myth and buffoonery. My argument was that AMONG
+their ideas is that of a superhuman being, unceasing (if I may not say
+eternal), a maker (if I may not say a Creator), a guardian of certain
+by no means despicable ethics, which I never proclaimed as supernormally
+inspired! It is no reply to me to say that, in or out of Mysteries, low
+fables about that being are told, and buffooneries are enacted. For,
+though I say that certain high ideas are taught in Mysteries, I do not
+think I say that in Mysteries no low myths are told.
+
+I take this opportunity, as the earliest, to apologise for an error in
+my Making of Religion concerning a passage in the Primitive Culture of
+my friend Mr. E. B. Tylor. Mr. Tylor quoted(1) a passage from Captain
+John Smith's History of Virginia, as given in Pinkerton, xiii. pp.
+13-39, 1632. In this passage no mention occurs of a Virginian deity
+named Ahone but "Okee," another and more truculent god, is named. I
+observed that, if Mr. Tylor had used Strachey's Historie of Travaile
+(1612), he would have found "a slightly varying copy" of Smith's text of
+1632, with Ahone as superior to Okee. I added in a note (p. 253): "There
+is a description of Virginia, by W. Strachey, including Smith's remarks
+published in 1612. Strachey interwove some of this work with his own MS.
+in the British Museum." Here, as presently will be shown, I erred, in
+company with Strachey's editor of 1849, and with the writer on Strachey
+in the Dictionary of National Biography. What Mr. Tylor quoted from an
+edition of Smith in 1632 had already appeared, in 1612, in a book
+(Map of Virginia, with a description of the Countrey) described on the
+title-page as "written by Captain Smith," though, in my opinion, Smith
+may have had a collaborator. There is no evidence whatever that Strachey
+had anything to do with this book of 1612, in which there is no mention
+of Ahone. Mr. Arber dates Strachey's own MS. (in which Ahone occurs) as
+of 1610-1615.(2) I myself, for reasons presently to be alleged, date
+the MS. mainly in 1611-1612. If Mr. Arber and I are right, Strachey must
+have had access to Smith's MS. before it was published in 1612, and we
+shall see how he used it. My point here is that Strachey mentioned Ahone
+(in MS.) before Smith's book of 1612 was published. This could not be
+gathered from the dedication to Bacon prefixed to Strachey's MS., for
+that dedication cannot be earlier that 1618.(3) I now ask leave to
+discuss the evidence for an early pre-Christian belief in a primal
+Creator, held by the Indian tribes from Plymouth, in New England, to
+Roanoke Island, off Southern Virginia.
+
+
+(1) Prim. Cult. ii. p. 342.
+
+(2) Arber's Smith, p. cxxxiii.
+
+(3) Hakluyt Society, Strachey, 1849, pp. xxi., xxii.
+
+
+THE GOD AHONE.
+
+An insertion by a manifest plagiary into the work of a detected liar
+is not, usually, good evidence. Yet this is all the evidence, it may be
+urged, which we have for the existence of a belief, in early Virginia,
+as to a good Creator, named Ahone. The matter stands thus: In 1607-1609
+the famed Captain John Smith endured and achieved in Virginia sufferings
+and adventures. In 1608 he sent to the Council at home a MS. map and
+description of the colony. In 1609 he returned to England (October). In
+May, 1610, William Strachey, gent., arrived in Virginia, where he was
+"secretary of state" to Lord De la Warr. In 1612 Strachey and Smith
+were both in England. In that year Barnes of Oxford published A Map
+of Virginia, with a description, etc., "written by Captain Smith,"
+according to the title-page. There was annexed a compilation from
+various sources, edited by "W. S.," that is, NOT William Strachey,
+but Dr. William Symonds. In the same year, 1612, or in 1611, William
+Strachey wrote his Historie of Travaile into Virginia Britannia, at
+least as far as page 124 of the Hakluyt edition of 1849.(1)
+
+
+(1) For proof see p. 24. third line from foot of page, where 1612 is
+indicated. Again, see p. 98, line 5, where "last year" is dated as
+"1610, about Christmas," which would put Strachey's work at this point
+as actually of 1611; prior, that is, to Smith's publication. Again, p.
+124, "this last year, myself being at the Falls" (of the James River),
+"I found in an Indian house certain clawes... which I brought away and
+into England".
+
+
+If Strachey, who went out with Lord De la Warr as secretary in 1610,
+returned with him (as is likely), he sailed for England on 28th March,
+1611. In that case, he was in England in 1611, and the passages cited
+leave it dubious whether he wrote his book in 1611, 1612, or in both
+years.(1)
+
+
+(1) Mr. Arber dates the MS. "1610-1615," and attributes to Strachey Laws
+for Virginia, 1612.
+
+
+Strachey embodies in his work considerable pieces of Smith's Map of
+Virginia and Description, written in 1608, and published in 1612. He
+continually deserts Smith, however, adding more recent information,
+reflections and references to the ancient classics, with allusions to
+his own travels in the Levant. His glossary is much more extensive than
+Smith's, and he inserts a native song of triumph over the English in the
+original.(1) Now, when Strachey comes to the religion of the natives(2)
+he gives eighteen pages (much of it verbiage) to five of Smith's.(3)
+What Smith (1612) says of their chief god I quote, setting Strachey's
+version (1611-1612) beside it.
+
+
+(1) Strachey, pp. 79-80. He may have got the song from Kemps or
+Machumps, friendly natives.
+
+(2) Pp. 82-100.
+
+(3) Arber, pp. 74-79.
+
+
+SMITH (Published, 1612).
+
+But their chiefe God they worship is the Diuell. Him they call Oke, and
+serue him more of feare than loue. They say they have conference with
+him, and fashion themselues as near to his shape as they can imagine.
+In their Temples, they have his image euile favouredly carved, and then
+painted, and adorned with chaines, copper, and beades; and covered with
+a skin, in such manner as the deformity may well suit with such a God.
+By him is commonly the sepulcher of their Kings.
+
+
+STRACHEY (Written, 1611-12).
+
+But their chief god they worship is no other, indeed, then the divell,
+whome they make presentments of, and shadow under the forme of an idoll,
+which they entitle Okeus, and whome they worship as the Romans did their
+hurtful god Vejovis, more for feare of harme then for hope of any good;
+they saie they have conference with him, and fashion themselves in
+their disguisments as neere to his shape as they can imagyn. In every
+territory of a weroance is a temple and a priest, peradventure two or
+thrie; yet happie doth that weroance accompt himself who can detayne
+with him a Quiyough-quisock, of the best, grave, lucky, well instructed
+in their misteryes, and beloved of their god; and such a one is noe
+lesse honoured then was Dianae's priest at Ephesus, for whome they
+have their more private temples, with oratories and chauneells therein,
+according as is the dignity and reverence of the Quiyough-quisock, which
+the weroance wilbe at charge to build upon purpose, sometyme twenty
+foote broad and a hundred in length, fashioned arbour wyse after their
+buylding, having comonly the dore opening into the east, and at the
+west end a spence or chauncell from the body of the temple, with hollow
+wyndings and pillers, whereon stand divers black imagies, fashioned
+to the shoulders, with their faces looking down the church, and where
+within their weroances, upon a kind of biere of reedes, lye buryed;
+and under them, apart, in a vault low in the ground (as a more secrett
+thing), vailed with a matt, sitts their Okeus, an image ill-favouredly
+carved, all black dressed, with chaynes of perle, the presentment and
+figure of that god (say the priests unto the laity, and who religiously
+believe what the priests saie) which doth them all the harme they
+suffer, be yt in their bodies or goods, within doores or abroad; and
+true yt is many of them are divers tymes (especyally offendors) shrewdly
+scratched as they walke alone in the woods, yt may well be by the
+subtyle spirit, the malitious enemy to mankind, whome, therefore, to
+pacefie and worke to doe them good (at least no harme) the priests tell
+them they must do these and these sacrifices unto (them) of these and
+these things, and thus and thus often, by which meanes not only their
+owne children, but straungers, are sometimes sacrificed unto him: whilst
+the great god (the priests tell them) who governes all the world, and
+makes the sun to shine, creating the moone and stars his companyons,
+great powers, and which dwell with him, and by whose virtues and
+influences the under earth is tempered, and brings forth her fruiets
+according to her seasons, they calling Ahone; the good and peaceable god
+requires no such dutyes, nor needes be sacrificed unto, for he intendeth
+all good unto them, and will doe noe harme, only the displeased Okeus,
+looking into all men's accions, and examining the same according to the
+severe scale of justice, punisheth them with sicknesse, beats them, and
+strikes their ripe corn with blastings, stormes, and thunder clapps,
+stirrs up warre, and makes their women falce unto them. Such is the
+misery and thraldome under which Sathan hath bound these wretched
+miscreants.
+
+
+I began by calling Strachey a plagiary. The reader will now observe that
+he gives far more than he takes. For example, his account of the temples
+is much more full than that of Smith, and he adds to Smith's version the
+character and being of Ahone, as what "the priests tell them". I submit,
+therefore, that Strachey's additions, if valid for temples, are not
+discredited for Ahone, merely because they are inserted in the framework
+of Smith. As far as I understand the matter, Smith's Map of Virginia
+(1612) is an amended copy, with additions, by Smith or another writer
+of that description, which he sent home to the Council of Virginia,
+in November, 1608.(1) To the book of 1612 was added a portion of
+"Relations" by different hands, edited by W. S., namely, Dr. Symonds.
+Strachey's editor, in 1849, regarded W. S. as Strachey, and supposed
+that Strachey was the real author of Smith's Map of Virginia, so that,
+in his Historie of Travaile, Strachey merely took back his own. He did
+not take back his own; he made use of Smith's MS., not yet published, if
+Mr. Arber and I rightly date Strachey's MS. at 1610-15, or 1611-12.
+Why Strachey acted thus it is possible to conjecture. As a scholar well
+acquainted with Virginia, and as Secretary for the Colony, he would have
+access to Smith's MS. of 1608 among the papers of the Council, before
+its publication. Smith professes himself "no scholer".(2) On the other
+hand, Strachey likes to show off his Latin and Greek. He has a
+curious, if inaccurate, knowledge of esoteric Greek and Roman religious
+antiquities, and in writing of religion aims at a comparative method.
+Strachey, however, took the trouble to copy bits of Smith into his own
+larger work, which he never gave to the printers.
+
+
+(1) Arber, p. 444.
+
+(2) Arber, p. 442.
+
+
+Now as to Ahone. It suits my argument to suppose that Strachey's account
+is no less genuine than his description of the temples (illustrated by
+a picture by John White, who had been in Virginia in 1589), and the
+account of the Great Hare of American mythology.(1) This view of a
+Virginian Creator, "our chief god" "who takes upon him this shape of a
+hare," was got, says Strachey, "last year, 1610," from a brother of the
+Potomac King, by a boy named Spilman, who says that Smith "sold" him
+to Powhattan.(2) In his own brief narrative Spelman (or Spilman) says
+nothing about the Cosmogonic Legend of the Great Hare. The story came
+up when Captain Argoll was telling Powhattan's brother the account of
+creation in Genesis (1610).
+
+
+(1) Strachey, p. 98-100.
+
+(2) "Spilman's Narrative," Arber, cx.-cxiv.
+
+
+Now Strachey's Great Hare is accepted by mythologists, while Ahone is
+regarded with suspicion. Ahone does not happen to suit anthropological
+ideas, the Hare suits them rather better. Moreover, and more important,
+there is abundant corroborative evidence for Oke and for the Hare,
+Michabo, who, says Dr. Brinton, "was originally the highest divinity
+recognised by them, powerful and beneficent beyond all others, maker of
+the heavens and the world," just like Ahone, in fact. And Dr. Brinton
+instructs us that Michabo originally meant not Great Hare, but "the
+spirit of light".(1) Thus, originally, the Red Men adored "The Spirit of
+Light, maker of the heavens and the world". Strachey claims no more than
+this for Ahone. Now, of course, Dr. Brinton may be right. But I have
+already expressed my extreme distrust of the philological processes
+by which he extracts "The Great Light; spirit of light," from Michabo,
+"beyond a doubt!" In my poor opinion, whatever claims Michabo may have
+as an unique creator of earth and heaven--"God is Light,"--he owes his
+mythical aspect as a Hare to something other than an unconscious pun. In
+any case, according to Dr. Brinton, Michabo, regarded as a creator, is
+equivalent to Strachey's Ahone. This amount of corroboration, valeat
+quantum, I may claim, from the Potomac Indians, for the belief in
+Ahone on the James River. Dr. Brinton is notoriously not a believer in
+American "monotheism".(2)
+
+
+(1) Myths of the New World, p. 178.
+
+(2) Myths of the New World, p. 53.
+
+
+The opponents of the authenticity of Ahone, however, will certainly
+argue: "For Oke, or Oki, as a redoubted being or spirit, or general name
+for such personages, we have plentiful evidence, corroborating that of
+Smith. But what evidence as to Ahone corroborates that of Strachey?" I
+must confess that I have no explicit corroborative evidence for Ahone,
+but then I have no accessible library of early books on Virginia. Now
+it is clear that if I found and produced evidence for Ahone as late
+as 1625, I would be met at once with the retort that, between 1610 and
+1625, Christian ideas had contaminated the native beliefs. Thus if I
+find Ahone, or a deity of like attributes, after a very early date, he
+is of no use for my purpose. Nor do I much expect to find him. But do we
+find Winslow's Massachusetts God, Kiehtan, named AFTER 1622 ("I only
+ask for information"), and if we don't, does that prevent Mr. Tylor from
+citing Kiehtan, with apparent reliance on the evidence?(1)
+
+
+(1) Primitive Culture, ii. p. 342.
+
+
+Again, Ahone, though primal and creative, is, by Strachey's account,
+a sleeping partner. He has no sacrifice, and no temple or idol is
+recorded. Therefore the belief in Ahone could only be discovered as a
+result of inquiry, whereas figures of Oke or Okeus, and his services,
+were common and conspicuous.(1) As to Oke, I cannot quite understand Mr.
+Tylor's attitude. Summarising Lafitau, a late writer of 1724, Mr. Tylor
+writes: "The whole class of spirits or demons, known to the Caribs by
+the name of cemi, in Algonkin as manitu, in Huron as oki, Lafitau now
+spells with capital letters, and converts them each into a supreme
+being".(2) Yet in Primitive Culture, ii., 342, 1891, Mr. Tylor had
+cited Smith's Okee (with a capital letter) as the "chief god" of the
+Virginians in 1612. How can Lafitau be said to have elevated oki into
+Oki, and so to have made a god out of "a class of spirits or demons,"
+in 1724, when Mr. Tylor had already cited Smith's Okee, with a capital
+letter and as a "chief god," in 1612? Smith, rebuked for the same by Mr.
+Tylor, had even identified Okee with the devil. Lafitau certainly
+did not begin this erroneous view of Oki as a "chief god" among the
+Virginians. If I cannot to-day produce corroboration for a god named
+Ahone, I can at least show that, from the north of New England to the
+south of Virginia, there is early evidence, cited by Mr. Tylor, for a
+belief in a primal creative being, closely analogous to Ahone. And this
+evidence, I think, distinctly proves that such a being as Ahone was
+within the capacity of the Indians in these latitudes. Mr. Tylor must
+have thought in 1891 that the natives were competent to a belief in a
+supreme deity, for he said, "Another famous native American name for the
+supreme deity is Oki".(3) In the essay of 1892, however, Oki does not
+appear to exist as a god's name till 1724. We may now, for earlier
+evidence, turn to Master Thomas Heriot, "that learned mathematician"
+"who spoke the Indian language," and was with the company which
+abandoned Virginia on 18th June, 1586. They ranged 130 miles north
+and 130 miles north-west of Roanoke Island, which brings them into the
+neighbourhood of Smith's and Strachey's country. Heriot writes as to the
+native creeds: "They believe that there are many gods which they call
+Mantoac, but of different sorts and degrees. Also that there is one
+chiefe God that hath beene from all eternitie, who, as they say, when he
+purposed first to make the world, made first other gods of a principall
+order, to be as instruments to be used in the Creation and Government to
+follow, and after the Sunne, Moone and Starres as pettie gods, and the
+instruments of the other order more principall.... They thinke that all
+the gods are of humane shape," and represent them by anthropomorphic
+idols. An idol, or image, "Kewasa" (the plural is "Kewasowok"),
+is placed in the temples, "where they worship, pray and make many
+offerings". Good souls go to be happy with the gods, the bad burn in
+Popogusso, a great pit, "where the sun sets". The evidence for this
+theory of a future life, as usual, is that of men who died and revived
+again, a story found in a score of widely separated regions, down to our
+day, when the death, revival and revelation occurred to the founder
+of the Arapahoe new religion of the Ghost Dance. The belief "works for
+righteousness". "The common sort... have great care to avoyde torment
+after death, and to enjoy blesse," also they have "great respect to
+their Governors".
+
+
+(1) Okee's image, as early as 1607, was borne into battle against Smith,
+who captured the god (Arber, p. 393). Ahone was not thus en evidence.
+
+(2) Journal of Anthrop. Inst., Feb., 1892, pp. 285, 286.
+
+(3) Prim. Cult,, ii. p. 342.
+
+
+This belief in a chief god "from all eternitie" (that is, of unexplained
+origin), may not be convenient to some speculators, but it exactly
+corroborates Strachey's account of Ahone as creator with subordinates.
+The evidence is of 1586 (twenty-six years before Strachey), and,
+like Strachey, Heriot attributes the whole scheme of belief to "the
+priestes". "This is the sum of their religion, which I learned by having
+speciall familiaritie with some of their priests."(1) I see no escape
+from the conclusion that the Virginians believed as Heriot says they
+did, except the device of alleging that they promptly borrowed some of
+Heriot's ideas and maintained that these ideas had ever been their own.
+Heriot certainly did not recognise the identity. "Through conversing
+with us they were brought into great doubts of their owne (religion),
+and no small admiration of ours; of which many desired to learne more
+than we had the meanes for want of utterance in their language to
+expresse." So Heriot could not be subtle in the native tongue. Heriot
+did what he could to convert them: "I did my best to make His immortall
+glory knowne". His efforts were chiefly successful by virtue of the
+savage admiration of our guns, mathematical instruments, and so forth.
+These sources of an awakened interest in Christianity would vanish
+with the total destruction and discomfiture of the colony, unless a few
+captives, later massacred, taught our religion to the natives.(2)
+
+
+(1) According to Strachey, Heriot could speak the native language.
+
+(2) Heriot's Narrative, pp. 37-39. Quaritch, London, 1893.
+
+
+I shall cite another early example of a New England deity akin to Ahone,
+with a deputy, a friend of sorcerers, like Okee. This account is in
+Smith's General History of New England, 1606-1624. We sent out a colony
+in 1607; "they all returned in the yeere 1608," esteeming the country "a
+cold, barren, mountainous rocky desart". I am apt to believe that
+they did not plant the fructifying seeds of grace among the natives in
+1607-1608. But the missionary efforts of French traders may, of course,
+have been blessed; nor can I deny that a yellow-haired man, whose corpse
+was found in 1620 with some objects of iron, may have converted the
+natives to such beliefs as they possessed. We are told, however, that
+these tenets were of ancestral antiquity. I cite E. Winslow, as edited
+by Smith (1623-24):--
+
+"Those where in this Plantation (New Plymouth) say Kiehtan(1) made all
+the other Gods: also one man and one woman, and with them all mankinde,
+but how they became so dispersed they know not. They say that at first
+there was no king but Kiehtan, that dwelleth far westerly above the
+heavens, whither all good men go when they die, and have plentie of all
+things. The bad go thither also and knock at the door, but ('the door is
+shut') he bids them go wander in endless want and misery, for they shall
+not stay there. They never saw Kiehtan,(2) but they hold it a great
+charge and dutie that one race teach another; and to him they make
+feasts and cry and sing for plenty and victory, or anything that is
+good.
+
+
+(1) In 1873 Mr. Tylor regarded Dr. Brinton's etymology of Kiehtan as =
+Kittanitowit = "Great Living Spirit," as "plausible". In his edition
+of 1891 he omits this etymology. Personally I entirely distrust the
+philological theories of the original sense of old divine names as a
+general rule.
+
+(2) "They never saw Kiehtan." So, about 1854, "The common answer
+of intelligent black fellows on the Barwon when asked if they know
+Baiame... is this: 'Kamil zaia zummi Baiame, zaia winuzgulda'; 'I have
+not seen Baiame, I have heard or perceived him'. If asked who made
+the sky, the earth, the animals and man, they always answer 'Baiame'."
+Daramulun, according to the same authority in Lang's Queensland, was
+the familiar of sorcerers, and appeared as a serpent. This answers, as I
+show, to Hobamock the subordinate power to Kiehtan in New England and to
+Okee, the familiar of sorcerers in Virginia. (Ridley, J. A. I., 1872, p.
+277.)
+
+
+"They have another Power they call Hobamock, which we conceive the
+Devill, and upon him they call to cure their wounds and diseases; when
+they are curable he persuades them he sent them, because they have
+displeased him; but, if they be mortal, then he saith, 'Kiehtan sent
+them'; which makes them never call on him in their sickness. They say
+this Hobamock appears to them sometimes like a man, a deer, or an eagle,
+but most commonly like a snake; not to all but to their Powahs to cure
+diseases, and Undeses... and these are such as conjure in Virginia, and
+cause the people to do what they list." Winslow (or rather Smith editing
+Winslow here), had already said, "They believe, as do the Virginians,
+of many divine powers, yet of one above all the rest, as the Southern
+Virginians call their chief god Kewassa (an error), and that we now
+inhabit Oke.... The Massachusetts call their great god Kiehtan."(1)
+
+
+(1) Arber, pp. 767, 768.
+
+
+Here, then, in Heriot (1586), Strachey (1611-12) and Winslow (1622), we
+find fairly harmonious accounts of a polydaemonism with a chief, primal,
+creative being above and behind it; a being unnamed, and Ahone and
+Kiehtan.
+
+Is all this invention? Or was all this derived from Europeans before
+1586, and, if so, from what Europeans? Mr. Tylor, in 1873, wrote, "After
+due allowance made for misrendering of savage answers, and importation
+of white men's thoughts, it can hardly be judged that a divine being,
+whose characteristics are often so unlike what European intercourse
+would have suggested, and who is heard of by such early explorers among
+such distant tribes, could be a deity of foreign origin". NOW, he "can
+HARDLY be ALTOGETHER a deity of foreign origin".(1) I agree with
+Mr. Tylor's earlier statement. In my opinion Ahone--Okeus,
+Kiehtan--Hobamock, correspond, the first pair to the usually unseen
+Australian Baiame (a crystal or hypnotic vision of Baiame scarcely
+counts), while the second pair, Okeus and Hobamock, answer to the
+Australian familiars of sorcerers, Koin and Brewin; the American
+"Powers" being those of peoples on a higher level of culture. Like
+Tharramulun where Baiame is supreme, Hobamock appears as a snake
+(Asclepius).
+
+
+(1) Prim. Cult., ii. 340, 1873, 1892.
+
+
+For all these reasons I am inclined to accept Strachey's Ahone as a
+veritable element in Virginian belief. Without temple or service, such a
+being was not conspicuous, like Okee and other gods which had idols and
+sacrifices.
+
+As far as I see, Strachey has no theory to serve by inventing Ahone. He
+asks how any races "if descended from the people of the first creation,
+should maintain so general and gross a defection from the true knowledge
+of God". He is reduced to suppose that, as descendants of Ham, they
+inherit "the ignorance of true godliness." (p. 45). The children of Shem
+and Japheth alone "retained, until the coming of the Messias, the only
+knowledge of the eternal and never-changing Trinity". The Virginians,
+on the other hand, fell heir to the ignorance, and "fearful and
+superstitious instinct of nature" of Ham (p. 40). Ahone, therefore, is
+not invented by Strachey to bolster up a theory (held by Strachey),
+of an inherited revelation, or of a sensus numinis which could not go
+wrong. Unless a proof be given that Strachey had a theory, or any other
+purpose, to serve by inventing Ahone, I cannot at present come into the
+opinion that he gratuitously fabled, though he may have unconsciously
+exaggerated.
+
+What were Strachey's sources? He was for nine months, if not more, in
+the colony: he had travelled at least 115 miles up the James River, he
+occasionally suggests modifications of Smith's map, he refers to Smith's
+adventures, and his glossary is very much larger than Smith's; its
+accuracy I leave to American linguists. Such a witness, despite his
+admitted use of Smith's text (if it is really all by Smith throughout)
+is not to be despised, and he is not despised in America.(1) Strachey,
+it is true, had not, like Smith, been captured by Indians and either
+treated with perfect kindness and consideration (as Smith reported at
+the time), or tied to a tree and threatened with arrows, and laid out
+to have his head knocked in with a stone; as he alleged sixteen years
+later! Strachey, not being captured, did not owe his release (1) to
+the magnanimity of Powhattan, (2) to his own ingenious lies, (3) to
+the intercession of Pocahontas, as Smith, and his friends for him, at
+various dates inconsistently declared. Smith certainly saw more of the
+natives at home: Strachey brought a more studious mind to what he could
+learn of their customs and ideas; and is not a convicted braggart. I
+conjecture that one of Strachey's sources was a native named Kemps.
+Smith had seized Kemps and Kinsock in 1609. Unknown authorities (Powell?
+and Todkill?) represent these two savages as "the most exact villaines
+in the country".(2) They were made to labour in fetters, then were set
+at liberty, but "little desired it".(3) Some "souldiers" ran away to the
+liberated Kemps, who brought them back to Smith.(4) Why Kemps and his
+friend are called "two of the most exact villains in the country"
+does not appear. Kemps died "of the surveye" (scurvey, probably) at
+Jamestown, in 1610-11. He was much made of by Lord De la Warr, "could
+speak a pretty deal of our English, and came orderly to church every day
+to prayers". He gave Strachey the names of Powhattan's wives, and told
+him, truly or not, that Pocahontas was married, about 1610, to an Indian
+named Kocoum.(5) I offer the guess that Kemps and Machumps, who came
+and went from Pocahontas, and recited an Indian prayer which Strachey
+neglected to copy out, may have been among Strachey's authorities. I
+shall, of course, be told that Kemps picked up Ahone at church. This did
+not strike Strachey as being the fact; he had no opinion of the creed in
+which Ahone was a factor, "the misery and thraldome under which Sathan
+has bound these wretched miscreants". According to Strachey, the
+priests, far from borrowing any part of our faith, "feare and tremble
+lest the knowledge of God, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ be taught in
+these parts".
+
+
+(1) Arber, cxvii. Strachey mentions that (before his arrival in
+Virginia) Pocahontas turned cart-wheels, naked, in Jamestown, being then
+under twelve, and not yet wearing the apron. Smith says she was ten
+in 1608, but does not mention the cart-wheels. Later, he found it
+convenient to put her age at twelve or thirteen in 1608. Most American
+scholars, such as Mr. Adams, entirely distrust the romantic later
+narratives of Smith.
+
+(2) The Proeeedings, etc., by W. S. Arber, p. 151.
+
+(3) Ibid., p. 155.
+
+(4) Ibid., p. 157.
+
+(5) Strachey, pp. 54, 55.
+
+
+Strachey is therefore for putting down the priests, and, like Smith
+(indeed here borrowing from Smith), accuses them of sacrificing
+children. To Smith's statement that such a rite was worked at
+Quiyough-cohanock, Strachey adds that Sir George Percy (who was with
+Smith) "was at, and observed" a similar mystery at Kecoughtan. It is
+plain that the rite was not a sacrifice, but a Bora, or initiation, and
+the parallel of the Spartan flogging of boys, with the retreat of the
+boys and their instructors, is very close, and, of course, unnoted by
+classical scholars except Mr. Frazer. Strachey ends with the critical
+remark that we shall not know all the certainty of the religion and
+mysteries till we can capture some of the priests, or Quiyough-quisocks.
+
+Students who have access to a good library of Americana may do more
+to elucidate Ahone. I regard him as in a line with Kiehtan and the God
+spoken of by Heriot, and do not believe (1) that Strachey lied; (2) that
+natives deceived Strachey; (3) that Ahone was borrowed from "the God of
+Captain Smith".
+
+
+
+
+MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I. SYSTEMS OF MYTHOLOGY.
+
+Definitions of religion--Contradictory evidence--"Belief in spiritual
+beings"--Objection to Mr. Tylor's definition--Definition as regards
+this argument--Problem: the contradiction between religion and myth--Two
+human moods--Examples--Case of Greece--Ancient mythologists--Criticism
+by Eusebius--Modern mythological systems--Mr. Max Muller--Mannhardt.
+
+
+The word "Religion" may be, and has been, employed in many different
+senses, and with a perplexing width of significance. No attempt to
+define the word is likely to be quite satisfactory, but almost any
+definition may serve the purpose of an argument, if the writer who
+employs it states his meaning frankly and adheres to it steadily. An
+example of the confusions which may arise from the use of the term
+"religion" is familiar to students. Dr. J. D. Lang wrote concerning the
+native races of Australia: "They have nothing whatever of the character
+of religion, or of religious observances, to distinguish them from the
+beasts that perish". Yet in the same book Dr. Lang published evidence
+assigning to the natives belief in "Turramullun, the chief of demons,
+who is the author of disease, mischief and wisdom".(1) The belief in
+a superhuman author of "disease, mischief and wisdom" is certainly
+a religious belief not conspicuously held by "the beasts"; yet all
+religion was denied to the Australians by the very author who prints
+(in however erroneous a style) an account of part of their creed. This
+writer merely inherited the old missionary habit of speaking about the
+god of a non-Christian people as a "demon" or an "evil spirit".
+
+
+(1) See Primitive Culture, second edition, i. 419.
+
+
+Dr. Lang's negative opinion was contradicted in testimony published by
+himself, an appendix by the Rev. Mr. Ridley, containing evidence of
+the belief in Baiame. "Those who have learned that 'God' is the name by
+which we speak of the Creator, say that Baiame is God."(1)
+
+
+(1) Lang's Queensland, p. 445, 1861.
+
+
+As "a minimum definition of religion," Mr. Tylor has suggested "the
+belief in spiritual beings". Against this it may be urged that, while we
+have no definite certainty that any race of men is destitute of belief
+in spiritual beings, yet certain moral and creative deities of low races
+do not seem to be envisaged as "spiritual" at all. They are regarded
+as EXISTENCES, as BEINGS, unconditioned by Time, Space, or Death, and
+nobody appears to have put the purely metaphysical question, "Are these
+beings spiritual or material?"(1) Now, if a race were discovered which
+believed in such beings, yet had no faith in spirits, that race could
+not be called irreligious, as it would have to be called in Mr. Tylor's
+"minimum definition". Almost certainly, no race in this stage of belief
+in nothing but unconditioned but not expressly spiritual beings is
+extant. Yet such a belief may conceivably have existed before men had
+developed the theory of spirits at all, and such a belief, in creative
+and moral unconditioned beings, not alleged to be spiritual, could not
+be excluded from a definition of religion.(2)
+
+
+(1) See The Making of Religion, pp. 201-210.
+
+(2) "The history of the Jews, nay, the history of our own mind, proves
+to demonstration that the thought of God is a far easier thought, and a
+far earlier, than that of a spirit." Father Tyrrell, S. J., The Month,
+October, 1898. As to the Jews, the question is debated. As to our own
+infancy, we are certainly taught about God before we are likely to be
+capable of the metaphysical notion of spirit. But we can scarcely reason
+from children in Christian houses to the infancy of the race.
+
+
+For these reasons we propose (merely for the purpose of the present
+work) to define religion as the belief in a primal being, a Maker,
+undying, usually moral, without denying that the belief in spiritual
+beings, even if immoral, may be styled religious. Our definition is
+expressly framed for the purpose of the argument, because that argument
+endeavours to bring into view the essential conflict between religion
+and myth. We intend to show that this conflict between the religious
+and the mythical conception is present, not only (where it has been
+universally recognised) in the faiths of the ancient civilised peoples,
+as in Greece, Rome, India and Egypt, but also in the ideas of the lowest
+known savages.
+
+It may, of course, be argued that the belief in Creator is itself a
+myth. However that may be, the attitude of awe, and of moral obedience,
+in face of such a supposed being, is religious in the sense of the
+Christian religion, whereas the fabrication of fanciful, humorous, and
+wildly irrational fables about that being, or others, is essentially
+mythical in the ordinary significance of that word, though not absent
+from popular Christianity.
+
+Now, the whole crux and puzzle of mythology is, "Why, having attained
+(in whatever way) to a belief in an undying guardian, 'Master of Life,'
+did mankind set to work to evolve a chronique scandaleuse about HIM?
+And why is that chronique the elaborately absurd set of legends which we
+find in all mythologies?"
+
+In answering, or trying to answer, these questions, we cannot go behind
+the beliefs of the races now most immersed in savage ignorance. About
+the psychology of races yet more undeveloped we can have no historical
+knowledge. Among the lowest known tribes we usually find, just as in
+ancient Greece, the belief in a deathless "Father," "Master," "Maker,"
+and also the crowd of humorous, obscene, fanciful myths which are in
+flagrant contradiction with the religious character of that belief. That
+belief is what we call rational, and even elevated. The myths, on the
+other hand, are what we call irrational and debasing. We regard low
+savages as very irrational and debased characters, consequently the
+nature of their myths does not surprise us. Their religious conception,
+however, of a "Father" or "Master of Life" seems out of keeping with
+the nature of the savage mind as we understand it. Still, there the
+religious conception actually is, and it seems to follow that we do not
+wholly understand the savage mind, or its unknown antecedents. In
+any case, there the facts are, as shall be demonstrated. However the
+ancestors of Australians, or Andamanese, or Hurons arrived at their
+highest religious conception, they decidedly possess it.(1) The
+development of their mythical conceptions is accounted for by those
+qualities of their minds which we do understand, and shall illustrate at
+length. For the present, we can only say that the religious conception
+uprises from the human intellect in one mood, that of earnest
+contemplation and submission: while the mythical ideas uprise from
+another mood, that of playful and erratic fancy. These two moods are
+conspicuous even in Christianity. The former, that of earnest and
+submissive contemplation, declares itself in prayers, hymns, and "the
+dim religious light" of cathedrals. The second mood, that of playful
+and erratic fancy, is conspicuous in the buffoonery of Miracle Plays, in
+Marchen, these burlesque popular tales about our Lord and the Apostles,
+and in the hideous and grotesque sculptures on sacred edifices. The two
+moods are present, and in conflict, through the whole religious history
+of the human race. They stand as near each other, and as far apart, as
+Love and Lust.
+
+
+(1) The hypothesis that the conception was borrowed from European
+creeds will be discussed later. See, too, "Are Savage Gods borrowed from
+Missionaries?" Nineteenth Century, January, 1899.
+
+
+It will later be shown that even some of the most backward savages make
+a perhaps half-conscious distinction between their mythology and their
+religion. As to the former, they are communicative; as to the latter,
+they jealously guard their secret in sacred mysteries. It is improbable
+that reflective "black fellows" have been morally shocked by the
+flagrant contradictions between their religious conceptions and their
+mythical stories of the divine beings. But human thought could not come
+into explicit clearness of consciousness without producing the sense of
+shock and surprise at these contradictions between the Religion and the
+Myth of the same god. Of this we proceed to give examples.
+
+In Greece, as early as the sixth century B. C., we are all familiar with
+Xenophanes' poem(1) complaining that the gods were credited with the
+worst crimes of mortals--in fact, with abominations only known in the
+orgies of Nero and Elagabalus. We hear Pindar refusing to repeat the
+tale which told him the blessed were cannibals.(2) In India we read the
+pious Brahmanic attempts to expound decently the myths which made Indra
+the slayer of a Brahman; the sinner, that is, of the unpardonable sin.
+In Egypt, too, we study the priestly or philosophic systems by which the
+clergy strove to strip the burden of absurdity and sacrilege from their
+own deities. From all these efforts of civilised and pious believers to
+explain away the stories about their own gods we may infer one fact--the
+most important to the student of mythology--the fact that myths were not
+evolved in times of clear civilised thought. It is when Greece is just
+beginning to free her thought from the bondage of too concrete language,
+when she is striving to coin abstract terms, that her philosophers and
+poets first find the myths of Greece a stumbling-block.
+
+
+(1) Ritter and Preller, Hist. Philos., Gothae, 1869, p. 82.
+
+(2) Olympic Odes, i., Myers's translation: "To me it is impossible to
+call one of the blessed gods a cannibal.... Meet it is for a man that
+concerning the gods he speak honourably, for the reproach is less. Of
+thee, son of Tantalus, I will speak contrariwise to them who have gone
+before me." In avoiding the story of the cannibal god, however, Pindar
+tells a tale even more offensive to our morality.
+
+
+All early attempts at an interpretation of mythology are so many efforts
+to explain the myths on some principle which shall seem not unreasonable
+to men living at the time of the explanation. Therefore the pious
+remonstrances and the forced constructions of early thinkers like
+Xenophanes, of poets like Pindar, of all ancient Homeric scholars and
+Pagan apologists, from Theagenes of Rhegium (525 B. C.), the early
+Homeric commentator, to Porphyry, almost the last of the heathen
+philosophers, are so many proofs that to Greece, as soon as she had
+a reflective literature, the myths of Greece seemed impious and
+IRRATIONAL. The essays of the native commentators on the Veda, in the
+same way, are endeavours to put into myths felt to be irrational and
+impious a meaning which does not offend either piety or reason. We may
+therefore conclude that it was not men in an early stage of philosophic
+thought (as philosophy is now understood)--not men like Empedocles and
+Heraclitus, nor reasonably devout men like Eumaeus, the pious swineherd
+of the Odyssey--who evolved the blasphemous myths of Greece, of Egypt
+and of India. We must look elsewhere for an explanation. We must try to
+discover some actual and demonstrable and widely prevalent condition
+of the human mind, in which tales that even to remote and rudimentary
+civilisations appeared irrational and unnatural would seem natural and
+rational. To discover this intellectual condition has been the aim of
+all mythologists who did not believe that myth is a divine tradition
+depraved by human weakness, or a distorted version of historical events.
+
+Before going further, it is desirable to set forth what our aim is, and
+to what extent we are seeking an interpretation of mythology. It is not
+our purpose to explain every detail of every ancient legend, either as a
+distorted historical fact or as the result of this or that confusion of
+thought caused by forgetfulness of the meanings of language, or in any
+other way; nay, we must constantly protest against the excursions of
+too venturesome ingenuity. Myth is so ancient, so complex, so full of
+elements, that it is vain labour to seek a cause for every phenomenon.
+We are chiefly occupied with the quest for an historical condition of
+the human intellect to which the element in myths, regarded by us as
+irrational, shall seem rational enough. If we can prove that such a
+state of mind widely exists among men, and has existed, that state of
+mind may be provisionally considered as the fount and ORIGIN of the
+myths which have always perplexed men in a reasonable modern mental
+condition. Again, if it can be shown that this mental stage was one
+through which all civilised races have passed, the universality of the
+mythopoeic mental condition will to some extent explain the universal
+DIFFUSION of the stories.
+
+Now, in all mythologies, whether savage or civilised, and in all
+religions where myths intrude, there exist two factors--the factor
+which we now regard as rational, and that which we moderns regard as
+irrational. The former element needs little explanation; the latter
+has demanded explanation ever since human thought became comparatively
+instructed and abstract.
+
+To take an example; even in the myths of savages there is much that
+still seems rational and transparent. If savages tell us that some wise
+being taught them all the simple arts of life, the use of fire, of the
+bow and arrow, the barbing of hooks, and so forth, we understand them
+at once. Nothing can be more natural than that man should believe in an
+original inventor of the arts, and should tell tales about the imaginary
+discoverers if the real heroes be forgotten. So far all is plain
+sailing. But when the savage goes on to say that he who taught the use
+of fire or who gave the first marriage laws was a rabbit or a crow, or a
+dog, or a beaver, or a spider, then we are at once face to face with the
+element in myths which seems to us IRRATIONAL. Again, among civilised
+peoples we read of the pure all-seeing Varuna in the Vedas, to whom
+sin is an offence. We read of Indra, the Lord of Thunder, borne in his
+chariot, the giver of victory, the giver of wealth to the pious; here
+once more all seems natural and plain. The notion of a deity who guides
+the whirlwind and directs the storm, a god of battles, a god who blesses
+righteousness, is familiar to us and intelligible; but when we read how
+Indra drank himself drunk and committed adulteries with Asura women, and
+got himself born from the same womb as a bull, and changed himself into
+a quail or a ram, and suffered from the most abject physical terror, and
+so forth, then we are among myths no longer readily intelligible; here,
+we feel, are IRRATIONAL stories, of which the original ideas, in their
+natural sense, can hardly have been conceived by men in a pure and
+rational early civilisation. Again, in the religions of even the
+lowest races, such myths as these are in contradiction with the ethical
+elements of the faith.
+
+If we look at Greek religious tradition, we observe the coexistence of
+the RATIONAL and the apparently IRRATIONAL elements. The RATIONAL myths
+are those which represent the gods as beautiful and wise beings. The
+Artemis of the Odyssey "taking her pastime in the chase of boars and
+swift deer, while with her the wild wood-nymphs disport them, and high
+over them all she rears her brow, and is easily to be known where all
+are fair,"(1) is a perfectly RATIONAL mythic representation of a divine
+being. We feel, even now, that the conception of a "queen and goddess,
+chaste and fair," the abbess, as Paul de Saint-Victor calls her, of
+the woodlands, is a beautiful and natural fancy, which requires no
+explanation. On the other hand, the Artemis of Arcadia, who is confused
+with the nymph Callisto, who, again, is said to have become a she-bear,
+and later a star; and the Brauronian Artemis, whose maiden ministers
+danced a bear-dance,(2) are goddesses whose legend seems unnatural,
+and needs to be made intelligible. Or, again, there is nothing not
+explicable and natural in the conception of the Olympian Zeus as
+represented by the great chryselephantine statue of Zeus at Olympia,
+or in the Homeric conception of Zeus as a god who "turns everywhere his
+shining eyes, and beholds all things, and protects the righteous, and
+deals good or evil fortune to men." But the Zeus whose grave was shown in
+Crete, or the Zeus who played Demeter an obscene trick by the aid of
+a ram, or the Zeus who, in the shape of a swan, became the father of
+Castor and Pollux, or the Zeus who deceived Hera by means of a feigned
+marriage with an inanimate object, or the Zeus who was afraid of Attes,
+or the Zeus who made love to women in the shape of an ant or a cuckoo,
+is a being whose myth is felt to be unnatural and bewildering.(3) It
+is this IRRATIONAL and unnatural element, as Mr. Max Muller says, "the
+silly, senseless, and savage element," that makes mythology the puzzle
+which men have so long found it. For, observe, Greek myth does
+not represent merely a humorous play of fancy, dealing with things
+religiously sacred as if by way of relief from the strained reverential
+contemplation of the majesty of Zeus. Many stories of Greek mythology
+are such as could not cross, for the first time, the mind of a civilised
+Xenophanes or Theagenes, even in a dream. THIS was the real puzzle.
+
+
+(1) Odyssey, vi. 102.
+
+(2) (Greek word omitted); compare Harpokration on this word.
+
+(3) These are the features in myth which provoke, for example, the
+wonder of Emeric-David. "The lizard, the wolf, the dog, the ass,
+the frog, and all the other brutes so common on religious monuments
+everywhere, do they not all imply a THOUGHT which we must divine?" He
+concludes that these animals, plants, and monsters of myths are so many
+"enigmas" and "symbols" veiling some deep, sacred idea, allegories of
+some esoteric religious creed. Jupiter, Paris, 1832, p. lxxvii.
+
+
+We have offered examples--Savage, Indian, and Greek--of that element in
+mythology which, as all civilised races have felt, demands explanation.
+
+To be still more explicit, we may draw up a brief list of the chief
+problems in the legendary stories attached to the old religions of the
+world--the problems which it is our special purpose to notice. First we
+have, in the myths of all races, the most grotesque conceptions of the
+character of gods when mythically envisaged. Beings who, in religion,
+leave little to be desired, and are spoken of as holy, immortal,
+omniscient, and kindly, are, in myth, represented as fashioned in the
+likeness not only of man, but of the beasts; as subject to death, as
+ignorant and impious.
+
+Most pre-Christian religions had their "zoomorphic" or partially
+zoomorphic idols, gods in the shape of the lower animals, or with the
+heads and necks of the lower animals. In the same way all mythologies
+represent the gods as fond of appearing in animal forms. Under these
+disguises they conduct many amours, even with the daughters of men, and
+Greek houses were proud of their descent from Zeus in the shape of an
+eagle or ant, a serpent or a swan; while Cronus and the Vedic Tvashtri
+and Poseidon made love as horses, and Apollo as a dog. Not less wild
+are the legends about the births of gods from the thigh, or the head,
+or feet, or armpits of some parent; while tales describing and pictures
+representing unspeakable divine obscenities were frequent in the
+mythology and in the temples of Greece. Once more, the gods were said
+to possess and exercise the power of turning men and women into birds,
+beasts, fishes, trees, and stones, so that there was scarcely a familiar
+natural object in the Greek world which had not once (according to
+legend) been a man or a woman. The myths of the origin of the world and
+man, again, were in the last degree childish and disgusting. The Bushmen
+and Australians have, perhaps, no story of the origin of species quite
+so barbarous in style as the anecdotes about Phanes and Prajapati which
+are preserved in the Orphic hymns and in the Brahmanas. The conduct
+of the earlier dynasties of classical gods towards each other was as
+notoriously cruel and loathsome as their behaviour towards mortals was
+tricksy and capricious. The classical gods, with all their immortal
+might, are, by a mythical contradiction of the religious conception,
+regarded as capable of fear and pain, and are led into scrapes as
+ludicrous as those of Brer Wolf or Brer Terrapin in the tales of
+the <DW64>s of the Southern States of America. The stars, again,
+in mythology, are mixed up with beasts, planets and men in the same
+embroglio of fantastic opinion. The dead and the living, men, beasts and
+gods, trees and stars, and rivers, and sun, and moon, dance through the
+region of myths in a burlesque ballet of Priapus, where everything may
+be anything, where nature has no laws and imagination no limits.
+
+Such are the irrational characteristics of myths, classic or Indian,
+European or American, African or Asiatic, Australian or Maori. Such
+is one element we find all the world over among civilised and savage
+people, quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus. It is no wonder that
+pious and reflective men have, in so many ages and in so many ways,
+tried to account to themselves for their possession of beliefs closely
+connected with religion which yet seemed ruinous to religion and
+morality.
+
+The explanations which men have given of their own sacred stories, the
+apologies for their own gods which they have been constrained to offer
+to themselves, were the earliest babblings of a science of mythology.
+That science was, in its dim beginnings, intended to satisfy a moral
+need. Man found that his gods, when mythically envisaged, were not made
+in his own moral image at its best, but in the image sometimes of the
+beasts, sometimes of his own moral nature at its very worst: in the
+likeness of robbers, wizards, sorcerers, and adulterers. Now, it
+is impossible here to examine minutely all systems of mythological
+interpretation. Every key has been tried in this difficult lock; every
+cause of confusion has been taken up and tested, deemed adequate, and
+finally rejected or assigned a subordinate place. Probably the first
+attempts to shake off the burden of religious horror at mythical impiety
+were made by way of silent omission. Thus most of the foulest myths of
+early India are absent, and presumably were left out, in the Rig-Veda.
+"The religious sentiment of the hymns, already so elevated, has
+discarded most of the tales which offended it, but has not succeeded
+in discarding them all."(1) Just as the poets of the Rig-Veda prefer to
+avoid the more offensive traditions about Indra and Tvashtri, so Homer
+succeeds in avoiding the more grotesque and puerile tales about his own
+gods.(2) The period of actual apology comes later. Pindar declines, as
+we have seen, to accuse a god of cannibalism. The Satapatha Brahmana
+invents a new story about the slaying of Visvarupa. Not Indra, but
+Trita, says the Brahmana apologetically, slew the three-headed son of
+Tvashtri. "Indra assuredly was free from that sin, for he is a god,"
+says the Indian apologist.(3) Yet sins which to us appear far more
+monstrous than the peccadillo of killing a three-headed Brahman are
+attributed freely to Indra.
+
+
+(1) Les Religions de l'Inde, Barth, p. 14. See also postea, "Indian
+Myths".
+
+(2) The reasons for Homer's reticence are probably different in
+different passages. Perhaps in some cases he had heard a purer version
+of myth than what reached Hesiod; perhaps he sometimes purposely (like
+Pindar) purified a myth; usually he must have selected, in conformity
+with the noble humanity and purity of his taste, the tales that best
+conformed to his ideal. He makes his deities reluctant to drag out in
+dispute old scandals of their early unheroic adventures, some of which,
+however, he gives, as the kicking of Hephaestus out of heaven, and the
+imprisonment of Ares in a vessel of bronze. Compare Professor Jebb's
+Homer, p. 83: "whatever the instinct of the great artist has tolerated,
+at least it has purged these things away." that is, divine amours in
+bestial form.
+
+(3) Satapatha Brahmana, Oxford, 1882, vol. i. p. 47.
+
+
+While poets could but omit a blasphemous tale or sketch an apology
+in passing, it became the business of philosophers and of antiquarian
+writers deliberately to "whitewash" the gods of popular religion.
+Systematic explanations of the sacred stories, whether as preserved
+in poetry or as told by priests, had to be provided. India had her
+etymological and her legendary school of mythology.(1) Thus, while the
+hymn SEEMED to tell how the Maruts were gods, "born together with the
+spotted deer," the etymological interpreters explained that the word for
+deer only meant the many- lines of clouds.(2) In the armoury of
+apologetics etymology has been the most serviceable weapon. It is
+easy to see that by aid of etymology the most repulsive legend may be
+compelled to yield a pure or harmless sense, and may be explained as
+an innocent blunder, caused by mere verbal misunderstanding. Brahmans,
+Greeks, and Germans have equally found comfort in this hypothesis. In
+the Cratylus of Plato, Socrates speaks of the notion of explaining myths
+by etymological guesses at the meaning of divine names as "a philosophy
+which came to him all in an instant". Thus we find Socrates shocked by
+the irreverence which styled Zeus the son of Cronus, "who is a proverb
+for stupidity". But on examining philologically the name Kronos,
+Socrates decides that it must really mean Koros, "not in the sense of
+a youth, but signifying the pure and garnished mind". Therefore,
+when people first called Zeus the son of Cronus, they meant nothing
+irreverent, but only that Zeus is the child of the pure mind or pure
+reason. Not only is this etymological system most pious and consolatory,
+but it is, as Socrates adds, of universal application. "For now I
+bethink me of a very new and ingenious notion,... that we may put in and
+pull out letters at pleasure, and alter the accents."(3)
+
+
+(1) Rig-Veda Sanhita. Max Muller, p. 59.
+
+(2) Postea, "Indian Divine Myths".
+
+(3) Jowett's Plato, vol. i. pp. 632, 670.
+
+
+Socrates, of course, speaks more than half in irony, but there is a
+certain truth in his account of etymological analysis and its dependence
+on individual tastes and preconceived theory.
+
+The ancient classical schools of mythological interpretation, though
+unscientific and unsuccessful, are not without interest. We find
+philosophers and grammarians looking, just as we ourselves are looking,
+for some condition of the human intellect out of which the absurd
+element in myths might conceivably have sprung. Very naturally the
+philosophers supposed that the human beings in whose brain and
+speech myths had their origin must have been philosophers like
+themselves--intelligent, educated persons. But such persons, they
+argued, could never have meant to tell stories about the gods so full of
+nonsense and blasphemy.
+
+Therefore the nonsense and blasphemy must originally have had some
+harmless, or even praiseworthy, sense. What could that sense have been?
+This question each ancient mythologist answered in accordance with his
+own taste and prejudices, and above all, and like all other and later
+speculators, in harmony with the general tendency of his own studies.
+If he lived when physical speculation was coming into fashion, as in
+the age of Empedocles, he thought that the Homeric poems must contain a
+veiled account of physical philosophy. This was the opinion of Theagenes
+of Rhegium, who wrote at a period when a crude physicism was disengaging
+itself from the earlier religious and mythical cosmogonic systems of
+Greece. Theagenes was shocked by the Homeric description of the battle
+in which the gods fought as allies of the Achaeans and Trojans. He
+therefore explained away the affair as a veiled account of the strife
+of the elements. Such "strife" was familiar to readers of the physical
+speculations of Empedocles and of Heraclitus, who blamed Homer for his
+prayer against Strife.(1)
+
+
+(1) Is. et Osir., 48.
+
+
+It did not occur to Theagenes to ask whether any evidence existed
+to show that the pre-Homeric Greeks were Empedoclean or Heraclitean
+philosophers. He readily proved to himself that Apollo, Helios, and
+Hephaestus were allegorical representations, like what such philosophers
+would feign,--of fire, that Hera was air, Poseidon water, Artemis the
+moon, and the rest he disposed of in the same fashion.(1)
+
+
+(1) Scholia on Iliad, xx. 67. Dindorf (1877), vol. iv. p. 231. "This
+manner of apologetics is as old as Theagenes of Rhegium. Homer offers
+theological doctrine in the guise of physical allegory."
+
+
+Metrodorus, again, turned not only the gods, but the Homeric heroes into
+"elemental combinations and physical agencies"; for there is nothing new
+in the mythological philosophy recently popular, which saw the sun, and
+the cloud, and the wind in Achilles, Athene, and Hermes.(1)
+
+
+(1) Grote, Hist, of Greece, ed. 1869, i. p. 404.
+
+
+In the Bacchae (291-297), Euripides puts another of the mythological
+systems of his own time into the mouth of Cadmus, the Theban king, who
+advances a philological explanation of the story that Dionysus was sewn
+up in the thigh of Zeus. The most famous of the later theories was that
+of Euhemerus (316 B.C.). In a kind of philosophical romance, Euhemerus
+declared that he had sailed to some No-man's-land, Panchaea, where he
+found the verity about mythical times engraved on pillars of bronze.
+This truth he published in the Sacra Historia, where he rationalised
+the fables, averring that the gods had been men, and that the myths were
+exaggerated and distorted records of facts. (See Eusebius, Praep. E.,
+ii 55.) The Abbe Banier (La Mythologie expliquee par l'Histoire, Paris,
+1738, vol. ii. p. 218) attempts the defence of Euhemerus, whom most of
+the ancients regarded as an atheist. There was an element of truth in
+his romantic hypothesis.(1)
+
+
+(1) See Block, Euhemere et sa Doctrine, Mons, 1876.
+
+
+Sometimes the old stories were said to conceal a moral, sometimes a
+physical, sometimes a mystical or Neo-platonic sort of meaning. As
+every apologist interpreted the legends in his own fashion, the
+interpretations usually disagreed and killed each other. Just as one
+modern mythologist sees the wind in Aeetes and the dawn in Medea, while
+another of the same school believes, on equally good evidence, that both
+Aeetes and Medea are the moon, so writers like Porphyry (270 A. D.)
+and Plutarch (60 A. D.) made the ancient deities types of their own
+favourite doctrines, whatever these might happen to be.
+
+When Christianity became powerful, the Christian writers naturally
+attacked heathen religion where it was most vulnerable, on the side of
+the myths, and of the mysteries which were dramatic representations
+of the myths. "Pretty gods you worship," said the Fathers, in effect,
+"homicides, adulterers, bulls, bears, mice, ants, and what not." The
+heathen apologists for the old religion were thus driven in the early
+ages of Christianity to various methods of explaining away the myths of
+their discredited religion.
+
+The early Christian writers very easily, and with considerable
+argumentative power, disposed of the apologies for the myths advanced by
+Porphyry and Plutarch. Thus Eusebius in the Praeparatio Evangelica
+first attacks the Egyptian interpretations of their own bestial or
+semi-bestial gods. He shows that the various interpretations destroy
+each other, and goes on to point out that Greek myth is in essence only
+a veneered and varnished version of the faith of Egypt. He ridicules,
+with a good deal of humour, the old theories which resolved so many
+mythical heroes into the sun; he shows that while one system is
+contented to regard Zeus as mere fire and air, another system recognises
+in him the higher reason, while Heracles, Dionysus, Apollo, and
+Asclepius, father and child, are all indifferently the sun.
+
+Granting that the myth-makers were only constructing physical
+allegories, why did they wrap them up, asks Eusebius, in what WE
+consider abominable fictions? In what state were the people who could
+not look at the pure processes of Nature without being reminded of
+the most hideous and unnatural offences? Once more: "The physical
+interpreters do not even agree in their physical interpretations". All
+these are equally facile, equally plausible, and equally incapable of
+proof. Again, Eusebius argues, the interpreters take for granted in the
+makers of the myths an amount of physical knowledge which they certainly
+did not possess. For example, if Leto were only another name for Hera,
+the character of Zeus would be cleared as far as his amour with Leto is
+concerned. Now, the ancient believers in the "physical phenomena theory"
+of myths made out that Hera, the wife of Zeus, was really the same
+person under another name as Leto, his mistress. "For Hera is the earth"
+(they said at other times that Hera was the air), "and Leto is the
+night; but night is only the shadow of the earth, and therefore Leto
+is only the shadow of Hera." It was easy, however, to prove that this
+scientific view of night as the shadow of earth was not likely to be
+known to myth-makers, who regarded "swift Night" as an actual person.
+Plutarch, too, had an abstruse theory to explain the legend about the
+dummy wife,--a log of oak-wood, which Zeus pretended to marry when at
+variance with Hera.(1)
+
+
+(1) Pausanias, ix. 31.
+
+
+This quarrel, he said, was merely the confusion and strife of elements.
+Zeus was heat, Hera was cold (she had already been explained as earth
+and air), the dummy wife of oak-wood was a tree that emerged after a
+flood, and so forth. Of course, there was no evidence that mythopoeic
+men held Plutarchian theories of heat and cold and the conflict of
+the elements; besides, as Eusebius pointed out, Hera had already been
+defined once as an allegory of wedded life, and once as the earth, and
+again as the air, and it was rather too late to assert that she was also
+the cold and watery element in the world. As for his own explanation of
+the myths, Eusebius holds that they descend from a period when men in
+their lawless barbarism knew no better than to tell such tales. "Ancient
+folk, in the exceeding savagery of their lives, made no account of God,
+the universal Creator (here Eusebius is probably wrong)... but betook
+them to all manner of abominations. For the laws of decent existence
+were not yet established, nor was any settled and peaceful state
+ordained among men, but only a loose and savage fashion of wandering
+life, while, as beasts irrational, they cared for no more than to fill
+their bellies, being in a manner without God in the world." Growing
+a little more civilised, men, according to Eusebius, sought after
+something divine, which they found in the heavenly bodies. Later,
+they fell to worshipping living persons, especially "medicine men" and
+conjurors, and continued to worship them even after their decease,
+so that Greek temples are really tombs of the dead.(1) Finally, the
+civilised ancients, with a conservative reluctance to abandon their
+old myths (Greek text omitted), invented for them moral or physical
+explanations, like those of Plutarch and others, earlier and later.(2)
+
+
+(1) Praep. E., ii. 5.
+
+(2) Ibid., 6,19.
+
+
+As Eusebius, like Clemens of Alexandria, Arnobius, and the other early
+Christian disputants, had no prejudice in favour of Hellenic mythology,
+and no sentimental reason for wishing to suppose that the origin of
+its impurities was pure, he found his way almost to the theory of the
+irrational element in mythology which we propose to offer.
+
+Even to sketch the history of mythological hypothesis in modern times
+would require a book to itself. It must suffice here to indicate the
+various lines which speculation as to mythology has pursued.
+
+All interpretations of myth have been formed in accordance with the
+ideas prevalent in the time of the interpreters. The early Greek
+physicists thought that mythopoeic men had been physicists. Aristotle
+hints that they were (like himself) political philosophers.(1)
+Neo-platonists sought in the myths for Neo-platonism; most Christians
+(unlike Eusebius) either sided with Euhemerus, or found in myth the
+inventions of devils, or a tarnished and distorted memory of the
+Biblical revelation.
+
+
+(1) Met., xi. 8,19.
+
+
+This was the theory, for example, of good old Jacob Bryant, who saw
+everywhere memories of the Noachian deluge and proofs of the correctness
+of Old Testament ethnology.(1)
+
+
+(1) Bryant, A New System, wherein an Attempt is made to Divest Tradition
+of Fable, 1774.
+
+
+Much the same attempt to find the Biblical truth at the bottom of savage
+and ancient fable has been recently made by the late M. Lenormant, a
+Catholic scholar.(1)
+
+
+(1) Les Origines de l'Histoire d'apres le Bible, 1880-1884.
+
+
+In the beginning of the present century Germany turned her attention to
+mythology. As usual, men's ideas were biassed by the general nature of
+their opinions. In a pious kind of spirit, Friedrich Creuzer sought to
+find SYMBOLS of some pure, early, and Oriental theosophy in the myths
+and mysteries of Greece. Certainly the Greeks of the philosophical
+period explained their own myths as symbols of higher things, but
+the explanation was an after-thought.(1) The great Lobeck, in his
+Aglaophamus (1829), brought back common sense, and made it the guide of
+his vast, his unequalled learning. In a gentler and more genial
+spirit, C. Otfried Muller laid the foundation of a truly scientific
+and historical mythology.(2) Neither of these writers had, like Alfred
+Maury,(3) much knowledge of the myths and faiths of the lower races, but
+they often seem on the point of anticipating the ethnological method.
+
+
+(1) Creuzer, Symbolik und Mythologie, 2d edit., Leipzig, 1836-43.
+
+(2) Introduction to a Scientific System of Mythology, English trans.,
+London, 1844.
+
+(3) Histoire des Religions de la Grece Antique, Paris, 1857.
+
+
+When philological science in our own century came to maturity, in
+philology, as of old in physics and later in symbols, was sought the
+key of myths. While physical allegory, religious and esoteric symbolism,
+verbal confusion, historical legend, and an original divine tradition,
+perverted in ages of darkness, have been the most popular keys in other
+ages, the scientific nineteenth century has had a philological key
+of its own. The methods of Kuhn, Breal, Max Muller, and generally the
+philological method, cannot be examined here at full length.(1) Briefly
+speaking, the modern philological method is intended for a scientific
+application of the old etymological interpretations. Cadmus in the
+Bacchae of Euripides, Socrates in the Cratylus of Plato, dismiss
+unpalatable myths as the results of verbal confusion. People had
+originally said something quite sensible--so the hypothesis runs--but
+when their descendants forgot the meaning of their remarks, a new and
+absurd meaning followed from a series of unconscious puns.(2) This view
+was supported in ancient times by purely conjectural and impossible
+etymologies. Thus the myth that Dionysus was sewn up in the THIGH of
+Zeus (Greek text omitted) was explained by Euripides as the result of a
+confusion of words. People had originally said that Zeus gave a pledge
+(Greek text omitted) to Hera. The modern philological school relies for
+explanations of untoward and other myths on similar confusions. Thus
+Daphne is said to have been originally not a girl of romance, but the
+dawn (Sanskirt, dahana: ahana) pursued by the rising sun. But as the
+original Aryan sense of Dahana or Ahana was lost, and as Daphne came to
+mean the laurel--the wood which burns easily--the fable arose that the
+tree had been a girl called Daphne.(3)
+
+
+(1) See Mythology in Encyclop. Brit. and in La Mythologie (A. L.),
+Paris, 1886, where Mr. Max Muller's system is criticised. See also
+Custom and Myth and Modern Mythology.
+
+(2) That a considerable number of myths, chiefly myths of place names,
+arise from popular etymologies is certain: what is objected to is the
+vast proportion given to this element in myths.
+
+(3) Max Muller, Nineteenth Century, December, 1885; "Solar Myths,"
+January, 1886; Myths and Mythologists (A. L). Whitney, Mannhardt,
+Bergaigne, and others dispute the etymology. Or. and Ling. Studies,
+1874, p. 160; Mannhardt, Antike Wald und Feld Kultus (Berlin, 1877), p.
+xx.; Bergaigne, La Religion Vedique, iii. 293; nor does Curtius like it
+much, Principles of Greek Etymology, English trans., ii. 92, 93; Modern
+Mythology (A. L.), 1897.
+
+
+This system chiefly rests on comparison between the Sanskrit names in
+the Rig-Veda and the mythic names in Greek, German, Slavonic, and other
+Aryan legends. The attempt is made to prove that, in the common speech
+of the undivided Aryan race, many words for splendid or glowing natural
+phenomena existed, and that natural processes were described in a
+figurative style. As the various Aryan families separated, the sense of
+the old words and names became dim, the nomina developed into numina,
+the names into gods, the descriptions of elemental processes into myths.
+As this system has already been criticised by us elsewhere with minute
+attention, a reference to these reviews must suffice in this place.
+Briefly, it may be stated that the various masters of the school--Kuhn,
+Max Muller, Roth, Schwartz, and the rest--rarely agree where agreement
+is essential, that is, in the philological foundations of their
+building. They differ in very many of the etymological analyses of
+mythical names. They also differ in the interpretations they put on the
+names, Kuhn almost invariably seeing fire, storm, cloud, or lightning
+where Mr. Max Muller sees the chaste Dawn. Thus Mannhardt, after having
+been a disciple, is obliged to say that comparative Indo-Germanic
+mythology has not borne the fruit expected, and that "the CERTAIN gains
+of the system reduce themselves to the scantiest list of parallels,
+such as Dyaus = Zeus = Tius, Parjanya = Perkunas, Bhaga = Bog, Varuna =
+Uranos" (a position much disputed), etc. Mannhardt adds his belief that
+a number of other "equations"--such as Sarameya = Hermeias, Saranyus =
+Demeter Erinnys, Kentauros = Gandharva, and many others--will not stand
+criticism, and he fears that these ingenious guesses will prove
+mere jeux d'esprit rather than actual facts.(1) Many examples of the
+precarious and contradictory character of the results of philological
+mythology, many instances of "dubious etymologies," false logic, leaps
+at foregone conclusions, and attempts to make what is peculiarly Indian
+in thought into matter of universal application, will meet us in the
+chapters on Indian and Greek divine legends.(2) "The method in its
+practical working shows a fundamental lack of the historical sense,"
+says Mannhardt. Examples are torn from their contexts, he observes;
+historical evolution is neglected; passages of the Veda, themselves
+totally obscure, are dragged forward to account for obscure Greek
+mythical phenomena. Such are the accusations brought by the regretted
+Mannhardt against the school to which he originally belonged, and
+which was popular and all-powerful even in the maturity of his own more
+clear-sighted genius. Proofs of the correctness of his criticism will
+be offered abundantly in the course of this work. It will become evident
+that, great as are the acquisitions of Philology, her least certain
+discoveries have been too hastily applied in alien "matter," that is, in
+the region of myth. Not that philology is wholly without place or part
+in the investigation of myth, when there is agreement among philologists
+as to the meaning of a divine name. In that case a certain amount of
+light is thrown on the legend of the bearer of the name, and on its
+origin and first home, Aryan, Greek, Semitic, or the like. But how rare
+is agreement among philologists!
+
+
+(1) Baum und Feld Kultus, p. xvii. Kuhn's "epoch-making" book is Die
+Herabkunft des Feuers, Berlin, 1859. By way of example of the disputes
+as to the original meaning of a name like Prometheus, compare Memoires
+de la Societe de Linguistique de Paris, t. iv. p. 336.
+
+(2) See especially Mannhardt's note on Kuhn's theories of Poseidon and
+Hermes, B. u. F. K., pp. xviii., xix., note 1.
+
+
+"The philological method," says Professor Tiele,(1) "is inadequate and
+misleading, when it is a question of discovering the ORIGIN of a myth,
+or the physical explanation of the oldest myths, or of accounting for
+the rude and obscene element in the divine legends of civilised races.
+But these are not the only problems of mythology. There is, for example,
+the question of the GENEALOGICAL relations of myths, where we have
+to determine whether the myths of peoples whose speech is of the same
+family are special modifications of a mythology once common to the race
+whence these peoples have sprung. The philological method alone can
+answer here." But this will seem a very limited province when we find
+that almost all races, however remote and unconnected in speech, have
+practically much the same myths.
+
+
+(1) Rev. de l'Hist. des Rel., xii. 3, 260, Nov., Dec., 1885.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. NEW SYSTEM PROPOSED.
+
+Chap. I. recapitulated--Proposal of a new method: Science of
+comparative or historical study of man--Anticipated in part by
+Eusebius, Fontenelle, De Brosses, Spencer (of C. C. C., Cambridge), and
+Mannhardt--Science of Tylor--Object of inquiry: to find condition of
+human intellect in which marvels of myth are parts of practical everyday
+belief--This is the savage state--Savages described--The wild element of
+myth a survival from the savage state--Advantages of this method--Partly
+accounts for wide DIFFUSION as well as ORIGIN of myths--Connected
+with general theory of evolution--Puzzling example of myth of the
+water-swallower--Professor Tiele's criticism of the method--Objections
+to method, and answer to these--See Appendix B.
+
+
+The past systems of mythological interpretation have been briefly
+sketched. It has been shown that the practical need for a reconciliation
+between RELIGION and MORALITY on one side, and the MYTHS about the gods
+on the other, produced the hypotheses of Theagenes and Metrodorus, of
+Socrates and Euemerus, of Aristotle and Plutarch. It has been shown that
+in each case the reconcilers argued on the basis of their own ideas and
+of the philosophies of their time. The early physicist thought that
+myth concealed a physical philosophy; the early etymologist saw in it a
+confusion of language; the early political speculator supposed that myth
+was an invention of legislators; the literary Euhemerus found the secret
+of myths in the course of an imaginary voyage to a fabled island.
+Then came the moment of the Christian attacks, and Pagan philosophers,
+touched with Oriental pantheism, recognised in myths certain pantheistic
+symbols and a cryptic revelation of their own Neo-platonism. When the
+gods were dead and their altars fallen, then antiquaries brought their
+curiosity to the problem of explaining myth. Christians recognised in it
+a depraved version of the Jewish sacred writings, and found the ark on
+every mountain-top of Greece. The critical nineteenth century brought
+in, with Otfried Muller and Lobeck, a closer analysis; and finally, in
+the sudden rise of comparative philology, it chanced that philologists
+annexed the domain of myths. Each of these systems had its own amount of
+truth, but each certainly failed to unravel the whole web of tradition
+and of foolish faith.
+
+Meantime a new science has come into existence, the science which
+studies man in the sum of all his works and thoughts, as evolved
+through the whole process of his development. This science, Comparative
+Anthropology, examines the development of law out of custom; the
+development of weapons from the stick or stone to the latest repeating
+rifle; the development of society from the horde to the nation. It is a
+study which does not despise the most backward nor degraded tribe, nor
+neglect the most civilised, and it frequently finds in Australians
+or Nootkas the germ of ideas and institutions which Greeks or Romans
+brought to perfection, or retained, little altered from their early
+rudeness, in the midst of civilisation.
+
+It is inevitable that this science should also try its hand on
+mythology. Our purpose is to employ the anthropological method--the
+study of the evolution of ideas, from the savage to the barbarous, and
+thence to the civilised stage--in the province of myth, ritual, and
+religion. It has been shown that the light of this method had dawned on
+Eusebius in his polemic with the heathen apologists. Spencer, the head
+of Corpus, Cambridge (1630-93), had really no other scheme in his mind
+in his erudite work on Hebrew Ritual.(1) Spencer was a student of man's
+religions generally, and he came to the conclusion that Hebrew ritual
+was but an expurgated, and, so to speak, divinely "licensed" adaptation
+of heathen customs at large. We do but follow his guidance on less
+perilous ground when we seek for the original forms of classical rite
+and myth in the parallel usages and legends of the most backward races.
+
+
+(1) De Legibus Hebraeorum Ritualibus, Tubingae, 1782.
+
+
+Fontenelle in the last century, stated, with all the clearness of the
+French intellect, the system which is partially worked out in this
+essay--the system which explains the irrational element in myth as
+inherited from savagery. Fontenelle's paper (Sur l'Origine des Fables)
+is brief, sensible, and witty, and requires little but copious evidence
+to make it adequate. But he merely threw out the idea, and left it to be
+neglected.(1)
+
+
+(1) See Appendix A., Fontenelle's Origine des Fables.
+
+
+Among other founders of the anthropological or historical school of
+mythology, De Brosses should not be forgotten. In his Dieux Fetiches
+(1760) he follows the path which Eusebius indicated--the path of Spencer
+and Fontenelle--now the beaten road of Tylor and M'Lennan and Mannhardt.
+
+In anthropology, in the science of Waitz, Tylor, and M'Lennan, in
+the examination of man's faith in the light of his social, legal, and
+historical conditions generally, we find, with Mannhardt, some of the
+keys of myth. This science "makes it manifest that the different stages
+through which humanity has passed in its intellectual evolution have
+still their living representatives among various existing races.
+The study of these lower races is an invaluable instrument for the
+interpretation of the survivals from earlier stages, which we meet in
+the full civilisation of cultivated peoples, but whose origins were in
+the remotest fetichism and savagery."(1)
+
+
+(1) Mannhardt op. cit. p. xxiii.
+
+
+It is by following this road, and by the aid of anthropology and
+of human history, that we propose to seek for a demonstrably actual
+condition of the human intellect, whereof the puzzling qualities of myth
+would be the natural and inevitable fruit. In all the earlier theories
+which we have sketched, inquirers took it for granted that the
+myth-makers were men with philosophic and moral ideas like their
+own--ideas which, from some reason of religion or state, they expressed
+in bizarre terms of allegory. We shall attempt, on the other hand, to
+prove that the human mind has passed through a condition quite unlike
+that of civilised men--a condition in which things seemed natural and
+rational that now appear unnatural and devoid of reason, and in which,
+therefore, if myths were evolved, they would, if they survived into
+civilisation, be such as civilised men find strange and perplexing.
+
+Our first question will be, Is there a stage of human society and of
+the human intellect in which facts that appear to us to be monstrous
+and irrational--facts corresponding to the wilder incidents of myth--are
+accepted as ordinary occurrences of everyday life? In the region of
+romantic rather than of mythical invention we know that there is such
+a state. Mr. Lane, in his preface to the Arabian Nights, says that the
+Arabs have an advantage over us as story-tellers. They can introduce
+such incidents as the change of a man into a horse, or of a woman into a
+dog, or the intervention of an Afreet without any more scruple than our
+own novelists feel in describing a duel or the concealment of a will.
+Among the Arabs the agencies of magic and of spirits are regarded as at
+least as probable and common as duels and concealments of wills seem
+to be thought by European novelists. It is obvious that we need look no
+farther for the explanation of the supernatural events in Arab romances.
+Now, let us apply this system to mythology. It is admitted that Greeks,
+Romans, Aryans of India in the age of the Sanskrit commentators, and
+Egyptians of the Ptolemaic and earlier ages, were as much puzzled as
+we are by the mythical adventures of their gods. But is there any
+known stage of the human intellect in which similar adventures, and
+the metamorphoses of men into animals, trees, stars, and all else
+that puzzles us in the civilised mythologies, are regarded as possible
+incidents of daily human life? Our answer is, that everything in the
+civilised mythologies which we regard as irrational seems only part of
+the accepted and natural order of things to contemporary savages, and in
+the past seemed equally rational and natural to savages concerning whom
+we have historical information.(1) Our theory is, therefore, that the
+savage and senseless element in mythology is, for the most part, a
+legacy from the fancy of ancestors of the civilised races who were once
+in an intellectual state not higher, but probably lower, than that of
+Australians, Bush-men, Red Indians, the lower races of South America,
+and other worse than barbaric peoples. As the ancestors of the Greeks,
+Aryans of India, Egyptians and others advanced in civilisation, their
+religious thought was shocked and surprised by myths (originally dating
+from the period of savagery, and natural in that period, though even
+then often in contradiction to morals and religion) which were preserved
+down to the time of Pausanias by local priesthoods, or which were
+stereotyped in the ancient poems of Hesiod and Homer, or in the
+Brahmanas and Vedas of India, or were retained in the popular religion
+of Egypt. This theory recommended itself to Lobeck. "We may believe that
+ancient and early tribes framed gods like unto themselves in action and
+in experience, and that the allegorical softening down of myths is the
+explanation added later by descendants who had attained to purer ideas
+of divinity, yet dared not reject the religion of their ancestors."(2)
+The senseless element in the myths would, by this theory, be for the
+most part a "survival"; and the age and condition of human thought
+whence it survived would be one in which our most ordinary ideas about
+the nature of things and the limits of possibility did not yet exist,
+when all things were conceived of in quite other fashion; the age, that
+is, of savagery.
+
+
+(1) We have been asked to DEFINE a savage. He cannot be defined in an
+epigram, but by way of choice of a type:--
+
+1. In material equipment the perfect savage is he who employs tools of
+stone and wood, not of metal; who is nomadic rather than settled; who
+is acquainted (if at all) only with the rudest forms of the arts of
+potting, weaving, fire-making, etc.; and who derives more of his food
+from the chase and from wild roots and plants than from any kind of
+agriculture or from the flesh of domesticated animals.
+
+2. In psychology the savage is he who (extending unconsciously to the
+universe his own implicit consciousness of personality) regards all
+natural objects as animated and intelligent beings, and, drawing no hard
+and fast line between himself and the things in the world, is readily
+persuaded that men may be metamorphosed into plants, beasts and stars;
+that winds and clouds, sun and dawn, are persons with human passions
+and parts; and that the lower animals especially may be creatures more
+powerful than himself, and, in a sense, divine and creative.
+
+3. In religion the savage is he who (while often, in certain moods,
+conscious of a far higher moral faith) believes also in ancestral
+ghosts or spirits of woods and wells that were never ancestral; prays
+frequently by dint of magic; and sometimes adores inanimate objects, or
+even appeals to the beasts as supernatural protectors.
+
+4. In society the savage is he who (as a rule) bases his laws on the
+well-defined lines of totemism--that is, claims descent from or other
+close relation to natural objects, and derives from the sacredness of
+those objects the sanction of his marriage prohibitions and blood-feuds,
+while he makes skill in magic a claim to distinguished rank.
+
+Such, for our purpose, is the savage, and we propose to explain the more
+"senseless" factors in civilised mythology as "survivals" of these ideas
+and customs preserved by conservatism and local tradition, or, less
+probably, borrowed from races which were, or had been, savage.
+
+(2) Aglaoph., i. 153. Had Lobeck gone a step farther and examined the
+mental condition of veteres et priscae gentes, this book would have
+been, superfluous. Nor did he know that the purer ideas were also
+existing among certain low savages.
+
+
+It is universally admitted that "survivals" of this kind do account for
+many anomalies in our institutions, in law, politics, society, even in
+dress and manners. If isolated fragments of earlier ages abide in these,
+it is still more probable that other fragments will survive in anything
+so closely connected as is mythology with the conservative religious
+sentiment and tradition. Our object, then, is to prove that the "silly,
+savage, and irrational" element in the myths of civilised peoples is,
+as a rule, either a survival from the period of savagery, or has been
+borrowed from savage neighbours by a cultivated people, or, lastly,
+is an imitation by later poets of old savage data.(1) For example,
+to explain the constellations as metamorphosed men, animals, or other
+objects of terrestrial life is the habit of savages,(2)--a natural habit
+among people who regard all things as on one level of personal life and
+intelligence. When the stars, among civilised Greeks or Aryans of India,
+are also popularly regarded as transformed and transfigured men, animals
+and the like, this belief may be either a survival from the age when the
+ancestors of Greeks and Indians were in the intellectual condition
+of the Australian Murri; or the star-name and star-myth may have been
+borrowed from savages, or from cultivated peoples once savage or apt to
+copy savages; or, as in the case of the Coma Berenices, a poet of a late
+age may have invented a new artificial myth on the old lines of savage
+fancy.
+
+
+(1) We may be asked why do savages entertain the irrational ideas which
+survive in myth? One might as well ask why they eat each other, or
+use stones instead of metal. Their intellectual powers are not fully
+developed, and hasty analogy from their own unreasoned consciousness
+is their chief guide. Myth, in Mr. Darwin's phrase, is one of the
+"miserable and indirect consequences of our highest faculties". Descent
+of Man, p. 69.
+
+(2) See Custom and Myth, "Star-Myths".
+
+
+This method of interpreting a certain element in mythology is, we must
+repeat, no new thing, though, to judge from the protests of several
+mythologists, it is new to many inquirers. We have seen that Eusebius
+threw out proposals in this direction; that Spencer, De Brosses, and
+Fontenelle unconsciously followed him; and we have quoted from Lobeck
+a statement of a similar opinion. The whole matter has been stated as
+clearly as possible by Mr. B. B. Tylor:--
+
+"Savages have been for untold ages, and still are, living in the
+myth-making stage of the human mind. It was through sheer ignorance and
+neglect of this direct knowledge how and by what manner of men myths
+are really made that their simple philosophy has come to be buried under
+masses of commentator's rubbish..."(1) Mr. Tylor goes on thus (and his
+words contain the gist of our argument): "The general thesis maintained
+is that myth arose in the savage condition prevalent in remote ages
+among the whole human race; that it remains comparatively unchanged
+among the rude modern tribes who have departed least from these
+primitive conditions, while higher and later civilisations, partly by
+retaining its actual principles, and partly by carrying on its inherited
+results in the form of ancestral tradition, continued it not merely in
+toleration, but in honour".(2) Elsewhere Mr. Tylor points out that by
+this method of interpretation we may study myths in various stages
+of evolution, from the rude guess of the savage at an explanation of
+natural phenomena, through the systems of the higher barbarisms, or
+lower civilisations (as in ancient Mexico), and the sacerdotage of
+India, till myth reaches its most human form in Greece. Yet even in
+Greek myth the beast is not wholly cast out, and Hellas by no means "let
+the ape and tiger die". That Mr. Tylor does not exclude the Aryan
+race from his general theory is plain enough.(3) "What is the Aryan
+conception of the Thunder-god but a poetic elaboration of thoughts
+inherited from the savage stage through which the primitive Aryans had
+passed?"(4)
+
+
+(1) Primitive Culture, 2nd edit., i. p. 283.
+
+(2) Op. cit., p. 275.
+
+(3) Primitive Culture, 2nd edit., ii. 265.
+
+(4) Pretty much the same view seems to be taken by Mr. Max Muller
+(Nineteenth Century, January, 1882) when he calls Tsui Goab (whom the
+Hottentots believe to be a defunct conjuror) "a Hottentot Indra or
+Zeus".
+
+
+The advantages of our hypothesis (if its legitimacy be admitted) are
+obvious. In the first place, we have to deal with an actual demonstrable
+condition of the human intellect. The existence of the savage state
+in all its various degrees, and of the common intellectual habits and
+conditions which are shared by the backward peoples, and again the
+survival of many of these in civilisation, are indubitable facts. We are
+not obliged to fall back upon some fanciful and unsupported theory of
+what "primitive man" did, and said, and thought. Nay, more; we escape
+all the fallacies connected with the terms "primitive man". We are not
+compelled (as will be shown later)(1) to prove that the first men of all
+were like modern savages, nor that savages represent primitive man.
+It may be that the lowest extant savages are the nearest of existing
+peoples to the type of the first human beings. But on this point it is
+unnecessary for us to dogmatise. If we can show that, whether men began
+their career as savages or not, they have at least passed through the
+savage status or have borrowed the ideas of races in the savage
+status, that is all we need. We escape from all the snares of theories
+(incapable of historical proof) about the really primeval and original
+condition of the human family.
+
+
+(1) Appendix B.
+
+
+Once more, our theory naturally attaches itself to the general system
+of Evolution. We are enabled to examine mythology as a thing of gradual
+development and of slow and manifold modifications, corresponding in
+some degree to the various changes in the general progress of society.
+Thus we shall watch the barbaric conditions of thought which produce
+barbaric myths, while these in their turn are retained, or perhaps
+purified, or perhaps explained away, by more advanced civilisations.
+Further, we shall be able to detect the survival of the savage ideas
+with least modification, and the persistence of the savage myths with
+least change, among the classes of a civilised population which have
+shared least in the general advance. These classes are, first, the
+rustic peoples, dwelling far from cities and schools, on heaths or by
+the sea; second, the conservative local priesthoods, who retain the more
+crude and ancient myths of the local gods and heroes after these
+have been modified or rejected by the purer sense of philosophers and
+national poets. Thus much of ancient myth is a woven warp and woof of
+three threads: the savage donnee, the civilised and poetic modification
+of the savage donnee, the version of the original fable which survives
+in popular tales and in the "sacred chapters" of local priesthoods. A
+critical study of these three stages in myth is in accordance with the
+recognised practice of science. Indeed, the whole system is only an
+application to this particular province, mythology, of the method by
+which the development either of organisms or of human institutions is
+traced. As the anomalies and apparently useless and accidental features
+in the human or in other animal organisms may be explained as stunted or
+rudimentary survivals of organs useful in a previous stage of life, so
+the anomalous and irrational myths of civilised races may be explained
+as survivals of stories which, in an earlier state of thought and
+knowledge, seemed natural enough. The persistence of the myths
+is accounted for by the well-known conservatism of the religious
+sentiment--a conservatism noticed even by Eusebius. "In later days, when
+they became ashamed of the religious beliefs of their ancestors, they
+invented private and respectful interpretations, each to suit himself.
+For no one dared to shake the ancestral beliefs, as they honoured at a
+very high rate the sacredness and antiquity of old associations, and of
+the teaching they had received in childhood."(1)
+
+
+(1) Praep. E., ii. 6, 19.
+
+
+Thus the method which we propose to employ is in harmony both with
+modern scientific procedure and with the views of a clear-sighted Father
+of the Church. Consequently no system could well be less "heretical" and
+"unorthodox".
+
+The last advantage of our hypothesis which need here be mentioned is
+that it helps to explain the DIFFUSION no less than the ORIGIN of the
+wild and crazy element in myth. We seek for the origin of the savage
+factor of myth in one aspect of the intellectual condition of savages.
+We say "in one aspect" expressly; to guard against the suggestion that
+the savage intellect has no aspect but this, and no saner ideas than
+those of myth. The DIFFUSION of stories practically identical in every
+quarter of the globe may be (provisionally) regarded as the result of
+the prevalence in every quarter, at one time or another, of similar
+mental habits and ideas. This explanation must not be pressed too hard
+nor too far. If we find all over the world a belief that men can change
+themselves and their neighbours into beasts, that belief will account
+for the appearance of metamorphosis in myth. If we find a belief that
+inanimate objects are really much on a level with man, the opinion
+will account for incidents of myth such as that in which the wooden
+figure-head of the Argo speaks with a human voice. Again, a widespread
+belief in the separability of the soul or the life from the body will
+account for the incident in nursery tales and myths of the "giant who
+had no heart in his body," but kept his heart and life elsewhere. An
+ancient identity of mental status and the working of similar mental
+forces at the attempt to explain the same phenomena will account,
+without any theory of borrowing, or transmission of myth, or of
+original unity of race, for the world-wide diffusion of many mythical
+conceptions.
+
+But this theory of the original similarity of the savage mind everywhere
+and in all races will scarcely account for the world-wide distribution
+of long and intricate mythical PLOTS, of consecutive series of adroitly
+interwoven situations. In presence of these long romances, found among
+so many widely severed peoples, conjecture is, at present, almost
+idle. We do not know, in many instances, whether such stories were
+independently developed, or carried from a common centre, or borrowed by
+one race from another, and so handed on round the world.
+
+This chapter may conclude with an example of a tale whose DIFFUSION may
+be explained in divers ways, though its ORIGIN seems undoubtedly savage.
+If we turn to the Algonkins, a stock of Red Indians, we come on a
+popular tradition which really does give pause to the mythologist. Could
+this story, he asks himself, have been separately invented in widely
+different places, or could the Iroquois have borrowed from the
+Australian blacks or the Andaman Islanders? It is a common thing in most
+mythologies to find everything of value to man--fire, sun, water--in
+the keeping of some hostile power. The fire, or the sun, or the water
+is then stolen, or in other ways rescued from the enemy and restored
+to humanity. The Huron story (as far as water is concerned) is told by
+Father Paul Le Jeune, a Jesuit missionary, who lived among the Hurons
+about 1636. The myth begins with the usual opposition between two
+brothers, the Cain and Abel of savage legend. One of the brothers, named
+Ioskeha, slew the other, and became the father of mankind (as known
+to the Red Indians) and the guardian of the Iroquois. The earth was at
+first arid and sterile, but Ioskeha destroyed the gigantic frog which
+had swallowed all the waters, and guided the torrents into smooth
+streams and lakes.(1)
+
+
+(1) Relations de la Nouvelle France, 1636, p. 103 (Paris, Cramoisy,
+1637).
+
+
+Now where, outside of North America, do we find this frog who swallowed
+all the water? We find him in Australia.
+
+"The aborigines of Lake Tyers," remarks Mr. Brough Smyth, "say that at
+one time there was no water anywhere on the face of the earth. All the
+waters were contained in the body of a huge frog, and men and women
+could get none of them. A council was held, and... it was agreed that
+the frog should be made to laugh, when the waters would run out of his
+mouth, and there would be plenty in all parts."
+
+To make a long story short, all the animals played the jester before
+the gigantic solemn frog, who sat as grave as Louis XV. "I do not like
+buffoons who don't make me laugh," said that majestical monarch. At last
+the eel danced on the tip of his tail, and the gravity of the prodigious
+Batrachian gave way. He laughed till he literally split his sides,
+and the imprisoned waters came with a rush. Indeed, many persons were
+drowned, though this is not the only Australian version of the Deluge.
+
+The Andaman Islanders dwell at a very considerable distance from
+Australia and from the Iroquois, and, in the present condition of the
+natives of Australia and Andaman, neither could possibly visit the
+other. The frog in the Andaman version is called a toad, and he came to
+swallow the waters in the following way: One day a woodpecker was eating
+honey high up in the boughs of a tree. Far below, the toad was a witness
+of the feast, and asked for some honey. "Well, come up here, and you
+shall have some," said the woodpecker. "But how am I to climb?" "Take
+hold of that creeper, and I will draw you up," said the woodpecker; but
+all the while he was bent on a practical joke. So the toad got into a
+bucket he happened to possess, and fastened the bucket to the creeper.
+"Now, pull!" Then the woodpecker raised the toad slowly to the level of
+the bough where the honey was, and presently let him down with a run,
+not only disappointing the poor toad, but shaking him severely. The toad
+went away in a rage and looked about him for revenge. A happy thought
+occurred to him, and he drank up all the water of the rivers and lakes.
+Birds and beasts were perishing, woodpeckers among them, of thirst. The
+toad, overjoyed at his success, wished to add insult to the injury, and,
+very thoughtlessly, began to dance in an irritating manner at his foes.
+But then the stolen waters gushed out of his mouth in full volume, and
+the drought soon ended. One of the most curious points in this myth is
+the origin of the quarrel between the woodpecker and the toad. The same
+beginning--the tale of an insult put on an animal by hauling up and
+letting him down with a run--occurs in an African Marchen.(1)
+
+
+(1) Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, i. 429, 430; Brinton, American
+Hero Myths, i. 55. Cf. also Relations de la Nouvelle France, 1636, 1640,
+1671; (Sagard, Hist. du Canada, 1636, p. 451;) Journal Anthrop. Inst.,
+1881.
+
+
+Now this strangely diffused story of the slaying of the frog which had
+swallowed all the water seems to be a savage myth of which the more
+heroic conflict of Indra with Vrittra (the dragon which had swallowed
+all the waters) is an epic and sublimer version.(1) "The heavenly water,
+which Vrittra withholds from the world, is usually the prize of the
+contest."
+
+
+(1) Ludwig, Der Rig-Veda, iii. p. 337. See postea, "Divine Myths of
+India".
+
+
+The serpent of Vedic myth is, perhaps, rather the robber-guardian than
+the swallower of the waters, but Indra is still, like the Iroquois
+Ioskeha, "he who wounds the full one".(1) This example of the wide
+distribution of a myth shows how the question of diffusion, though
+connected with, is yet distinct from that of origin. The advantage
+of our method will prove to be, that it discovers an historical and
+demonstrable state of mind as the origin of the wild element in
+myth. Again, the wide prevalence in the earliest times of this mental
+condition will, to a certain extent, explain the DISTRIBUTION of
+myth. Room must be left, of course, for processes of borrowing and
+transmission, but how Andamanese, Australians and Hurons could borrow
+from each other is an unsolved problem.
+
+
+(1) Gubernatis, Zoological Myth. ii. 395, note 2. "When Indra kills the
+serpent he opens the torrent of the waters" (p. 393). See also Aitareya
+Brahmana, translated by Haug, ii. 483.
+
+
+Finally, our hypothesis is not involved in dubious theories of race. To
+us, myths appear to be affected (in their origins) much less by the race
+than by the stage of culture attained by the people who cherish them.
+A fight for the waters between a monstrous dragon like Vrittra and a
+heroic god like Indra is a nobler affair than a quarrel for the
+waters between a woodpecker and a toad. But the improvement and
+transfiguration, so to speak, of a myth at bottom the same is due to the
+superior culture, not to the peculiar race, of the Vedic poets, except
+so far as culture itself depends on race. How far the purer culture was
+attained to by the original superiority of the Aryan over the Andaman
+breed, it is not necessary for our purpose to inquire. Thus, on the
+whole, we may claim for our system a certain demonstrable character,
+which helps to simplify the problems of mythology, and to remove
+them from the realm of fanciful guesses and conflicting etymological
+conjectures into that of sober science. That these pretensions are not
+unacknowledged even by mythologists trained in other schools is proved
+by the remarks of Dr. Tiele.(1)
+
+
+(1) Rev. de l'Hist. des Rel., "Le Mythe de Cronos," January, 1886. Dr.
+Tiele is not, it must be noted, a thorough adherent of our theory. See
+Modern Mythology: "The Question of Allies".
+
+
+Dr. Tiele writes: "If I were obliged to choose between this method" (the
+system here advocated) "and that of comparative philology, it is the
+former that I would adopt without the slightest hesitation. This method
+alone enables us to explain the fact, which has so often provoked
+amazement, that people so refined as the Greeks,... or so rude, but
+morally pure, as the Germans,... managed to attribute to their gods
+all manner of cowardly, cruel and disorderly conduct. This method alone
+explains the why and wherefore of all those strange metamorphoses
+of gods into beasts and plants, and even stones, which scandalised
+philosophers, and which the witty Ovid played on for the diversion of
+his contemporaries. In short, this method teaches us to recognise in all
+those strange stories the survivals of a barbaric age, long passed away,
+but enduring to later times in the form of religious traditions, of all
+traditions the most persistent.... Finally, this method alone enables us
+to explain the origin of myths, because it endeavours to study them
+in their rudest and most primitive shape, thus allowing their true
+significance to be much more clearly apparent than it can be in the
+myths (so often touched, retouched, augmented and humanised) which are
+current among races arrived at a certain degree of culture."
+
+The method is to this extent applauded by a most competent authority,
+and it has been warmly accepted by a distinguished French school of
+students, represented by M. Gaidoz. But it is obvious that the method
+rests on a double hypothesis: first, that satisfactory evidence as to
+the mental conditions of the lower and backward races is obtainable;
+second, that the civilised races (however they began) either passed
+through the savage state of thought and practice, or borrowed very
+freely from people in that condition. These hypotheses have been
+attacked by opponents; the trustworthiness of our evidence, especially,
+has been assailed. By way of facilitating the course of the exposition
+and of lessening the disturbing element of controversy, a reply to
+the objections and a defence of the evidence has been relegated to an
+Appendix.(1) Meanwhile we go on to examine the peculiar characteristics
+of the mental condition of savages and of peoples in the lower and upper
+barbarisms.
+
+
+(1) Appendix B.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. THE MENTAL CONDITION OF SAVAGES--CONFUSION WITH
+NATURE--TOTEMISM.
+
+
+The mental condition of savages the basis of the irrational element in
+myth--Characteristics of that condition: (1) Confusion of all things
+in an equality of presumed animation and intelligence; (2) Belief in
+sorcery; (3) Spiritualism; (4) Curiosity; (5) Easy credulity and mental
+indolence--The curiosity is satisfied, thanks to the credulity, by myths
+in answer to all inquiries--Evidence for this--Mr. Tylor's opinion--Mr.
+Im Thurn--Jesuit missionaries' Relations--Examples of confusion
+between men, plants, beasts and other natural objects--Reports of
+travellers--Evidence from institution of totemism--Definition of
+totemism--Totemism in Australia, Africa, America, the Oceanic Islands,
+India, North Asia--Conclusions: Totemism being found so widely
+distributed, is a proof of the existence of that savage mental condition
+in which no line is drawn between men and the other things in the world.
+This confusion is one of the characteristics of myth in all races.
+
+
+We set out to discover a stage of human intellectual development which
+would necessarily produce the essential elements of myth. We think we
+have found that stage in the condition of savagery. We now proceed to
+array the evidence for the mental processes of savages. We intend to
+demonstrate the existence in practical savage life of the ideas which
+most surprise us when we find them in civilised sacred legends.
+
+For the purposes of this inquiry, it is enough to select a few special
+peculiarities of savage thought.
+
+1. First we have that nebulous and confused frame of mind to which all
+things, animate or inanimate, human, animal, vegetable, or inorganic,
+seem on the same level of life, passion and reason. The savage, at all
+events when myth-making, draws no hard and fast line between himself and
+the things in the world. He regards himself as literally akin to animals
+and plants and heavenly bodies; he attributes sex and procreative powers
+even to stones and rocks, and he assigns human speech and human feelings
+to sun and moon and stars and wind, no less than to beasts, birds and
+fishes.(1)
+
+
+(1) "So fasst auch das Alterthum ihren Unterschied von den Menschen
+ganz anders als die spatere Zeit."--Grimm, quoted by Liebrecht, Zur
+Volkskunde, p. 17.
+
+
+2. The second point to note in savage opinion is the belief in magic and
+sorcery. The world and all the things in it being vaguely conceived of
+as sensible and rational, obey the commands of certain members of the
+tribe, chiefs, jugglers, conjurors, or what you will. Rocks open at
+their order, rivers dry up, animals are their servants and hold converse
+with them. These magicians cause or heal diseases, and can command even
+the weather, bringing rain or thunder or sunshine at their will.(1)
+There are few supernatural attributes of "cloud-compelling Zeus" or of
+Apollo that are not freely assigned to the tribal conjuror. By virtue,
+doubtless, of the community of nature between man and the things in the
+world, the conjuror (like Zeus or Indra) can assume at will the shape
+of any animal, or can metamorphose his neighbours or enemies into animal
+forms.
+
+
+(1) See Roth in North-West Central Queensland Aborigines, chapter xii.,
+1897.
+
+
+3. Another peculiarity of savage belief naturally connects itself with
+that which has just been described. The savage has very strong ideas
+about the persistent existence of the souls of the dead. They retain
+much of their old nature, but are often more malignant after death than
+they had been during life. They are frequently at the beck and call of
+the conjuror, whom they aid with their advice and with their magical
+power. By virtue of the close connection already spoken of between
+man and the animals, the souls of the dead are not rarely supposed to
+migrate into the bodies of beasts, or to revert to the condition of that
+species of creatures with which each tribe supposes itself to be related
+by ties of kinship or friendship. With the usual inconsistency of
+mythical belief, the souls of the dead are spoken of, at other times,
+as if they inhabited a spiritual world, sometimes a paradise of flowers,
+sometimes a gloomy place, which mortal men may visit, but whence no one
+can escape who has tasted of the food of the ghosts.
+
+4. In connection with spirits a far-reaching savage philosophy
+prevails. It is not unusual to assign a ghost to all objects, animate or
+inanimate, and the spirit or strength of a man is frequently regarded as
+something separable, capable of being located in an external object,
+or something with a definite locality in the body. A man's strength
+and spirit may reside in his kidney fat, in his heart, in a lock of his
+hair, or may even be stored by him in some separate receptacle. Very
+frequently a man is held capable of detaching his soul from his body,
+and letting it roam about on his business, sometimes in the form of a
+bird or other animal.
+
+5. Many minor savage beliefs might be named, such as the common faith in
+friendly or protecting animals, and the notion that "natural deaths" (as
+we call them) are always UNNATURAL, that death is always caused by some
+hostile spirit or conjuror. From this opinion comes the myth that man is
+naturally not subject to death: that death was somehow introduced into
+the world by a mistake or misdeed is a corollary. (See "Myths of the
+Origin of Death" in Modern Mythology.)
+
+6. One more mental peculiarity of the savage mind remains to be
+considered in this brief summary. The savage, like the civilised man, is
+curious. The first faint impulses of the scientific spirit are at work
+in his brain; he is anxious to give himself an account of the world
+in which he finds himself. But he is not more curious than he is, on
+occasion, credulous. His intellect is eager to ask questions, as is the
+habit of children, but his intellect is also lazy, and he is content
+with the first answer that comes to hand. "Ils s'arretent aux premieres
+notions qu'ils en ont," says Pere Hierome Lalemant.(1) "Nothing," says
+Schoolcraft, "is too capacious (sic) for Indian belief."(2) The replies
+to his questions he receives from tradition or (when a new problem
+arises) evolves an answer for himself in the shape of STORIES. Just as
+Socrates, in the Platonic dialogues, recalls or invents a myth in the
+despair of reason, so the savage has a story for answer to almost
+every question that he can ask himself. These stories are in a sense
+scientific, because they attempt a solution of the riddles of the world.
+They are in a sense religious, because there is usually a supernatural
+power, a deus ex machina, of some sort to cut the knot of the problem.
+Such stories, then, are the science, and to a certain extent the
+religious tradition, of savages.(3)
+
+
+(1) Relations de la Nouvelle France, 1648, p. 70.
+
+(2) Algic Researches, i. 41.
+
+(3) "The Indians (Algonkins) conveyed instruction--moral, mechanical and
+religious--through traditionary fictions and tales."--Schoolcraft, Algic
+Researches, i. 12.
+
+
+Now these tales are necessarily cast in the mould of the savage ideas of
+which a sketch has been given. The changes of the heavenly bodies, the
+processes of day and night, the existence of the stars, the invention
+of the arts, the origin of the world (as far as known to the savage),
+of the tribe, of the various animals and plants, the origin of death
+itself, the origin of the perplexing traditional tribal customs, are all
+accounted for in stories. At the same time, an actual divine Maker is
+sometimes postulated. The stories, again, are fashioned in accordance
+with the beliefs already named: the belief in human connection with and
+kinship with beasts and plants; the belief in magic; the belief in the
+perpetual possibility of metamorphosis or "shape shifting"; the belief
+in the permanence and power of the ghosts of the dead; the belief in the
+personal and animated character of all the things in the world, and so
+forth.
+
+No more need be said to explain the wild and (as it seems to us moderns)
+the irrational character of savage myth. It is a jungle of foolish
+fancies, a walpurgis nacht of gods and beasts and men and stars and
+ghosts, all moving madly on a level of common personality and animation,
+and all changing shapes at random, as partners are changed in some
+fantastic witches' revel. Such is savage mythology, and how could it
+be otherwise when we consider the elements of thought and belief out of
+which it is mainly composed? We shall see that part of the mythology of
+the Greeks or the Aryans of India is but a similar walpurgis nacht, in
+which an incestuous or amorous god may become a beast, and the object
+of his pursuit, once a woman, may also become a beast, and then shift
+shapes to a tree or a bird or a star. But in the civilised races the
+genius of the people tends to suppress, exclude and refine away the wild
+element, which, however, is never wholly eliminated. The Erinyes soon
+stop the mouth of the horse of Achilles when he begins, like the horse
+in Grimm's Goose Girl, to hold a sustained conversation.(1) But the
+ancient, cruel, and grotesque savage element, nearly overcome by Homer
+and greatly reduced by the Vedic poets, breaks out again in Hesiod, in
+temple legends and Brahmanic glosses, and finally proves so strong that
+it can only be subdued by Christianity, or rather by that break between
+the educated classes and the traditional past of religion which has
+resulted from Christianity. Even so, myth lingers in the folk-lore of
+the non-progressive classes of Europe, and, as in Roumania, invades
+religion.
+
+
+(1) Iliad, xix. 418.
+
+
+We have now to demonstrate the existence in the savage intellect of
+the various ideas and habits which we have described, and out of which
+mythology springs. First, we have to show that "a nebulous and confused
+state of mind, to which all things, animate or inanimate, human, animal,
+vegetable or inorganic, seem on the same level of life, passion and
+reason," does really exist.(1) The existence of this condition of the
+intellect will be demonstrated first on the evidence of the statements
+of civilised observers, next on the evidence of the savage institutions
+in which it is embodied.
+
+
+(1) Creuzer and Guigniaut, vol. i. p. 111.
+
+
+The opinion of Mr. Tylor is naturally of great value, as it is formed
+on as wide an acquaintance with the views of the lower races as any
+inquirers can hope to possess. Mr. Tylor observes: "We have to inform
+ourselves of the savage man's idea, which is very different from the
+civilised man's, of the nature of the lower animals.... The sense of an
+absolute psychical distinction between man and beast, so prevalent in
+the civilised world, is hardly to be found among the lower races."(1)
+The universal attribution of "souls" to all things--the theory known as
+"Animism"--is another proof that the savage draws no hard and fast line
+between man and the other things in the world. The notion of the Italian
+country-people, that cruelty to an animal does not matter because it is
+not a "Christian," has no parallel in the philosophy of the savage,
+to whom all objects seem to have souls, just as men have. Mr. Im Thurn
+found the absence of any sense of a difference between man and nature
+a characteristic of his native companions in Guiana. "The very phrase,
+'Men and other animals,' or even, as it is often expressed, 'Men and
+animals,' based as it is on the superiority which civilised man feels
+over other animals, expresses a dichotomy which is in no way recognised
+by the Indian.... It is therefore most important to realise how
+comparatively small really is the difference between men in a state of
+savagery and other animals, and how completely even such difference as
+exists escapes the notice of savage men... It is not, therefore, too
+much to say that, according to the view of the Indians, other animals
+differ from men only in bodily form and in their various degrees of
+strength; in spirit they do not differ at all."(2) The Indian's notion
+of the life of plants and stones is on the same level of unreason, as we
+moderns reckon reason. He believes in the spirits of rocks and stones,
+undeterred by the absence of motion in these objects. "Not only many
+rocks, but also many waterfalls, streams, and indeed material objects of
+every sort, are supposed each to consist of a body and a spirit, as does
+man."(3) It is not our business to ask here how men came by the belief
+in universal animation. That belief is gradually withdrawn, distinctions
+are gradually introduced, as civilisation and knowledge advance. It is
+enough for us if the failure to draw a hard and fast line between man
+and beasts, stones and plants, be practically universal among
+savages, and if it gradually disappears before the fuller knowledge of
+civilisation. The report which Mr. Im Thurn brings from the Indians of
+Guiana is confirmed by what Schoolcraft says of the Algonkin races of
+the northern part of the continent. "The belief of the narrators and
+listeners in every wild and improbable thing told helps wonderfully in
+the original stories, in joining all parts together. The Indian believes
+that the whole visible and invisible creation is animated.... To make
+the matter worse, these tribes believe that animals of the lowest as
+well as highest class in the chain of creation are alike endowed with
+reasoning powers and faculties. As a natural conclusion they endow
+birds, beasts and all other animals with souls."(4) As an example of the
+ease with which the savage recognises consciousness and voluntary
+motion even in stones, may be cited Kohl's account of the beliefs of the
+Objibeways.(5) Nearly every Indian has discovered, he says, an object
+in which he places special confidence, and to which he sacrifices more
+zealously than to the Great Spirit. The "hope" of Otamigan (a companion
+of the traveller) was a rock, which once advanced to meet him, swayed,
+bowed and went back again. Another Indian revered a Canadian larch,
+"because he once heard a very remarkable rustling in its branches".
+It thus appears that while the savage has a general kind of sense that
+inanimate things are animated, he is a good deal impressed by their
+conduct when he thinks that they actually display their animation. In
+the same way a devout modern spiritualist probably regards with more
+reverence a table which he has seen dancing and heard rapping than a
+table at which he has only dined. Another general statement of failure
+to draw the line between men and the irrational creation is found in
+the old Jesuit missionary Le Jeune's Relations de la Nouvelle France.(6)
+"Les sauvages se persuadent que non seulement les hommes et les autres
+animaux, mais aussi que toutes les autres choses sont animees." Again:
+"Ils tiennent les poissons raisonnables, comme aussi les cerfs". In the
+Solomon Islands, Mr. Romilly sailed with an old chief who used violent
+language to the waves when they threatened to dash over the boat, and
+"old Takki's exhortations were successful".(7) Waitz(8) discovers the
+same attitude towards the animals among the <DW64>s. Man, in their
+opinion, is by no means a separate sort of person on the summit of
+nature and high above the beasts; these he rather regards as dark and
+enigmatic beings, whose life is full of mystery, and which he therefore
+considers now as his inferiors, now as his superiors. A collection of
+evidence as to the savage failure to discriminate between human and
+non-human, animate and inanimate, has been brought together by Sir John
+Lubbock.(9)
+
+
+(1) Primitive Culture, i. 167-169.
+
+(2) Among the Indians of Guiana (1883), p. 350.
+
+(3) Op. Cit., 355.
+
+(4) Schoolcraft, Algic Researches, i. 41.
+
+(5) Kohl, Wanderings Round Lake Superior, pp. 58, 59; Muller, Amerikan
+Urrelig., pp. 62-67.
+
+(6) 1636, p. 109.
+
+(7) Western Pacific, p. 84.
+
+(8) Anthropologie der Natur-Volker, ii. 177.
+
+(9) Origin of Civilisation, p. 33. A number of examples of this mental
+attitude among the Bushmen will be found in chap. v., postea.
+
+
+To a race accustomed like ourselves to arrange and classify, to people
+familiar from childhood and its games with "vegetable, animal and
+mineral," a condition of mind in which no such distinctions are drawn,
+any more than they are drawn in Greek or Brahmanic myths, must
+naturally seem like what Mr. Max Muller calls "temporary insanity".
+The imagination of the savage has been defined by Mr. Tylor as "midway
+between the conditions of a healthy, prosaic, modern citizen, and of a
+raving fanatic, or of a patient in a fever-ward". If any relics of
+such imagination survive in civilised mythology, they will very closely
+resemble the productions of a once universal "temporary insanity". Let
+it be granted, then, that "to the lower tribes of man, sun and stars,
+trees and rivers, winds and clouds, become personal, animate creatures,
+leading lives conformed to human or animal analogies, and performing
+their special functions in the universe with the aid of limbs like
+beasts, or of artificial instruments like men; or that what men's eyes
+behold is but the instrument to be used or the material to be shaped,
+while behind it there stands some prodigious but yet half-human
+creature, who grasps it with his hands or blows it with his breath. The
+basis on which such ideas as these are built is not to be narrowed
+down to poetic fancy and transformed metaphor. They rest upon a
+broad philosophy of nature; early and crude, indeed, but thoughtful,
+consistent, and quite really and seriously meant."(1)
+
+
+(1) Primtive Culture, i. 285.
+
+
+For the sake of illustration, some minor examples must next be given
+of this confusion between man and other things in the world, which
+will presently be illustrated by the testimony of a powerful and long
+diffused set of institutions.
+
+The Christian Quiches of Guatemala believe that each of them has a beast
+as his friend and protector, just as in the Highlands "the dog is
+the friend of the Maclaines". When the Finns, in their epic poem the
+Kalewala, have killed a bear, they implore the animal to forgive them.
+"Oh, Ot-so," chant the singers, "be not angry that we come near thee.
+The bear, the honey-footed bear, was born in lands between sun and moon,
+and he died, not by men's hands, but of his own will."(1) The Red Men of
+North America(2) have a tradition showing how it is that the bear does
+not die, but, like Herodotus with the sacred stories of the Egyptian
+priests, Mr. Schoolcraft "cannot induce himself to write it out".(3) It
+is a most curious fact that the natives of Australia tell a similar tale
+of THEIR "native bear". "He did not die" when attacked by men.(4) In
+parts of Australia it is a great offence to skin the native bear,
+just as on a part of the west coast of Ireland, where seals are
+superstitiously regarded, the people cannot be bribed to skin them. In
+New Caledonia, when a child tries to kill a lizard, the men warn him to
+"beware of killing his own ancestor".(5) The Zulus spare to destroy a
+certain species of serpents, believed to be the spirits of kinsmen, as
+the great snake which appeared when Aeneas did sacrifice was held to
+be the ghost of Anchises. Mexican women(6) believed that children born
+during an eclipse turn into mice. In Australia the natives believe
+that the wild dog has the power of speech; whoever listens to him is
+petrified; and a certain spot is shown where "the wild dog spoke and
+turned the men into stone";(7) and the blacks run for their lives as
+soon as the dog begins to speak. What it said was "Bones".
+
+
+(1) Kalewala, in La Finlande, Leouzon Le Duc (1845), vol. ii. p. 100;
+cf. also the Introduction.
+
+(2) Schoolcraft, v. 420.
+
+(3) See similar ceremonies propitiatory of the bear in Jewett's
+Adventures among the Nootkas, Edinburgh, 1824.
+
+(4) Brough Smyth, i. 449.
+
+(5) J. J. Atkinson's MS.
+
+(6) Sahagun, ii. viii. 250; Bancroft, iii. 111. Compare stories of
+women who give birth to animals in Melusine, 1886, August-November. The
+Batavians believe that women, when delivered of a child, are frequently
+delivered at the same time of a young crocodile as a twin. Hawkesworth's
+Voyages, iii. 756. Liebrecht, Zur Volkskunde, p. 17 et seq.
+
+(7) Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, i. 497.
+
+
+These are minor examples of a form of opinion which is so strong that
+it is actually the chief constituent in savage society. That society,
+whether in Ashantee or Australia, in North America or South Africa,
+or North Asia or India, or among the wilder tribes of ancient Peru,
+is based on an institution generally called "totemism". This very
+extraordinary institution, whatever its origin, cannot have arisen
+except among men capable of conceiving kinship and all human
+relationships as existing between themselves and all animate and
+inanimate things. It is the rule, and not the exception, that savage
+societies are founded upon this belief. The political and social conduct
+of the backward races is regulated in such matters as blood-feud and
+marriage by theories of the actual kindred and connection by descent, or
+by old friendship, which men have in common with beasts, plants, the sun
+and moon, the stars, and even the wind and the rain. Now, in whatever
+way this belief in such relations to beasts and plants may have arisen,
+it undoubtedly testifies to a condition of mind in which no hard and
+fast line was drawn between man and animate and inanimate nature. The
+discovery of the wide distribution of the social arrangements based
+on this belief is entirely due to Mr. J. F. M'Lennan, the author of
+Primitive Marriage. Mr. M'Lennan's essays ("The Worship of Plants and
+Animals," "Totems and Totemism") were published in the Fortnightly
+Review, 1869-71. Any follower in the footsteps of Mr. M'Lennan has it
+in his power to add a little evidence to that originally set forth, and
+perhaps to sift the somewhat uncritical authorities adduced.(1)
+
+
+(1) See also Mr. Frazer's Totemism, and Golden Bough, with chapter on
+Totemism in Modern Mythology.
+
+
+The name "Totemism" or "Totamism" was first applied at the end of the
+last century by Long(1) to the Red Indian custom which acknowledges
+human kinship with animals. This institution had already been recognised
+among the Iroquois by Lafitau,(2) and by other observers. As to the
+word "totem," Mr. Max Muller(3) quotes an opinion that the interpreters,
+missionaries, Government inspectors, and others who apply the name
+totem to the Indian "family mark" must have been ignorant of the Indian
+languages, for there is in them no such word as totem. The right word,
+it appears, is otem; but as "totemism" has the advantage of possessing
+the ground, we prefer to say "totemism" rather than "otemism". The facts
+are the same, whatever name we give them. As Mr. Muller says himself,(4)
+"every warrior has his crest, which is called his totem";(5) and he
+goes on to describe a totem of an Indian who died about 1793. We may
+now return to the consideration of "otemism" or totemism. We approach
+it rather as a fact in the science of mythology than as a stage in the
+evolution of the modern family system. For us totemism is interesting
+because it proves the existence of that savage mental attitude which
+assumes kindred and alliance between man and the things in the world.
+As will afterwards be seen, totemism has also left its mark on the
+mythologies of the civilised races. We shall examine the institution
+first as it is found in Australia, because the Australian form of
+totemism shows in the highest known degree the savage habit of confusing
+in a community of kinship men, stars, plants, beasts, the heavenly
+bodies, and the forces of Nature. When this has once been elucidated, a
+shorter notice of other totemistic races will serve our purpose.
+
+
+(1) Voyages and Travels, 1791.
+
+(2) Moeurs des Sauvages (1724), p. 461.
+
+(3) Academy, December 15, 1883.
+
+(4) Selected Essays (1881), ii. 376.
+
+(5) Compare Mr. Max Muller's Contributions to the Science of Mythology.
+
+
+The society of the Murri or black fellows of Australia is divided into
+local tribes, each of which possesses, or used to possess, and hunt
+over a considerable tract of country. These local tribes are united by
+contiguity, and by common local interests, but not necessarily by blood
+kinship. For example, the Port Mackay tribe, the Mount Gambier tribe,
+the Ballarat tribe, all take their names from their district. In the
+same way we might speak of the people of Strathclyde or of Northumbria
+in early English history. Now, all these local tribes contain an
+indefinite number of stocks of kindred, of men believing themselves to
+be related by the ties of blood and common descent. That descent the
+groups agree in tracing, not from some real or idealised human parent,
+but from some animal, plant, or other natural object, as the kangaroo,
+the emu, the iguana, the pelican, and so forth. Persons of the pelican
+stock in the north of Queensland regard themselves as relations of
+people of the same stock in the most southern parts of Australia. The
+creature from which each tribe claims descent is called "of the same
+flesh," while persons of another stock are "fresh flesh". A native may
+not marry a woman of "his own flesh"; it is only a woman of "fresh" or
+"strange" flesh he may marry. A man may not eat an animal of "his own
+flesh"; he may only eat "strange flesh". Only under great stress of need
+will an Australian eat the animal which is the flesh-and-blood cousin
+and protector of his stock.(1) (These rules of marriage and blood,
+however, do not apply among the Arunta of Central Australia, whose
+Totems (if Totems they should be called) have been developed on very
+different lines.(2)) Clearer evidence of the confusion between man and
+beast, of the claiming of kin between man and beast, could hardly be.
+
+
+(1) Dawson, Aborigines, pp. 26, 27; Howitt and Fison, Kamilaroi and
+Kurnai, p. 169.
+
+(2) Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia.
+
+
+But the Australian philosophy of the intercommunion of Nature goes still
+farther than this. Besides the local divisions and the kindred
+stocks which trace their descent from animals, there exist among many
+Australian tribes divisions of a kind still unexplained. For example,
+every man of the Mount Gambier local tribe is by birth either a Kumite
+or a Kroki. This classification applies to the whole of the sensible
+universe. Thus smoke and honeysuckle trees belong to the division
+Kumite, and are akin to the fishhawk stock of men. On the other hand,
+the kangaroo, summer, autumn, the wind and the shevak tree belong to
+the division Kroki, and are akin to the black cockatoo stock of men. Any
+human member of the Kroki division has thus for his brothers the sun,
+the wind, the kangaroo, and the rest; while any man of the Kumite
+division and the crow surname is the brother of the rain, the thunder,
+and the winter. This extraordinary belief is not a mere idle fancy--it
+influences conduct. "A man does not kill or use as food any of the
+animals of the same subdivision (Kroki or Kumite) with himself,
+excepting when hunger compels, and then they express sorrow for having
+to eat their wingong (friends) or tumanang (their flesh). When using the
+last word they touch their breasts, to indicate the close relationship,
+meaning almost a portion of themselves. To illustrate: One day one of
+the blacks killed a crow. Three or four days afterwards a Boortwa (a man
+of the crow surname and stock), named Larry, died. He had been ailing
+for some days, but the killing of his wingong (totem) hastened his
+death."(1) Commenting on this statement, Mr. Fison observes: "The South
+Australian savage looks upon the universe as the Great Tribe, to one
+of whose divisions he himself belongs; and all things, animate and
+inanimate, which belong to his class are parts of the body corporate
+whereof he himself is part". This account of the Australian beliefs and
+customs is borne out, to a certain extent, by the evidence of Sir George
+Grey,(2) and of the late Mr. Gideon Scott Lang.(3) These two writers
+take no account of the singular "dichotomous" divisions, as of Kumite
+and Kroki, but they draw attention to the groups of kindred which derive
+their surnames from animals, plants, and the like. "The origin of these
+family names," says Sir George Grey, "is attributed by the natives to
+different causes.... One origin frequently assigned by the natives is,
+that they were derived from some vegetable or animal being very common
+in the district which the family inhabited." We have seen from
+the evidence of Messrs. Fison and Howitt that a more common native
+explanation is based on kinship with the vegetable or plant which
+bestows the family surname. Sir George Gray mentions that the families
+use their plant or animal as a crest or kobong (totem), and he adds that
+natives never willingly kill animals of their kobong, holding that some
+one of that species is their nearest friend. The consequences of eating
+forbidden animals vary considerably. Sometimes the Boyl-yas (that is,
+ghosts) avenge the crime. Thus when Sir George Grey ate some mussels
+(which, after all, are not the crest of the Greys), a storm followed,
+and one of his black fellow improvised this stave:--
+
+
+     Oh, wherefore did he eat the mussels?
+     Now the Boyl-yas storms and thunders make;
+     Oh, wherefore would he eat the mussels?
+
+
+(1) Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 169.
+
+(2) Travels, ii. 225.
+
+(3) Lang, Lecture on Natives of Australia, p. 10.
+
+
+There are two points in the arrangements of these stocks of kindred
+named from plants and animals which we shall find to possess a high
+importance. No member of any such kindred may marry a woman of the same
+name and descended from the same object.(1) Thus no man of the Emu stock
+may marry an Emu woman; no Blacksnake may marry a Blacksnake woman, and
+so forth. This point is very strongly put by Mr. Dawson, who has had
+much experience of the blacks. "So strictly are the laws of marriage
+carried out, that, should any sign of courtship or affection be observed
+between those 'of one flesh,' the brothers or male relatives of the
+woman beat her severely." If the incestuous pair (though not in the
+least related according to our ideas) run away together, they are
+"half-killed"; and if the woman dies in consequence of her punishment,
+her partner in iniquity is beaten again. No "eric" or blood-fine of any
+kind is paid for her death, which carries no blood-feud. "Her punishment
+is legal."(2) This account fully corroborates that of Sir George
+Grey.(3)
+
+
+(1) Taplin, The Nerrinyeri. p. 2. "Every tribe, regarded by them as a
+family, has its ngaitge, or tutelary genius or tribal symbol, in the
+shape of some bird, beast, fish, reptile, insect, or substance. Between
+individuals of the same tribe no marriage can take place." Among the
+Narrinyeri kindred is reckoned (p. 10) on the father's side. See
+also (p. 46) ngaitge = Samoan aitu. "No man or woman will kill their
+ngaitge," except with precautions, for food.
+
+(2) Op. cit., p. 28.
+
+(3) Ibid., ii. 220.
+
+
+Our conclusion is that the belief in "one flesh" (a kinship shared
+with the animals) must be a thoroughly binding idea, as the notion is
+sanctioned by capital punishment.
+
+Another important feature in Australian totemism strengthens our
+position. The idea of the animal kinship must be an ancient one in the
+race, because the family surname, Emu, Bandicoot, or what not, and the
+crest, kobong, or protecting and kindred animal, are inherited through
+the mother's side in the majority of stocks. This custom, therefore,
+belongs to that early period of human society in which the woman is the
+permanent and recognised factor in the family while male parentage is
+uncertain.(1) One other feature of Australian totemism must be mentioned
+before we leave the subject. There is some evidence that in certain
+tribes the wingong or totem of each man is indicated by a tattooed
+representation of it upon his flesh. The natives are very licentious,
+but men would shrink from an amour with a woman who neither belonged to
+their own district nor spoke their language, but who, in spite of that,
+was of their totem. To avoid mistakes, it seems that some tribes mark
+the totem on the flesh with incised lines.(2) The natives frequently
+design figures of some kind on the trees growing near the graves of
+deceased warriors. Some observers have fancied that in these designs
+they recognised the totem of the dead men; but on this subject evidence
+is by no means clear. We shall see that this primitive sort of heraldry,
+this carving or painting of hereditary blazons, is common among the Red
+Men of America.(3)
+
+
+(1) Cf. Bachofen, Das Mutterrecht; M'Lennan, Primitive Marriage, passim;
+Encycl. Brit. s. v. Family.
+
+(2) Fison, op. cit., p. 66.
+
+(3) Among other recent sources see Howitt in "Organisation of Australian
+Tribes" (Transactions of Royal Society of Victoria, 1889), and Spencer
+and Gillen, Natives of Central Australia. In Central Australia there is
+a marked difference in the form of Totemism.
+
+
+Though a large amount of evidence might be added to that already put
+forward, we may now sum up the inferences to be drawn from the study
+of totemism in Australia. It has been shown (1) that the natives think
+themselves actually akin to animals, plants, the sun, and the wind, and
+things in general; (2) that those ideas influence their conduct, and
+even regulate their social arrangements, because (3) men and women of
+the kinship of the same animal or plant may not intermarry, while men
+are obliged to defend, and in case of murder to avenge, persons of the
+stock of the family or plant from which they themselves derive their
+family name. Thus, on the evidence of institutions, it is plain that
+the Australians are (or before the influence of the Europeans became
+prevalent were) in a state of mind which draws no hard and fast line
+between man and the things in the world. If, therefore, we find that
+in Australian myth, men, gods, beasts, and things all shift shapes
+incessantly, and figure in a coroboree dance of confusion, there will
+be nothing to astonish us in the discovery. The myths of men in the
+Australian intellectual condition, of men who hold long conversations
+with the little "native bear," and ask him for oracles, will naturally
+and inevitably be grotesque and confused.(1)
+
+
+(1) Brough Smyth, i. 447, on MS. authority of W. Thomas.
+
+
+It is "a far cry" from Australia to the West Coast of Africa, and it
+is scarcely to be supposed that the Australians have borrowed ideas and
+institutions from Ashantee, or that the people of Ashantee have derived
+their conceptions of the universe from the Murri of Australia. We find,
+however, on the West African Coast, just as we do in Australia, that
+there exist large local divisions of the natives. These divisions are
+spoken of by Mr. Bowditch (who visited the country on a mission in 1817)
+as nations, and they are much more populous and powerful (as the people
+are more civilised) than the local tribes of Australia. Yet, just as
+among the local tribes of Australia, the nations of the West African
+Coast are divided into stocks of kindred, each STOCK having its
+representatives in each NATION. Thus an Ashantee or a Fantee may belong
+to the same stock of kindred as a member of the Assin or Akini nation.
+When an Ashantee of the Annona stock of kindred meets a Warsaw man of
+the same stock they salute and acknowledge each other as brothers.
+In the same way a Ballarat man of the Kangaroo stock in Australia
+recognises a relative in a Mount Gambier man who is also a Kangaroo.
+Now, with one exception, all the names of the twelve stocks of West
+African kindreds, or at least all of them which Mr. Bowditch could get
+the native interpreters to translate, are derived from animals, plants
+and other natural objects, just as in Australia.(1) Thus Quonna is a
+buffalo, Abrootoo is a cornstalk, Abbradi a plantain. Other names are,
+in English, the parrot, the wild cat, red earth, panther and dog. Thus
+all the natives of this part of Africa are parrots, dogs, buffaloes,
+panthers, and so forth, just as the Australians are emus, iguanas, black
+cockatoos, kangaroos, and the rest. It is remarkable that there is an
+Incra stock, or clan of ants, in Ashantee, just as there was a race of
+Myrmidons, believed to be descended from or otherwise connected with
+ants, in ancient Greece. Though Bowditch's account of these West African
+family divisions is brief, the arrangement tallies closely with that
+of Australia. It is no great stretch of imagination to infer that the
+African tribes do, or once did, believe themselves to be of the kindred
+of the animals whose names they bear.(2) It is more or less confirmatory
+of this hypothesis that no family is permitted to use as food the
+animal from which it derives its name. We have seen that a similar rule
+prevails, as far as hunger and scarcity of victuals permit it to be
+obeyed, among the natives of Australia. The Intchwa stock in Ashantee
+and Fantee is particularly unlucky, because its members may not eat
+the dog, "much relished by native epicures, and therefore a serious
+privation". Equally to be pitied were the ancient Egyptians, who, if
+they belonged to the district of the sheep, might not eat mutton,
+which their neighbours, the Lycopolitae, devoured at pleasure. These
+restrictions appear to be connected with the almost universal dislike
+of cannibals to eat persons of their own kindred except as a pious
+duty. This law of the game in cannibalism has not yet been thoroughly
+examined, though we often hear of wars waged expressly for the purpose
+of securing food (human meat), while some South American tribes
+actually bred from captive women by way of securing constant supplies of
+permitted flesh.(3) When we find stocks, then, which derive their names
+from animals and decline to eat these animals, we may at least SUSPECT
+that they once claimed kinship with the name-giving beasts. The refusal
+to eat them raises a presumption of such faith. Old Bosman(4) had
+noticed the same practices. "One eats no mutton, another no goat's
+flesh, another no beef, swine's flesh, wild fowl, cocks with white
+feathers, and they say their ancestors did so from the beginning of the
+world."
+
+
+(1) The evidence of native interpreters may be viewed with suspicion.
+It is improbable, however, that in 1817 the interpreters were
+acquainted with the totemistic theory of mythologists, and deliberately
+mistranslated the names of the stocks, so as to make them harmonise with
+Indian, Australian, and Red Indian totem kindreds. This, indeed, is an
+example where the criterion of "recurrence" or "coincidence" seems to be
+valuable. Bowditch's Mission to Ashantee (1873), p. 181.
+
+(2) This view, however, does not prevail among the totemistic tribes of
+British Columbia, for example.
+
+(3) Cieza de Leon (Hakluyt Society), p. 50. This amazing tale is
+supported by the statement that kinship went by the female side (p.
+49); the father was thus not of the kin of his child by the alien woman.
+Cieza was with Validillo in 1538.
+
+(4) In Pinkerton, xvi. 400.
+
+
+While in the case of the Ashantee tribes, we can only infer the
+existence of a belief in kinship with the animals from the presence
+of the other features of fully developed totemism (especially from the
+refusal to eat the name-giving animal), we have direct evidence for the
+opinion in another part of Africa, among the Bechuanas.(1) Casalis,
+who passed twenty-three years as a missionary in South Africa, thus
+describes the institution: "While the united communities usually bear
+the name of their chief or of the district which they inhabit" (local
+tribes, as in Australia), "each stock (tribu) derives its title from
+an animal or a vegetable. All the Bechuanas are subdivided thus into
+Bakuenas (crocodile-men), Batlapis (men of the fish), Banarer (of the
+buffalo), Banukus (porcupines), Bamoraras (wild vines), and so forth.
+The Bakuenas call the crocodile their father, sing about him in their
+feasts, swear by him, and mark the ears of their cattle with an incision
+which resembles the open jaws of the creature." This custom of marking
+the cattle with the crest, as it were, of the stock, takes among some
+races the shape of deforming themselves, so as the more to resemble the
+animal from which they claim descent. "The chief of the family which
+holds the chief rank in the stock is called 'The Great Man of the
+Crocodile'. Precisely in the same way the Duchess of Sutherland is
+styled in Gaelic 'The Great Lady of the Cat,'" though totemism is
+probably not the origin of this title.
+
+
+(1) E. Casalis, Les Bassoutos, 1859.
+
+
+Casalis proceeds: "No one would dare to eat the flesh or wear the skin
+of the animal whose name he bears. If the animal be dangerous--the
+lion, for example--people only kill him after offering every apology and
+asking his pardon. Purification must follow such a sacrifice." Casalis
+was much struck with the resemblance between these practices and the
+similar customs of North American races. Livingstone's account(1) on the
+whole corroborates that of Casalis, though he says the Batau (tribe
+of the lion) no longer exists. "They use the word bina 'to dance,' in
+reference to the custom of thus naming themselves, so that when you wish
+to ascertain what tribe they belong to, you say, 'What do you dance?'
+It would seem as if this had been part of the worship of old." The
+mythological and religious knowledge of the Bushmen is still imparted in
+dances; and when a man is ignorant of some myth he will say, "I do not
+dance that dance," meaning that he does not belong to the guild which
+preserves that particular "sacred chapter".(2)
+
+
+(1) Missionary Travels (1857), p. 13.
+
+(2) Orpen, Cape Monthly Magazine, 1872.
+
+
+Casalis noticed the similarity between South African and Red Indian
+opinion about kinship with vegetables and beasts. The difficulty in
+treating the Red Indian belief is chiefly found in the abundance of the
+evidence. Perhaps the first person who ever used the word "totemism,"
+or, as he spells it, "totamism," was (as we said) Mr. Long, an
+interpreter among the Chippeways, who published his Voyages in 1791.
+Long was not wholly ignorant of the languages, as it was his business to
+speak them, and he was an adopted Indian. The ceremony of adoption was
+painful, beginning with a feast of dog's flesh, followed by a Turkish
+bath and a prolonged process of tattooing.(1) According to Long,(2)
+"The totam, they conceive, assumes the form of some beast or other, and
+therefore they never kill, hurt, or eat the animal whose form they think
+this totam bears". One man was filled with religious apprehensions, and
+gave himself up to the gloomy belief of Bunyan and Cowper, that he had
+committed the unpardonable sin, because he dreamed he had killed his
+totem, a bear.(3) This is only one example, like the refusal of the
+Osages to kill the beavers, with which they count cousins,(4) that the
+Red Man's belief is an actual creed, and does influence his conduct.
+
+
+(1) Long, pp. 46-49.
+
+(2) Ibid., p. 86.
+
+(3) Ibid., p. 87.
+
+(4) Schoolcraft, i. 319.
+
+
+As in Australia, the belief in common kin with beasts is most clearly
+proved by the construction of Red Indian society. The "totemistic" stage
+of thought and manners prevails. Thus Charlevoix says,(1) "Plusieurs
+nations ont chacune trois familles ou tribus principales, AUSSI
+ANCIENNES, A CE QU'IL PAROIT, QUE LEUR ORIGINE. Chaque tribu porte le
+nom d'un animal, et la nation entiere a aussi le sien, dont elle
+prend le nom, et dont la figure est sa marque, ou, se l'on veut, ses
+armoiries, on ne signe point autrement les traites qu'en traceant ces
+figures." Among the animal totems Charlevoix notices porcupine, bear,
+wolf and turtle. The armoiries, the totemistic heraldry of the peoples
+of Virginia, greatly interested a heraldic ancestor of Gibbon the
+historian,(2) who settled in the colony. According to Schoolcraft,(3)
+the totem or family badge, of a dead warrior is drawn in a reverse
+position on his grave-post. In the same way the leopards of England are
+drawn reversed on the shield of an English king opposite the mention
+of his death in old monkish chronicles. As a general rule,(4) persons
+bearing the same totem in America cannot intermarry. "The union must be
+between various totems." Moreover, as in the case of the Australians,
+"the descent of the chief is in the female line". We thus find among
+the Red Men precisely the same totemistic regulations as among the
+Aborigines of Australia. Like the Australians, the Red Men "never"
+(perhaps we should read "hardly ever") eat their totems. Totemists,
+in short, spare the beasts that are their own kith and kin. To avoid
+multiplying details which all corroborate each other, it may suffice to
+refer to Schoolcraft for totemism among the Iowas(5) and the Pueblos;(6)
+for the Iroquois, to Lafitau, a missionary of the early part of the
+eighteenth century. Lafitau was perhaps the first writer who ever
+explained certain features in Greek and other ancient myths and
+practices as survivals from totemism. The Chimera, a composite creature,
+lion, goat and serpent, might represent, Lafitau thought, a league
+of three totem tribes, just as wolf, bear and turtle represented the
+Iroquois League.
+
+
+(1) Histoire de la France-Nouvelle, iii. 266.
+
+(2) Introductio ad Latinam Blasoniam, by John Gibbon, Blue Mantle,
+London, 1682. "The dancers, were painted some party per pale, gul and
+sab, some party per fesse of the same colours;" whence Gibbon concluded
+"that heraldry was ingrafted naturally into the sense of the humane
+race".
+
+(3) Vol. i. p. 356.
+
+(4) Schoolcraft, v. 73.
+
+(5) Ibid., iii. 268.
+
+(6) Ibid., iv. 86.
+
+
+The martyred Pere Rasles, again, writing in 1723,(1) says that one stock
+of the Outaonaks claims descent from a hare ("the great hare was a man
+of prodigious size"), while another stock derive their lineage from the
+carp, and a third descends from a bear; yet they do not scruple, after
+certain expiatory rites, to eat bear's flesh. Other North American
+examples are the Kutchin, who have always possessed the system of
+totems.(2)
+
+
+(1) Kip's Jesuits in America i. 33.
+
+(2) Dall's Alaska, pp. 196-198.
+
+
+It is to be noticed, as a peculiarity of Red Indian totemism which we
+have not observed (though it may exist) in Africa, that certain stocks
+claim relations with the sun. Thus Pere Le Petit, writing from New
+Orleans in 1730, mentions the Sun, or great chief of the Natchez
+Indians.(1) The totem of the privileged class among the Natchez was the
+sun, and in all myths the sun is regarded as a living being, who can
+have children, who may be beaten, who bleeds when cut, and is simply
+on the same footing as men and everything else in the world. Precisely
+similar evidence comes from South America. In this case our best
+authority is almost beyond suspicion. He knew the native languages well,
+being himself a half-caste. He was learned in the European learning
+of his time; and as a son of the Incas, he had access to all surviving
+Peruvian stores of knowledge, and could collect without difficulty the
+testimonies of his countrymen. It will be seen(2) that Don Garcilasso
+de la Vega could estimate evidence, and ridiculed the rough methods and
+fallacious guesses of Spanish inquirers. Garcilasso de la Vega was
+born about 1540, being the son of an Inca princess and of a Spanish
+conqueror. His book, Commentarias Reales,(3) was expressly intended to
+rectify the errors of such Spanish writers as Acosta. In his account of
+Peruvian religion, Garcilasso distinguishes between the beliefs of the
+tribes previous to the rise of the Inca empire and the sun-worship of
+the Incas. But it is plain, from Garcilasso's own account and from other
+evidence, that under the Incas the older faiths and fetichisms survived,
+in subordination to sun-worship, just as Pagan superstitions survived
+in custom and folk-lore after the official recognition of Christianity.
+Sun-worship, in Peru, and the belief in a Supreme Creator there, seem
+even, like Catholicism in Mexico, China and elsewhere, to have made a
+kind of compromise with the lower beliefs, and to have been content
+to allow a certain amount of bowing down in the temples of the elder
+faiths. According, then, to Garcilasso's account of Peruvian totemism,
+"An Indian was not looked upon as honourable unless he was descended
+from a fountain, river,(4) or lake, or even from the sea, OR FROM A WILD
+ANIMAL, such as a bear, lion, tiger, eagle, or the bird they call cuntur
+(condor), or some other bird of prey ".(5) A certain amount of worship
+was connected with this belief in kinship with beasts and natural
+objects. Men offered up to their totems "what they usually saw them
+eat".(6) On the seacoasts "they worshipped sardines, skates, dog-fish,
+and, for want of larger gods, crabs.... There was not an animal, how
+vile and filthy soever, that they did not worship as a god," including
+"lizards, toads and frogs." Garcilasso (who says they ate the fish
+they worshipped) gives his own theory of the origin of totemism. In the
+beginning men had only sought for badges whereby to discriminate one
+human stock from another. "The one desired to have a god different from
+the other.... They only thought of making one different from another."
+When the Inca emperors began to civilise the totemistic stocks, they
+pointed out that their own father, the sun, possessed "splendour and
+beauty" as contrasted with "the ugliness and filth of the frogs and
+other vermin they looked upon as gods".(7) Garcilasso, of course, does
+not use the North American word totem (or ote or otem) for the family
+badge which represented the family ancestors. He calls these things, as
+a general rule, pacarissa. The sun was the pacarissa of the Incas, as it
+was of the chief of the Natchez. The pacarissa of other stocks was
+the lion, bear, frog, or what not. Garcilasso accounts for the belief
+accorded to the Incas, when they claimed actual descent from the sun, by
+observing(8) that "there were tribes among their subjects who professed
+similar fabulous descents, though they did not comprehend how to select
+ancestors so well as the Incas, but adored animals and other low and
+earthly objects". As to the fact of the Peruvian worship of beasts, if
+more evidence is wanted, it is given, among others, by Cieza de Leon,(9)
+who contrasts the adoration of the Roman gods with that offered in Peru
+to brutes. "In the important temple of Pacha-camac (the spiritual deity
+of Peru) they worshipped a she-fox or vixen and an emerald." The devil
+also "appeared to them and spoke in the form of a tiger, very fierce".
+Other examples of totemism in South America may be studied in the
+tribes on the Amazon.(10) Mr. Wallace found the Pineapple stock, the
+Mosquitoes, Woodpeckers, Herons, and other totem kindreds. A curious
+example of similar ideas is discovered among the Bonis of Guiana. These
+people were originally West Coast Africans imported as slaves, who have
+won their freedom with the sword. While they retain a rough belief in
+Gadou (God) and Didibi (the devil), they are divided into totem stocks
+with animal names. The red ape, turtle and cayman are among the chief
+totems.(11)
+
+
+(1) Kip, ii. 288.
+
+(2) Appendix B.
+
+(3) See translation in Hakluyt Society's Collection.
+
+(4) Like many Greek heroes. Odyssey, iii. 489. "Orsilochus, the child
+begotten of Alpheus."
+
+(5) Comm. Real., i. 75.
+
+(6) Ibid., 53.
+
+(7) Ibid., 102.
+
+(8) Ibid., 83.
+
+(9) Cieza de Leon (Hakluyt Society), p. 183.
+
+(10) Acuna, p. 103; Wallace, Travels on Amazon (1853), pp. 481-506.
+
+(11) Crevaux, Voyages dans l'Amerique du Sud, p. 59.
+
+
+After this hasty examination of the confused belief in kinship with
+animals and other natural objects which underlies institutions in
+Australia, West and South Africa, North and South America, we may glance
+at similar notions among the non-Aryan races of India. In Dalton's
+Ethnology of Bengal,(1) he tells us that the Garo clans are divided into
+maharis or motherhoods. Children belong to the mahari of the mother,
+just as (in general) they derive their stock name and totem from the
+mother's side in Australia and among the North American Indians. No man
+may marry (as among the Red Indians and Australians) a woman belonging
+to his own stock, motherhood or mahari. So far the maharis of Bengal
+exactly correspond to the totem kindred. But do the Maharis also take
+their names from plants and animals, and so forth? We know that the
+Killis, similar communities among the Bengal Hos and Mundos, do this.(2)
+"The Mundaris, like the Oraons, adopt as their tribal distinction the
+name of some animal, and the flesh of that animal is tabooed to them as
+food; for example, the eel, the tortoise." This is exactly the state of
+things in Ashanti. Dalton mentions also(3) a princely family in Nagpur
+which claims descent from "a great hooded snake". Among the Oraons he
+found(4) tribes which might not eat young mice (considered a dainty) or
+tortoises, and a stock which might not eat the oil of the tree which
+was their totem, nor even sit in its shade. "The family or tribal names"
+(within which they may not marry) "are usually those of animals or
+plants, and when this is the case, the flesh of some part of the animal
+or the fruit of the tree is tabooed to the tribe called after it."
+
+
+(1) Dalton, p. 63.
+
+(2) Ibid., p. 189.
+
+(3) Ibid., p. 166.
+
+(4) Ibid., p. 254.
+
+
+An excellent sketch of totemism in India is given by Mr. H. H. Risley of
+the Bengal Civil Service:--(1)
+
+
+(1) The Asiatic Quarterly, No. 3, Essay on "Primitive Marriage in
+Bengal."
+
+
+"At the bottom of the social system, as understood by the average Hindu,
+stands a large body of non-Aryan castes and tribes, each of which is
+broken up into a number of what may be called totemistic exogamous
+septs. Each sept bears the name of an animal, a tree, a plant, or of
+some material object, natural or artificial, which the members of that
+sept are prohibited from killing, eating, cutting, burning, carrying,
+using, etc."(1)
+
+
+(1) Here we may note that the origin of exogamy itself is merely part
+of a strict totemistic prohibition. A man may not "use" an object within
+the totem kin, nor a woman of the kin. Compare the Greek idiom (Greek
+text omitted).
+
+
+Mr. Risley finds that both Kolarians, as the Sonthals, and Dravidians,
+as the Oraons, are in this state of totemism, like the Hos and Mundas.
+It is most instructive to learn that, as one of these tribes rises in
+the social scale, it sloughs off its totem, and, abandoning the common
+name derived from bird, beast, or plant, adopts that of an eponymous
+ancestor. A tendency in this direction has been observed by Messrs.
+Fison and Howitt even in Australia. The Mahilis, Koras and Kurmis,
+who profess to be members of the Hindu community, still retain the
+totemistic organisation, with names derived from birds, beasts and
+plants. Even the Jagannathi Kumhars of Orissa, taking rank immediately
+below the writer-caste, have the totems tiger, snake, weasel, cow, frog,
+sparrow and tortoise. The sub-castes of the Khatlya Kumhars explain away
+their totem-names "as names of certain saints, who, being present at
+Daksha's Horse-sacrifice, transformed themselves into animals to escape
+the wrath of Siva," like the gods of Egypt when they fled in bestial
+form from the wrath of Set.
+
+Among the non-Aryan tribes the marriage law has the totemistic sanction.
+No man may marry a woman of his totem kin. When the totem-name is
+changed for an eponym, the non-Aryan, rising in the social scale,
+is practically in the same position as the Brahmans, "divided into
+exogamous sections (gotras), the members of which profess to be
+descended from the mythical rishi or inspired saint whose name the gotra
+bears". There is thus nothing to bar the conjecture that the exogamous
+gotras of the whole Brahmans were once a form of totem-kindred,
+which (like aspiring non-Aryan stocks at the present day) dropped the
+totem-name and renamed the septs from some eponymous hero, medicine-man,
+or Rishi.
+
+Constant repetition of the same set of facts becomes irksome, and yet
+is made necessary by the legitimate demand for trustworthy and abundant
+evidence. As the reader must already have reflected, this living
+mythical belief in the common confused equality of men, gods, plants,
+beasts, rivers, and what not, which still regulates savage society,(1)
+is one of the most prominent features in mythology. Porphyry remarked
+and exactly described it among the Egyptians--"common and akin to men
+and gods they believed the beasts to be."(2) The belief in such equality
+is alien to modern civilisation. We have shown that it is common and
+fundamental in savagery. For instance, in the Pacific, we might quote
+Turner,(3) and for Melanesia, Codrington,(4) while for New Zealand we
+have Taylor.(5) For the Jakuts, along the banks of the Lena in Northern
+Asia, we have the evidence of Strahlenberg, who writes: "Each tribe of
+these people look upon some particular creature as sacred, e.g., a swan,
+goose, raven, etc., and such is not eaten by that tribe" though the
+others may eat it.(6) As the majority of our witnesses were quite
+unaware that the facts they described were common among races of whom
+many of them had never even heard, their evidence may surely be accepted
+as valid, especially as the beliefs testified to express themselves in
+marriage laws, in the blood-feud, in abstinence from food, on pillars
+over graves, in rude heraldry, and in other obvious and palpable
+shapes. If we have not made out, by the evidence of institutions, that
+a confused credulity concerning the equality and kinship of man and the
+objects in nature is actually a ruling belief among savages, and even
+higher races, from the Lena to the Amazon, from the Gold Coast to
+Queensland, we may despair of ever convincing an opponent. The survival
+of the same beliefs and institutions among civilised races, Aryan and
+others, will later be demonstrated.(7) If we find that the mythology of
+civilised races here agrees with the actual practical belief of savages,
+and if we also find that civilised races retain survivals of the
+institutions in which the belief is expressed by savages, then we may
+surely infer that the activity of beasts in the myths of Greece springs
+from the same sources as the similar activity of beasts in the myths of
+Iroquois or Kaffirs. That is to say, part of the irrational element
+in Greek myth will be shown to be derived (whether by inheritance or
+borrowing) from an ascertained condition of savage fancy.
+
+
+(1) See some very curious and disgusting examples of this confusion in
+Liebrecht's Zur Volkskunde, pp. 395, 396 (Heilbronn, 1879).
+
+(2) De Abst., ii. 26.
+
+(3) Nineteen Years in Polynesia, p. 238, and Samoa by the same author.
+Complete totemism is not asserted here, and is denied for Melanesia.
+
+(4) Journ. Anthrop. Inst., "Religious Practices in Melanesia".
+
+(5) New Zealand, "Animal Intermarriage with Men".
+
+(6) Description of Asia (1783), p. 383.
+
+(7) Professor Robertson Smith, Kinship in Arabia, attempts to show
+that totemism existed in the Semitic races. The topic must be left to
+Orientalists.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. THE MENTAL CONDITION OF
+SAVAGES--MAGIC--METAMORPHOSIS--METAPHYSIC--PSYCHOLOGY.
+
+
+Claims of sorcerers--Savage scientific speculation--Theory of
+causation--Credulity, except as to new religious ideas--"Post hoc,
+ergo propter hoc"--Fundamental ideas of magic--Examples: incantations,
+ghosts, spirits--Evidence of rank and other institutions in proof of
+confusions of mind exhibited in magical beliefs.
+
+
+"I mean eftsoons to have a fling at magicians for their abominable lies
+and monstrous vanities."--PLINY, ap. Phil. Holland.
+
+"Quoy de ceux qui naturellement se changent en loups, en juments, et
+puis encores en hommes?"--MONTAIGNE, Apologie pour Raymond de Sebonde.
+
+
+The second feature in the savage intellectual condition which we
+promised to investigate was the belief in magic and sorcery. The world
+and all the things in it being conceived of vaguely as sensible and
+rational, are supposed to obey the commands of certain members of each
+tribe, such as chiefs, jugglers, or conjurors. These conjurors, like
+Zeus or Indra, can affect the weather, work miracles, assume what
+shapes, animal, vegetable, or inorganic, they please, and can
+metamorphose other persons into similar shapes. It has already been
+shown that savage man has regarded all THINGS as PERSONS much on a level
+with himself. It has now to be shown WHAT KIND OF PERSON HE CONCEIVES
+HIMSELF TO BE. He does not look on men as civilised races regard them,
+that is, as beings with strict limitations. On the other hand, he thinks
+of certain members of his tribe as exempt from most of the limitations,
+and capable of working every miracle that tradition has ever attributed
+to prophets or gods. Nor are such miraculous powers, such practical
+omnipotence, supposed by savages to be at all rare among themselves.
+Though highly valued, miraculous attainments are not believed to be
+unusual. This must be kept steadily in mind. When myth-making man
+regards the sky or sun or wind as a person, he does not mean merely
+a person with the limitations recognised by modern races. He means a
+person with the miraculous powers of the medicine-man. The sky, sun,
+wind or other elemental personage can converse with the dead, and can
+turn himself and his neighbours into animals, stones and trees.
+
+To understand these functions and their exercise, it is necessary to
+examine what may be called savage science, savage metaphysics, and the
+savage theory of the state of the dead. The medicine-man's supernatural
+claims are rooted in the general savage view of the world, of what is
+possible, and of what (if anything) is impossible. The savage, even more
+than the civilised man, may be described as a creature "moving about in
+worlds not realised". He feels, no less than civilised man, the need of
+making the world intelligible, and he is active in his search for causes
+and effects. There is much "speculation in these eyes that he doth glare
+withal". This is a statement which has been denied by some persons
+who have lived with savages. Thus Mr. Bates, in his Naturalist on the
+Amazon,(1) writes: "Their want of curiosity is extreme.... Vicente (an
+Indian companion) did not know the cause of thunder and lightning. I
+asked him who made the sun, the stars, the trees. He didn't know, and
+had never heard the subject mentioned in his tribe." But Mr. Bates
+admits that even Vicente had a theory of the configuration of the world.
+"The necessity of a theory of the earth and water had been felt, and
+a theory had been suggested." Again, Mr. Bates says about a certain
+Brazilian tribe, "Their sluggish minds seem unable to conceive or feel
+the want of a theory of the soul"; and he thinks the cause of this
+indolence is the lack "of a written language or a leisured class". Now
+savages, as a rule, are all in the "leisured class," all sportsmen.
+Mr. Herbert Spencer, too, has expressed scepticism about the curiosity
+attributed to savages. The point is important, because, in our view, the
+medicine-man's powers are rooted in the savage theory of things, and if
+the savage is too sluggish to invent or half consciously evolve a theory
+of things, our hypothesis is baseless. Again, we expect to find in
+savage myths the answer given by savages to their own questions. But
+this view is impossible if savages do not ask themselves, and never have
+asked themselves, any questions at all about the world. On this topic
+Mr. Spencer writes: "Along with absence of surprise there naturally
+goes absence of intelligent curiosity".(2) Yet Mr. Spencer admits that,
+according to some witnesses, "the Dyaks have an insatiable curiosity,"
+the Samoans "are usually very inquisitive," and "the Tahitians are
+remarkably curious and inquisitive". Nothing is more common than to
+find travellers complaining that savages, in their ardently inquiring
+curiosity, will not leave the European for a moment to his own
+undisturbed devices. Mr. Spencer's savages, who showed no curiosity,
+displayed this impassiveness when Europeans were trying to make them
+exhibit signs of surprise. Impassivity is a point of honour with many
+uncivilised races, and we cannot infer that a savage has no curiosity
+because he does not excite himself over a mirror, or when his European
+visitors try to swagger with their mechanical appliances. Mr. Herbert
+Spencer founds, on the statements of Mr. Bates already quoted, a notion
+that "the savage, lacking ability to think and the accompanying desire
+to know, is without tendency to speculate". He backs Mr. Bates's
+experience with Mungo Park's failure to "draw" the <DW64>s about the
+causes of day and night. They had never indulged a conjecture nor formed
+an hypothesis on the matter. Yet Park avers that "the belief in one God
+is entire and universal among them". This he "pronounces without the
+smallest shadow of doubt". As to "primitive man," according to Mr.
+Spencer, "the need for explanations about surrounding appearances does
+not occur to him". We have disclaimed all knowledge about "primitive
+man," but it is easy to show that Mr. Spencer grounds his belief in the
+lack of speculation among savages on a frail foundation of evidence.
+
+
+(1) Vol. ii. p. 162.
+
+(2) Sociology, p. 98.
+
+
+Mr. Spencer has admitted speculation, or at least curiosity, among New
+Caledonians, New Guinea people, Dyaks, Samoans and Tahitians. Even where
+he denies its existence, as among the Amazon tribes mentioned by Mr.
+Bates, we happen to be able to show that Mr. Bates was misinformed.
+Another traveller, the American geologist, Professor Hartt of Cornell
+University, lived long among the tribes of the Amazon. But Professor
+Hartt did not, like Mr. Bates, find them at all destitute of theories of
+things--theories expressed in myths, and testifying to the intellectual
+activity and curiosity which demands an answer to its questions.
+Professor Hartt, when he first became acquainted with the Indians of the
+Amazon, knew that they were well supplied with myths, and he set to work
+to collect them. But he found that neither by coaxing nor by offers of
+money could he persuade an Indian to relate a myth. Only by accident,
+"while wearily paddling up the Paranamirim of the Ituki," did he
+hear the steersman telling stories to the oarsmen to keep them awake.
+Professor Hartt furtively noted down the tale, and he found that by
+"setting the ball rolling," and narrating a story himself, he could make
+the natives throw off reserve and add to his stock of tales. "After one
+has obtained his first myth, and has learned to recite it accurately and
+spiritedly, the rest is easy." The tales published by Professor Hartt
+are chiefly animal stories, like those current in Africa and among the
+Red Indians, and Hartt even believed that many of the legends had been
+imported by <DW64>s. But as the majority of the <DW64> myths, like
+those of the Australians, give a "reason why" for the existence of some
+phenomenon or other, the argument against early man's curiosity and
+vivacity of intellect is rather injured, even if the Amazonian myths
+were imported from Africa. Mr. Spencer based his disbelief in the
+intellectual curiosity of the Amazonian tribes and of <DW64>s on the
+reports of Mr. Bates and of Mungo Park. But it turns out that both
+<DW64>s and Amazonians have stories which do satisfy an unscientific
+curiosity, and it is even held that the <DW64>s lent the Amazonians
+these very stories.(1) The Kamschadals, according to Steller, "give
+themselves a reason why for everything, according to their own lively
+fancy, and do not leave the smallest matter uncriticised".(2) As far,
+then, as Mr. Spencer's objections apply to existing savages, we may
+consider them overweighed by the evidence, and we may believe in a naive
+savage curiosity about the world and desire for explanations of the
+causes of things. Mr. Tylor's opinion corroborates our own: "Man's
+craving to know the causes at work in each event he witnesses, the
+reasons why each state of things he surveys is such as it is and no
+other, is no product of high civilisation, but a characteristic of his
+race down to its lowest stages. Among rude savages it is already an
+intellectual appetite, whose satisfaction claims many of the moments not
+engrossed by war or sport, food or sleep. Even in the Botocudo or
+the Australian, scientific speculation has its germ in actual
+experience."(3) It will be shown later that the food of the savage
+intellectual appetite is offered and consumed in the shape of
+explanatory myths.
+
+
+(1) See Amazonian Tortoise-Myth., pp. 5, 37, 40; and compare Mr.
+Harris's Preface to Nights with Uncle Remus.
+
+(2) Steller, p. 267. Cf. Farrer's Primitive Manners, p. 274.
+
+(3) Primitive Culture, i. 369.
+
+
+But we must now observe that the "actual experience," properly so
+called, of the savage is so limited and so  by misconception and
+superstition, that his knowledge of the world varies very much from the
+conceptions of civilised races. He seeks an explanation, a theory of
+things, based on his experience. But his knowledge of physical causes
+and of natural laws is exceedingly scanty, and he is driven to fall back
+upon what we may call metaphysical, or, in many cases "supernatural"
+explanations. The narrower the range of man's knowledge of physical
+causes, the wider is the field which he has to fill up with
+hypothetical causes of a metaphysical or "supernatural" character. These
+"supernatural" causes themselves the savage believes to be matters of
+experience. It is to his mind a matter of experience that all nature
+is personal and animated; that men may change shapes with beasts; that
+incantations and supernatural beings can cause sunshine and storm.
+
+A good example of this is given in Charlevoix's work on French
+Canada.(1) Charlevoix was a Jesuit father and missionary among the
+Hurons and other tribes of North America. He thus describes the
+philosophy of the Red Men: "The Hurons attribute the most ordinary
+effects to supernatural causes".(2) In the same page the good father
+himself attributes the welcome arrival of rainy weather and the cure
+of certain savage patients to the prayers of Pere Brebeuf and to the
+exhibition of the sacraments. Charlevoix had considerably extended
+the field in which natural effects are known to be produced by natural
+causes. He was much more scientifically minded than his savage flock,
+and was quite aware that an ordinary clock with a pendulum cannot bring
+bad luck to a whole tribe, and that a weather-cock is not a magical
+machine for securing unpleasant weather. The Hurons, however, knowing
+less of natural causes and nothing of modern machinery, were as
+convinced that his clock was ruining the luck of the tribe and his
+weather-cock spoiling the weather, as Father Charlevoix could be of
+the truth of his own inferences. One or two other anecdotes in the good
+father's history and letters help to explain the difference between the
+philosophies of wild and of Christian men. The Pere Brebeuf was once
+summoned at the instigation of a Huron wizard or "medicine-man" before
+a council of the tribe. His judges told the father that nothing had gone
+right since he appeared among them. To this Brebeuf replied by "drawing
+the attention of the savages to the absurdity of their principles". He
+admitted(3) the premise that nothing had turned out well in the tribe
+since his arrival. "But the reason," said he, "plainly is that God is
+angry with your hardness of heart." No sooner had the good father thus
+demonstrated the absurdity of savage principles of reasoning, than the
+malignant Huron wizard fell down dead at his feet! This event naturally
+added to the confusion of the savages.
+
+
+(1) Histoire de la France-Nouvelle.
+
+(2) Vol. i. p. 191.
+
+(3) Vol. i. p. 192.
+
+
+Coincidences of this sort have a great effect on savage minds. Catlin,
+the friend of the Mandan tribe, mentions a chief who consolidated his
+power by aid of a little arsenic, bought from the whites. The chief used
+to prophesy the sudden death of his opponents, which always occurred at
+the time indicated. The natural results of the administration of arsenic
+were attributed by the barbarous people to supernatural powers in the
+possession of the chief.(1) Thus the philosophy of savages seeks causas
+cognoscere rerum, like the philosophy of civilised men, but it flies
+hastily to a hypothesis of "supernatural" causes which are only guessed
+at, and are incapable of demonstration. This frame of mind prevails
+still in civilised countries, as the Bishop of Nantes showed when, in
+1846, he attributed the floods of the Loire to "the excesses of the
+press and the general disregard of Sunday". That "supernatural" causes
+exist and may operate, it is not at all our intention to deny. But
+the habit of looking everywhere for such causes, and of assuming their
+interference at will, is the main characteristic of savage speculation.
+The peculiarity of the savage is that he thinks human agents can work
+supernaturally, whereas even the Bishop reserved his supernatural
+explanations for the Deity. On this belief in man's power to affect
+events beyond the limits of natural possibility is based the whole
+theory of MAGIC, the whole power of sorcerers. That theory, again, finds
+incessant expression in myth, and therefore deserves our attention.
+
+
+(1) Catlin, Letters, ii. 117.
+
+
+The theory requires for its existence an almost boundless credulity.
+This credulity appears to Europeans to prevail in full force among
+savages. Bosman is amazed by the African belief that a spider created
+the world. Moffat is astonished at the South African notion that the sea
+was accidentally created by a girl. Charlevoix says, "Les sauvages
+sont d'une facilite a croire ce qu'on leur dit, que les plus facheuse
+experiences n'ont jamais pu guerir".(1) But it is a curious fact that
+while savages are, as a rule, so credulous, they often laugh at
+the religious doctrines taught them by missionaries. Elsewhere they
+recognise certain essential doctrines as familiar forms of old.
+Dr. Moffat remarks, "To speak of the Creation, the Fall and the
+Resurrection, seemed more fabulous, extravagant and ludicrous to them
+than their own vain stories of lions and hyaenas." Again, "The Gospel
+appeared too preposterous for the most foolish to believe".(2) While
+the Zulus declared that they used to accept their own myths without
+inquiry,(3) it was a Zulu who suggested to Bishop Colenso his doubts
+about the historical character of the Noachian Deluge. Hearne(4) knew
+a Red Man, Matorabhee, who, "though a perfect bigot with regard to the
+arts and tricks of the jugglers, could yet by no means be impressed with
+a belief of any part of OUR religion". Lieutenant Haggard, R.N., tells
+the writer that during an eclipse at Lamoo he ridiculed the native
+notion of driving away a beast which devours the moon, and explained the
+real cause of the phenomenon. But his native friend protested that "he
+could not be expected to believe such a story". Yet other savages aver
+an old agreement with the belief in a moral Creator.
+
+
+(1) Vol. ii. p. 378.
+
+(2) Missionary Labours, p. 245.
+
+(3) Callaway, Religion of Amazulus, i. 35.
+
+(4) Journey among the Indians, 1795, p. 350.
+
+
+We have already seen sufficient examples of credulity in savage
+doctrines about the equal relations of men and beasts, stars, clouds
+and plants. The same readiness of belief, which would be surprising in
+a Christian child, has been found to regulate the rudimentary political
+organisations of grey barbarians. Add to this credulity a philosophy
+which takes resemblance, or contiguity in space, or nearness in time as
+a sufficient reason for predicating the relations of cause and effect,
+and we have the basis of savage physical science. Yet the metaphysical
+theories of savages, as expressed in Maori, Polynesian, and Zuni hymns,
+often amaze us by their wealth of abstract ideas. Coincidence elsewhere
+stands for cause.
+
+Post hoc, ergo propter hoc, is the motto of the savage philosophy of
+causation. The untutored reasoner speculates on the principles of the
+Egyptian clergy, as described by Herodotus.(1) "The Egyptians have
+discovered more omens and prodigies than any other men; for when aught
+prodigious occurs, they keep good watch, and write down what follows;
+and then, if anything like the prodigy be repeated, they expect the same
+events to follow as before." This way of looking at things is the very
+essence of superstition.
+
+
+(1) II. p. 82.
+
+
+Savages, as a rule, are not even so scientific as the Egyptians. When
+an untoward event occurs, they look for its cause among all the less
+familiar circumstances of the last few days, and select the determining
+cause very much at random. Thus the arrival of the French missionaries
+among the Hurons was coincident with certain unfortunate events;
+therefore it was argued that the advent of the missionaries was the
+cause of the misfortune. When the Bechuanas suffered from drought, they
+attributed the lack of rain to the arrival of Dr. Moffat, and especially
+to his beard, his church bell, and a bag of salt in his possession. Here
+there was not even the pretence of analogy between cause and effect.
+Some savages might have argued (it is quite in their style), that as
+salt causes thirst, a bag of salt causes drought; but no such case could
+be made out against Dr. Moffat's bell and beard. To give an example from
+the beliefs of English peasants. When a cottage was buried by a little
+avalanche in 1772, the accident was attributed to the carelessness of
+the cottagers, who had allowed a light to be taken out of their dwelling
+in Christmas-tide.(1) We see the same confusion between antecedence and
+consequence in time on one side, and cause and effect on the other, when
+the Red Indians aver that birds actually bring winds and storms or fair
+weather. They take literally the sense of the Rhodian swallow-song:--
+
+
+     The swallow hath come,
+     Bringing fair hours,
+     Bringing fair seasons,
+     On black back and white breast.(2)
+
+
+(1) Shropshire Folk-Lore, by Miss Burne, iii. 401.
+
+(2) Brinton, Myths of New World, p. 107.
+
+
+Again, in the Pacific the people of one island always attribute
+hurricanes to the machinations of the people of the nearest island to
+windward. The wind comes from them; therefore (as their medicine-men can
+notoriously influence the weather), they must have sent the wind. This
+unneighbourly act is a casus belli, and through the whole of a group
+of islands the banner of war, like the flag of freedom in Byron, flies
+against the wind. The chief principle, then, of savage science is that
+antecedence and consequence in time are the same as effect and cause.(1)
+Again, savage science holds that LIKE AFFECTS LIKE, that you can injure
+a man, for example, by injuring his effigy. On these principles the
+savage explains the world to himself, and on these principles he tries
+to subdue to himself the world. Now the putting of these principles into
+practice is simply the exercise of art magic, an art to which nothing
+seems impossible. The belief that his Shamans or medicine-men practise
+this art is universal among savages. It seriously affects their conduct,
+and is reflected in their myths.
+
+
+(1) See account of Zuni metaphysics in chapter on American Divine Myths.
+
+
+The one general rule which governs all magical reasoning is, that casual
+connection in thought is equivalent to causative connection in fact.
+Like suggests like to human thought by association of ideas; wherefore
+like influences like, or produces analogous effects in practice. Any
+object once in a man's possession, especially his hair or his nails, is
+supposed to be capable of being used against him by a sorcerer. The
+part suggests the whole. A lock of a man's hair was part of the man; to
+destroy the hair is to destroy its former owner. Again, whatever event
+follows another in time suggests it, and may have been caused by
+it. Accompanying these ideas is the belief that nature is peopled by
+invisible spiritual powers, over which magicians and sorcerers possess
+influence. The magic of the lower races chiefly turns on these two
+beliefs. First, "man having come to associate in thought those things
+which he found by experience to be connected in fact, proceeded
+erroneously to invert their action, and to conclude that association in
+thought must involve similar connection in reality. He thus attempted to
+discover, to foretell, and to cause events, by means of processes
+which we now see to have only an ideal significance."(1) Secondly,
+man endeavoured to make disembodied spirits of the dead, or any other
+spirits, obedient to his will. Savage philosophy presumes that the
+beliefs are correct, and that their practical application is successful.
+Examples of the first of the two chief magical ideas are as common in
+unscientific modern times or among unscientific modern people as in the
+savage world.
+
+
+(1) Primitive Culture, i. 14.
+
+
+The physicians of the age of Charles II. were wont to give their
+patients "mummy powder," that is, pulverised mummy. They argued that the
+mummy had lasted for a very long time, and that the patients ought to do
+so likewise. Pliny imagined that diamonds must be found in company with
+gold, because these are the most perfect substances in the world, and
+like should draw to like. Aurum potabile, or drinkable gold, was a
+favourite medical nostrum of the Middle Ages, because gold, being
+perfect, should produce perfect health. Among savages the belief that
+like is caused by like is exemplified in very many practices. The New
+Caledonians, when they wish their yam plots to be fertile, bury in them
+with mystic ceremonies certain stones which are naturally shaped like
+yams. The Melanesians have reduced this kind of magic to a system. Among
+them certain stones have a magical efficacy, which is determined in each
+case by the shape of the stone. "A stone in the shape of a pig, of a
+bread-fruit, of a yam, was a most valuable find. No garden was planted
+without the stones which were to increase the crop."(1) Stones with a
+rude resemblance to beasts bring the Zuni luck in the chase.
+
+
+(1) Rev. R. H. Codrington, Journ. Anth. Inst., February, 1881.
+
+
+The spiritual theory in some places is mixed up with the "like to like"
+theory, and the magical stones are found where the spirits have been
+heard twittering and whistling. "A large stone lying with a number of
+small ones under it, like a sow among her sucklings, was good for a
+childless woman."(1) It is the savage belief that stones reproduce
+their species, a belief consonant with the general theory of universal
+animation and personality. The ancient belief that diamonds gendered
+diamonds is a survival from these ideas. "A stone with little disks upon
+it was good to bring in money; any fanciful interpretation of a mark
+was enough to give a character to the stone and its associated Vui" or
+spirit in Melanesia. In Scotland, stones shaped like various parts
+of the human body are expected to cure the diseases with which these
+members may be afflicted. "These stones were called by the names of the
+limbs which they represented, as 'eye-stone,' 'head-stone'." The patient
+washed the affected part of the body, and rubbed it well with the stone
+corresponding.(2)
+
+
+(1) Codrington, Journ. Anth. Soc., x. iii. 276.
+
+(2) Gregor, Folk-Lore of North-East Counties, p. 40.
+
+
+To return from European peasant-magic to that of savages, we find that
+when the Bushmen want wet weather they light fires, believing that
+the black smoke clouds will attract black rain clouds; while the Zulus
+sacrifice black cattle to attract black clouds of rain.(1) Though this
+magic has its origin in savage ignorance, it survives into civilisation.
+Thus the sacrifices of the Vedic age were imitations of the natural
+phenomena which the priests desired to produce.(2) "C'etait un moyen de
+faire tombre la pluie en realisant, par les representations terrestres
+des eaux du nuage et de l'eclair, les conditions dans lesquelles
+celui-ci determine dans le ciel l'epanchement de celles-la." A good
+example of magical science is afforded by the medical practice of the
+Dacotahs of North America.(3) When any one is ill, an image of his
+disease, a boil or what not, is carved in wood. This little image is
+then placed in a bowl of water and shot at with a gun. The image of the
+disease being destroyed, the disease itself is expected to disappear.
+Compare the magic of the Philistines, who made golden images of the
+sores which plagued them and stowed them away in the ark.(4) The custom
+of making a wax statuette of an enemy, and piercing it with pins or
+melting it before the fire, so that the detested person might waste
+as his semblance melted, was common in mediaeval Europe, was known to
+Plato, and is practised by <DW64>s. Some Australians take some of the
+hair of an enemy, mix it with grease and the feathers of the eagle, and
+burn it in the fire. This is "bar" or black magic. The boarding under
+the chair of a magistrate in Barbadoes was lifted not long ago, and the
+ground beneath was found covered with wax images of litigants stuck full
+of pins.
+
+
+(1) Callaway, i. 92.
+
+(2) Bergaigne, Religion Vedique, i. 126-138, i., vii., viii.
+
+(3) Schoolcraft, iv. 491.
+
+(4) 1 Samuel vi. 4, 5.
+
+
+The war-magic of the Dacotahs works in a similar manner. Before a party
+starts on the war-trail, the chief, with various ceremonies, takes his
+club and stands before his tent. An old witch bowls hoops at him; each
+hoop represents an enemy, and for each he strikes a foeman is expected
+to fall. A bowl of sweetened water is also set out to entice the spirits
+of the enemy.(1) The war-magic of the Aryans in India does not differ
+much in character from that of the Dacotahs. "If any one wishes his army
+to be victorious, he should go beyond the battle-line, cut a stalk of
+grass at the top and end, and throw it against the hostile army with the
+words, Prasahe kas trapasyati?--O Prasaha, who sees thee? If one who has
+such knowledge cuts a stalk of grass and throws the parts at the hostile
+army, it becomes split and dissolved, just as a daughter-in-law becomes
+abashed and faints when seeing her father-in-law,"--an allusion,
+apparently, to the widespread tabu which makes fathers-in-law,
+daughters-in-law, sons-in-law, and mothers-in-law avoid each other.(2)
+
+
+(1) Schoolcraft, iv. 496.
+
+(2) Aitareya Brahmana, iii. 22.
+
+
+The hunt-dances of the Red Indians and Australians are arranged like
+their war-magic. Effigies of the bears, deer, or kangaroos are made, or
+some of the hunters imitate the motions of these animals. The rest of
+the dancers pretend to spear them, and it is hoped that this will ensure
+success among the real bears and kangaroos.
+
+Here is a singular piece of magic in which Europeans and Australian
+blacks agree. Boris Godunoff made his servants swear never to injure him
+by casting spells with the dust on which his feet or his carriage wheels
+had left traces.(1) Mr. Howitt finds the same magic among the Kurnai.(2)
+"Seeing a Tatungolung very lame, I asked him what was the matter. He
+said, 'Some fellow has put BOTTLE in my foot'. I found he was probably
+suffering from acute rheumatism. He explained that some enemy must have
+found his foot-track and have buried in it a piece of broken bottle. The
+magic influence, he believed, caused it to enter his foot." On another
+occasion a native told Mr. Howitt that he had seen black fellows putting
+poison in his foot-tracks. Bosman mentions a similar practice among the
+people of Guinea. In Scottish folk-lore a screw nail is fixed into the
+footprint of the person who is to be injured.
+
+
+(1) Rambaud's History of Russia, English trans., i. 351.
+
+(2) Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 250.
+
+
+Just as these magical efforts to influence like by like work their way
+into Vedic and other religions, so they are introduced into the religion
+of the savage. His prayers are addresses to some sort of superior being,
+but the efficacy of the prayer is often eked out by a little magic,
+unless indeed we prefer to suppose that the words of the supplication
+are interpreted by gesture-speech. Sproat writes: "Set words and
+gestures are used according to the thing desired. For instance, in
+praying for salmon, the native rubs the backs of his hands, looks
+upwards, and mutters the words, 'Many salmon, many salmon'. If he wishes
+for deer, he carefully rubs both eyes; or, if it is geese, he rubs the
+back of his shoulder, uttering always in a sing-song way the accustomed
+formula.... All these practices in praying no doubt have a meaning. We
+may see a steady hand is needed in throwing the salmon-spear, and clear
+eyesight in finding deer in the forest."(1)
+
+
+(1) Savage Life, p. 208.
+
+
+In addition to these forms of symbolical magic (which might be
+multiplied to any extent), we find among savages the belief in the power
+of songs of INCANTATION. This is a feature of magic which specially
+deserves our attention. In myths, and still more in marchen or household
+tales, we shall constantly find that the most miraculous effects are
+caused when the hero pronounces a few lines of rhyme. In Rome, as we
+have all read in the Latin Delectus, it was thought that incantations
+could draw down the moon. In the Odyssey the kinsfolk of Odysseus sing
+"a song of healing" over the wound which was dealt him by the boar's
+tusk. Jeanne d'Arc, wounded at Orleans, refused a similar remedy.
+Sophocles speaks of the folly of muttering incantations over wounds
+that need the surgeon's knife. The song that salved wounds occurs in
+the Kalewala, the epic poem of the Finns. In many of Grimm's marchen,
+miracles are wrought by the repetition of snatches of rhyme. This belief
+is derived from the savage state of fancy. According to Kohl,(1) "Every
+sorrowful or joyful emotion that opens the Indian's mouth is at once
+wrapped up in the garb of a wabanonagamowin (chanson magicale). If you
+ask one of them to sing you a simple innocent hymn in praise of Nature,
+a spring or jovial hunting stave, he never gives you anything but a form
+of incantation, with which he says you will be able to call to you all
+the birds from the sky, and all the foxes and wolves from their caves
+and burrows."(2) The giant's daughter in the Scotch marchen, Nicht,
+Nought, Nothing, is thus enabled to call to her aid "all the birds of
+the sky". In the same way, if you ask an Indian for a love-song, he
+will say that a philtre is really much more efficacious. The savage, in
+short, is extremely practical. His arts, music and drawing, exist not
+pour l'art, but for a definite purpose, as methods of getting something
+that the artist wants. The young lover whom Kohl knew, like the lover
+of Bombyca in Theocritus, believed in having an image of himself and an
+image of the beloved. Into the heart of the female image he thrust magic
+powders, and he said that this was common, lovers adding songs, "partly
+elegiac, partly malicious, and almost criminal forms of incantation".(3)
+
+
+(1) Page 395.
+
+(2) Cf. Comparetti's Traditional Poetry of the Finns.
+
+(3) Kitchi gami, pp. 395, 397.
+
+
+Among the Indo-Aryans the masaminik or incantations of the Red Man are
+known as mantras.(1) These are usually texts from the Veda, and are
+chanted over the sick and in other circumstances where magic is believed
+to be efficacious. Among the New Zealanders the incantations are called
+karakias, and are employed in actual life. There is a special karakia to
+raise the wind. In Maori myths the hero is very handy with his karakia.
+Rocks split before him, as before girls who use incantations in Kaffir
+and Bushman tales. He assumes the shape of any animal at will, or flies
+in the air, all by virtue of the karakia or incantation.(2)
+
+
+(1) Muir, Sanskrit Texts, v. 441, "Incantations from the Atharva Veda".
+
+(2) Taylor's New Zealand; Theal's Kaffir Folk-Lore, South-African
+Folk-Lore Journal, passim; Shortland's Traditions of the New Zealanders,
+pp. 130-135.
+
+
+Without multiplying examples in the savage belief that miracles can be
+wrought by virtue of physical CORRESPONDANCES, by like acting on like,
+by the part affecting the whole, and so forth, we may go on to the
+magical results produced by the aid of spirits. These may be either
+spirits of the dead or spiritual essences that never animated mortal
+men. Savage magic or science rests partly on the belief that the
+world is peopled by a "choir invisible," or rather by a choir only
+occasionally visible to certain gifted people, sorcerers and diviners.
+An enormous amount of evidence to prove the existence of these tenets
+has been collected by Mr. Tylor, and is accessible to all in the
+chapters on "Animism" in his Primitive Culture. It is not our business
+here to account for the universality of the belief in spirits. Mr.
+Tylor, following Lucretius and Homer, derives the belief from the
+reasonings of early men on the phenomena of dreams, fainting, shadows,
+visions caused by narcotics, hallucinations, and other facts which
+suggest the hypothesis of a separable life apart from the bodily
+organism. It would scarcely be fair not to add that the kind of "facts"
+investigated by the Psychical Society--such "facts" as the appearance
+of men at the moment of death in places remote from the scene of their
+decease, with such real or delusive experiences as the noises and
+visions in haunted houses--are familiar to savages. Without discussing
+these obscure matters, it may be said that they influence the thoughts
+even of some scientifically trained and civilised men. It is natural,
+therefore, that they should strongly sway the credulous imagination of
+backward races, in which they originate or confirm the belief that life
+can exist and manifest itself after the death of the body.(1)
+
+
+(1) See the author's Making of Religion, 1898.
+
+
+Some examples of savage "ghost-stories," precisely analogous to the
+"facts" of the Psychical Society's investigations, may be adduced. The
+first is curious because it offers among the Kanekas an example of a
+belief current in Breton folk-lore. The story is vouched for by Mr. J.
+J. Atkinson, late of Noumea, New Caledonia. Mr. Atkinson, we have reason
+to believe, was unacquainted with the Breton parallel. To him one day a
+Kaneka of his acquaintance paid a visit, and seemed loth to go away. He
+took leave, returned, and took leave again, till Mr. Atkinson asked him
+the reason of his behaviour. He then explained that he was about to die,
+and would never see his English friend again. As he seemed in perfect
+health, Mr. Atkinson rallied him on his hypochondria; but the poor
+fellow replied that his fate was sealed. He had lately met in the wood
+one whom he took for the Kaneka girl of his heart; but he became aware
+too late that she was no mortal woman, but a wood-spirit in the guise of
+the beloved. The result would be his death within three days, and, as a
+matter of fact, he died. This is the groundwork of the old Breton ballad
+of Le Sieur Nan, who dies after his intrigue with the forest spectre.(1)
+A tale more like a common modern ghost-story is vouched for by Mr. C.
+J. Du Ve, in Australia. In the year 1860, a Maneroo black fellow died in
+the service of Mr. Du Ve. "The day before he died, having been ill some
+time, he said that in the night his father, his father's friend, and a
+female spirit he could not recognise, had come to him and said that he
+would die next day, and that they would wait for him. Mr. Du Ye adds
+that, though previously the Christian belief had been explained to this
+man, it had entirely faded, and that he had gone back to the belief of
+his childhood." Mr. Fison, who prints this tale in his Kamilaroi and
+Kurnai,(2) adds, "I could give many similar instances which have come
+within my own knowledge among the Fijians, and, strange to say, the
+dying man in all these cases kept his appointment with the ghosts to the
+very day".
+
+
+(1) It may, of course, be conjectured that the French introduced this
+belief into New Caledonia.
+
+(2) Page 247.
+
+
+In the Cruise of the Beagle is a parallel anecdote of a Fuegian, Jimmy
+Button, and his father's ghost.
+
+Without entering into a discussion of ghosts, it is plain that the kind
+of evidence, whatever its value may be, which convinces many educated
+Europeans of the existence of "veridical" apparitions has also played
+its part in the philosophy of uncivilised races. On this belief in
+apparitions, then, is based the power of the savage sorcerers and
+necromants, of the men who converse with the dead and are aided by
+disembodied spirits. These men have greatly influenced the beginnings
+of mythology. Among certain Australian tribes the necromants are called
+Birraark.(1) "The Kurnai tell me," says Mr. Howitt, "that a Birraark
+was supposed to be initiated by the 'Mrarts (ghosts) when they met
+him wandering in the bush.... It was from the ghosts that he obtained
+replies to questions concerning events passing at a distance or yet to
+happen, which might be of interest or moment to his tribe." Mr. Howitt
+prints an account of a spiritual seance in the bush.(2) "The fires were
+let go down. The Birraark uttered a cry 'coo-ee' at intervals. At
+length a distant reply was heard, and shortly afterwards the sound as of
+persons jumping on the ground in succession. A voice was then heard in
+the gloom asking in a strange intonation, 'What is wanted?' Questions
+were put by the Birraark and replies given. At the termination of the
+seance, the spirit-voice said, 'We are going'. Finally, the Birraark was
+found in the top of an almost inaccessible tree, apparently asleep."(3)
+There was one Birraark at least to every clan. The Kurnai gave the name
+of "Brewin" (a powerful evil spirit) to a Birraark who was once carried
+away for several days by the Mrarts or spirits.(4) It is a belief with
+the Australians, as, according to Bosman, it was with the people of
+the Gold Coast, that a very powerful wizard lives far inland, and the
+<DW64>s held that to this warlock the spirits of the dead went to be
+judged according to the merit of their actions in life. Here we have a
+doctrine answering to the Greek belief in "the wizard Minos," Aeacus,
+and Rhadamanthus, and to the Egyptian idea of Osiris as judge of the
+departed.(5) The pretensions of the sorcerer to converse with the dead
+are attested by Mr. Brough Smyth.(6) "A sorcerer lying on his stomach
+spoke to the deceased, and the other sitting by his side received the
+precious messages which the dead man told." As a natural result of these
+beliefs, the Australian necromant has great power in the tribe. Mr.
+Howitt mentions a case in which a group of kindred, ceasing to use their
+old totemistic surname, called themselves the children of a famous
+dead Birraark, who thus became an eponymous hero, like Ion among the
+Ionians.(7) Among the Scotch Highlanders the position and practice
+of the seer were very like those of the Birraark. "A person," says
+Scott,(8) "was wrapped up in the skin of a newly slain bullock and
+deposited beside a waterfall or at the bottom of a precipice, or in some
+other strange, wild and unusual situation, where the scenery around him
+suggested nothing but objects of horror. In this situation he revolved
+in his mind the question proposed and whatever was impressed on him by
+his exalted imagination PASSED FOR THE INSPIRATION OF THE DISEMBODIED
+SPIRITS who haunt these desolate recesses." A number of examples are
+given in Martin's Description of the Western Islands.(9) In the Century
+magazine (July, 1882) is a very full report of Thlinkeet medicine-men
+and metamorphoses.
+
+
+(1) Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 253.
+
+(2) Page 254.
+
+(3) In the Jesuit Relations (1637), p. 51, we read that the Red Indian
+sorcerer or Jossakeed was credited with power to vanish suddenly away
+out of sight of the men standing around him. Of him, as of Homeric
+gods, it might be said, "Who has power to see him come or go against his
+will?"
+
+(4) Here, in the first edition, occurred the following passage: "The
+conception of Brewin is about as near as the Kurnai get to the idea of a
+God; their conferring of his name on a powerful sorcerer is therefore
+a point of importance and interest". Mr. Howitt's later knowledge
+demonstrates an error here.
+
+(5) Bosman in Pinkerton, xvi. p. 401.
+
+(6) Aborigines of Australia, i. 197.
+
+(7) In Victoria, after dark the wizard goes up to the clouds and brings
+down a good spirit. Dawkins, p. 57. For eponymous medicine-men see
+Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 231.
+
+(8) Lady of the Lake, note 1 to Canto iv.
+
+(9) P. 112.
+
+
+The sorcerer among the Zulus is, apparently, of a naturally hysterical
+and nervous constitution. "He hears the spirits who speak by whistlings
+speaking to him."(1) Whistling is also the language of the ghosts in New
+Caledonia, where Mr. Atkinson informs us that he has occasionally put
+an able-bodied Kaneka to ignominious flight by whistling softly in the
+dusk. The ghosts in Homer make a similar sound, "and even as bats flit
+gibbering in the secret place of a wondrous cavern,... even so the
+souls gibbered as they fared together" (Odyssey, xxiv. 5). "The familiar
+spirits make him" (that Zulu sorcerer) "acquainted with what is about
+to happen, and then he divines for the people." As the Birraarks learn
+songs and dance-music from the Mrarts, so the Zulu Inyanga or diviners
+learn magical couplets from the Itongo or spirits.(2)
+
+
+(1) Callaway, Religious System of the Amazules, p. 265.
+
+(2) On all this, see "Possession" in The Making of Religion.
+
+
+The evidence of institutions confirms the reports about savage belief
+in magic. The political power of the diviners is very great, as may be
+observed from the fact that a hereditary chief needs their consecration
+to make him a chief de jure.(1) In fact, the qualities of the diviner
+are those which give his sacred authority to the chief. When he has
+obtained from the diviners all their medicines and information as to the
+mode of using the isitundu (a magical vessel), it is said that he often
+orders them to be killed. Now, the chief is so far a medicine-man that
+he is lord of the air. "The heaven is the chief's," say the Zulus;
+and when he calls out his men, "though the heaven is clear, it becomes
+clouded by the great wind that arises". Other Zulus explain this as the
+mere hyperbole of adulation. "The word of the chief gives confidence to
+his troops; they say, 'We are going; the chief has already seen all that
+will happen in his vessel'. Such then are chiefs; they use a vessel
+for divination."(2) The makers of rain are known in Zululand as
+"heaven-herds" or "sky-herds," who herd the heaven that it may not break
+out and do its will on the property of the people. These men are, in
+fact, (Greek text omitted), "cloud-gatherers," like the Homeric Zeus,
+the lord of the heavens. Their name of "herds of the heavens" has a
+Vedic sound. "The herd that herds the lightning," say the Zulus, "does
+the same as the herder of the cattle; he does as he does by whistling;
+he says, 'Tshu-i-i-i. Depart and go yonder. Do not come here.'" Here
+let it be observed that the Zulus conceive of the thunder-clouds and
+lightning as actual creatures, capable of being herded like sheep. There
+is no metaphor or allegory about the matter,(3) and no forgetfulness of
+the original meaning of words. The cloud-herd is just like the cowherd,
+except that not every man, but only sorcerers, and they who have eaten
+the "lightning-bird" (a bird shot near the place where lightning has
+struck the earth), can herd the clouds of heaven. The same ideas prevail
+among the Bushmen, where the rainmaker is asked "to milk a nice gentle
+female rain"; the rain-clouds are her hair. Among the Bushmen Rain is a
+person. Among the Red Indians no metaphor seems to be intended when it
+is said that "it is always birds who make the wind, except that of the
+east". The Dacotahs once killed a thunder-bird(4) behind Little Crow's
+village on the Missouri. It had a face like a man with a nose like an
+eagle's bill.(5)
+
+
+(1) Callaway, p. 340.
+
+(2) Callaway, Religions System of the Amazules, p. 343.
+
+(3) Ibid., p. 385.
+
+(4) Schoolcraft, iii. 486.
+
+(5) Compare Callaway, p. 119.
+
+
+The political and social powers which come into the hands of the
+sorcerers are manifest, even in the case of the Australians. Tribes and
+individuals can attempt few enterprises without the aid of the man who
+listens to the ghosts. Only he can foretell the future, and, in the case
+of the natural death of a member of the tribe, can direct the vengeance
+of the survivors against the hostile magician who has committed a murder
+by "bar" or magic. Among the Zulus we have seen that sorcery gives the
+sanction to the power of the chief. "The winds and weather are at the
+command" of Bosman's "great fetisher". Inland from the Gold Coast,(1)
+the king of Loango, according to the Abbe Proyart, "has credit to make
+rain fall on earth". Similar beliefs, with like political results, will
+be found to follow from the superstition of magic among the Red Indians
+of North America. The difficulty of writing about sorcerers among the
+Red Indians is caused by the abundance of the evidence. Charlevoix
+and the other early Jesuit missionaries found that the jongleurs,
+as Charlevoix calls the Jossakeeds or medicine-men, were their chief
+opponents. As among the Scotch Highlanders, the Australians and the
+Zulus, the Red Indian jongleur is visited by the spirits. He covers
+a hut with the skin of the animal which he commonly wears, retires
+thither, and there converses with the bodiless beings.(2) The good
+missionary like Mr. Moffat in Africa, was convinced that the exercises
+of the Jossakeeds were verily supernatural. "Ces seducteurs ont un
+veritable commerce avec le pere du mensonge."(3) This was denied
+by earlier and wiser Jesuit missionaries. Their political power was
+naturally great. In time of war "ils avancent et retardent les marches
+comme il leur plait". In our own century it was a medicine-man, Ten Squa
+Ta Way, who by his magical processes and superstitious rites stirred up
+a formidable war against the United States.(4) According to Mr. Pond,(5)
+the native name of the Dacotah medicine-men, "Wakan," signifies "men
+supernaturally gifted". Medicine-men are believed to be "wakanised"
+by mystic intercourse with supernatural beings. The business of the
+wakanised man is to discern future events, to lead and direct parties on
+the war-trail, "to raise the storm or calm the tempest, to converse with
+the lightning or thunder as with familiar friends".(6) The wakanised
+man, like the Australian Birraark and the Zulu diviner, "dictates chants
+and prayers". In battle "every Dacotah warrior looks to the Wakan man
+as almost his only resource". Belief in Wakan men is, Mr. Pond says,
+universal among the Dacotahs, except where Christianity has undermined
+it. "Their influence is deeply felt by every individual of the tribe,
+and controls all their affairs." The Wakan man's functions are absorbed
+by the general or war-chief of the tribe, and in Schoolcraft (iv. 495),
+Captain Eastman prints copies of native scrolls showing the war-chief
+at work as a wizard. "The war-chief who leads the party to war is always
+one of these medicine-men." In another passage the medicine-men are
+described as "having a voice in the sale of land". It must be observed
+that the Jossakeed, or medicine-man, pure and simple, exercises a power
+which is not in itself hereditary. Chieftainship, when associated with
+inheritance of property, is hereditary; and when the chief, as among the
+Zulus, absorbs supernatural power, then the same man becomes diviner
+and chief, and is a person of great and sacred influence. The liveliest
+account of the performances of the Maori "tohunga" or sorcerer is to be
+found in Old New Zealand,(7) by the Pakeha Maori, an English gentleman
+who had lived with the natives like one of themselves. The tohunga, says
+this author,(8) presided over "all those services and customs which had
+something approaching to a religious character. They also pretended to
+power by means of certain familiar spirits, to foretell future events,
+and even in some cases to control them.... The spirit 'entered into'
+them, and, on being questioned, gave a response in a sort of half
+whistling, half-articulate voice, supposed to be the proper language
+of spirits." In New South Wales, Mrs. Langlot Parker has witnessed
+a similar exhibition. The "spirits" told the truth in this case. The
+Pakeha Maori was present in a darkened village-hall when the spirit of
+a young man, a great friend of his own, was called up by a tohunga.
+"Suddenly, without the slightest warning, a voice came out of the
+darkness.... The voice all through, it is to be remembered, was not the
+voice of the tohunga, but a strange melancholy sound, like the sound of
+a wind blowing into a hollow vessel. 'It is well with me; my place is a
+good place.' The spirit gave an answer to a question which proved to
+be correct, and then 'Farewell,' cried the spirit FROM DEEP BENEATH THE
+GROUND. 'Farewell,' again, FROM HIGH IN AIR. 'Farewell,' once more came
+moaning through the distant darkness of the night." As chiefs in New
+Zealand no less than tohungas can exercise the mystical and magical
+power of tabu, that is, of imparting to any object or person an
+inviolable character, and can prevent or remit the mysterious punishment
+for infringement of tabu, it appears probable that in New Zealand,
+as well as among the Zulus and Red Indians, chiefs have a tendency to
+absorb the sacred character and powers of the tohungas. This is natural
+enough, for a tohunga, if he plays his cards well, is sure to acquire
+property and hereditary wealth, which, in combination with magical
+influence, are the necessary qualifications for the office of the
+chieftain.
+
+
+(1) Pinkerton, xvi. 401.
+
+(2) Charlevoix, i. 105. See "Savage Spiritualism" in Cock Lane and
+Common Sense.
+
+(3) Ibid., iii. 362.
+
+(4) Catlin, ii. 17.
+
+(5) In Schoolcraft, iv. 402.
+
+(6) Pond, in Schoolcraft, iv. 647.
+
+(7) Auckland, 1863.
+
+(8) Page 148.
+
+
+Here is the place to mention a fact which, though at first sight it may
+appear to have only a social interest, yet bears on the development of
+mythology. Property and rank seem to have been essential to each other
+in the making of social rank, and where one is absent among contemporary
+savages, there we do not find the other. As an example of this, we might
+take the case of two peoples who, like the Homeric Ethiopians, are the
+outermost of men, and dwell far apart at the ends of the world. The
+Eskimos and the Fuegians, at the extreme north and south of the American
+continent, agree in having little or no private property and no chiefs.
+Yet magic is providing a kind of basis of rank. The bleak plains of ice
+and rock are, like Attica, "the mother of men without master or lord".
+Among the "house-mates" of the smaller settlements there is no head-man,
+and in the larger gatherings Dr. Rink says that "still less than among
+the house-mates was any one belonging to such a place to be considered
+a chief". The songs and stories of the Eskimo contain the praises of men
+who have risen up and killed any usurper who tried to be a ruler over
+his "place-mates". No one could possibly establish any authority on
+the basis of property, because "superfluous property, implements, etc.,
+rarely existed". If there are three boats in one household, one of the
+boats is "borrowed" by the community, and reverts to the general fund.
+If we look at the account of the Fuegians described in Admiral Fitzroy's
+cruise, we find a similar absence of rank produced by similar causes.
+"The perfect equality among the individuals composing the tribes must
+for a long time <DW44> their civilisation.... At present even a piece of
+cloth is torn in shreds and distributed, and no one individual becomes
+richer than another. On the other hand, it is difficult to understand
+how a chief can arise till there is property of some sort by which he
+might manifest and still increase his authority." In the same book,
+however, we get a glimpse of one means by which authority can be
+exercised. "The doctor-wizard of each party has much influence over his
+companions." Among the Eskimos this element in the growth of authority
+also exists. A class of wizards called Angakut have power to cause fine
+weather, and, by the gift of second-sight and magical practices,
+can detect crimes, so that they necessarily become a kind of civil
+magistrates. These Angekkok or Angakut have familiar spirits called
+Torngak, a word connected with the name of their chief spiritual being,
+Torngarsak. The Torngak is commonly the ghost of a deceased parent of
+the sorcerer. "These men," says Egede, "are held in great honour and
+esteem among this stupid and ignorant nation, insomuch that nobody dare
+ever refuse the strictest obedience when they command him in the name of
+Torngarsak." The importance and actual existence of belief in magic
+has thus been attested by the evidence of institutions, even among
+Australians, Fuegians and Eskimos.
+
+It is now necessary to pass from examples of tribes who have
+superstitious respect for certain individuals, but who have no property
+and no chiefs, to peoples who exhibit the phenomenon of superstitious
+reverence attached to wealthy rulers or to judges. To take the example
+of Ireland, as described in the Senchus Mor, we learn that the chiefs,
+just like the Angakut of the Eskimos, had "power to make fair or foul
+weather" in the literal sense of the words.(1) In Africa, in the same
+way, as Bosman, the old traveller, says, "As to what difference there
+is between one <DW64> and another, the richest man is the most honoured,"
+yet the most honoured man has the same magical power as the poor
+Angakuts of the Eskimos.
+
+
+(1) Early History of Institutions, p. 195.
+
+
+"In the Solomon Islands," says Dr. Codrington, "there is nothing to
+prevent a common man from becoming a chief, if he can show that he has
+the mana (supernatural power) for it."(1)
+
+
+(1) Journ. Anth. Inst., x. iii. 287, 300, 309.
+
+
+Though it is anticipating a later stage of this inquiry, we must here
+observe that the sacredness, and even the magical virtues of barbarous
+chiefs seem to have descended to the early leaders of European races.
+The children of Odin and of Zeus were "sacred kings". The Homeric
+chiefs, like those of the Zulus and the Red Men, and of the early Irish
+and Swedes, exercised an influence over the physical universe. Homer(1)
+speaks of "a blameless king, one that fears the gods, and reigns among
+many men and mighty, and the black earth bears wheat and barley, and the
+sheep bring forth and fail not, and the sea gives store of fish, and all
+out of his good sovereignty".
+
+
+(1) Od., xix. 109.
+
+
+The attributes usually assigned by barbarous peoples to their
+medicine-men have not yet been exhausted. We have found that they can
+foresee and declare the future; that they control the weather and the
+sensible world; that they can converse with, visit and employ about
+their own business the souls of the dead. It would be easy to show at
+even greater length that the medicine-man has everywhere the power of
+metamorphosis. He can assume the shapes of all beasts, birds, fishes,
+insects and inorganic matters, and he can subdue other people to the
+same enchantment. This belief obviously rests on the lack of recognised
+distinction between man and the rest of the world, which we have so
+frequently insisted on as a characteristic of savage and barbarous
+thought. Examples of accredited metamorphosis are so common everywhere,
+and so well known, that it would be waste of space to give a long
+account of them. In Primitive Culture(1) a cloud of witnesses to the
+belief in human tigers, hyaenas, leopards and wolves is collected.(2)
+Mr. Lane(3) found metamorphosis by wizards as accredited a working
+belief at Cairo as it is among Abipones, Eskimo, or the people of
+Ashangoland. In various parts of Scotland there is a tale of a witch who
+was shot at when in the guise of a hare. In this shape she was
+wounded, and the same wound was found on her when she resumed her human
+appearance. Lafitau, early in the last century, found precisely the
+same tale, except that the wizards took the form of birds, not of hares,
+among the Red Indians. The birds were wounded by the magical arrows of
+an old medicine-man, Shonnoh Koui Eretsi, and these bolts were found
+in the bodies of the human culprits. In Japan, as we learn from several
+stories in Mr. Mitford's Tales of Old Japan, people chiefly metamorphose
+themselves into foxes and badgers. The sorcerers of Honduras(4) "possess
+the power of transforming men into wild beasts, and were much feared
+accordingly". Among the Cakchiquels, a cultivated people of Guatemala,
+the very name of the clergy, haleb, was derived from their power of
+assuming animal shapes, which they took on as easily as the Homeric
+gods.(5) Regnard, the French dramatist, who travelled among the Lapps at
+the end of the seventeenth century (1681), says: "They believe witches
+can turn men into cats;" and again, "Under the figures of swans, crows,
+falcons and geese, they call up tempests and destroy ships".(6) Among
+the Bushmen "sorcerers assume the forms of beasts and jackals".(7)
+Dobrizhoffer (1717-91), a missionary in Paraguay, found that "sorcerers
+arrogate to themselves the power of transforming themselves into
+tigers".(8) He was present when the Abipones believed that a conversion
+of this sort was actually taking place: "Alas," cried the people, "his
+whole body is beginning to be covered with tiger-spots; his nails are
+growing". Near Loanda, Livingstone found that a "chief may metamorphose
+himself into a lion, kill any one he choses, and then resume his proper
+form".(9) Among the Barotse and Balonda, "while persons are still
+alive they may enter into lions and alligators".(10) Among the Mayas of
+Central America "sorcerers could transform themselves into dogs,
+pigs and other animals; their glance was death to a victim".(11) The
+Thlinkeets think that their Shamans can metamorphose themselves into
+animals at pleasure; and a very old raven was pointed out to Mr. C. E.
+S. Wood as an incarnation of the soul of a Shaman.(12) Sir A. C. Lyall
+finds a similar belief in flourishing existence in India. The European
+superstition of the were-wolf is too well known to need description.
+Perhaps the most curious legend is that told by Giraldus Cambrensis
+about a man and his wife metamorphosed into wolves by an abbot. They
+retained human speech, made exemplary professions of Christian faith,
+and sent for priests when they found their last hours approaching. In an
+old Norman ballad a girl is transformed into a white doe, and hunted and
+slain by her brother's hounds. The "aboriginal" peoples of India retain
+similar convictions. Among the Hos,(13) an old sorcerer called Pusa
+was known to turn himself habitually into a tiger, and to eat his
+neighbour's goats, and even their wives. Examples of the power of
+sorcerers to turn, as with the Gorgon's head, their enemies into stone,
+are peculiarly common in America.(14) Hearne found that the Indians
+believed they descended from a dog, who could turn himself into a
+handsome young man.(15)
+
+
+(1) Vol. i. pp. 309-315.
+
+(2) See also M'Lennan on Lykanthropy in Encyclopedia Britannica.
+
+(3) Arabian Nights, i. 51.
+
+(4) Bancroft, Races of Pacific Coast, i. 740.
+
+(5) Brinton, Annals of the Cakchiquels, p. 46.
+
+(6) Pinkerton, i. 471.
+
+(7) Bleek, Brief Account of Bushman Folk-Lore, pp. 15, 40.
+
+(8) English translation of Dobrizhoffer's Abipones, i. 163.
+
+(9) Missionary Travels, p. 615.
+
+(10) Livingstone, p. 642.
+
+(11) Bancroft, ii.
+
+(12) Century Magazine, July, 1882.
+
+(13) Dalton's Ethnology of Bengal, p. 200.
+
+(14) Dorman, pp. 130, 134; Report of Ethnological Bureau, Washington,
+1880-81.
+
+(15) A Journey, etc., p. 342.
+
+
+Let us recapitulate the powers attributed all over the world, by the
+lower people, to medicine-men. The medicine-man has all miracles at his
+command. He rules the sky, he flies into the air, he becomes visible
+or invisible at will, he can take or confer any form at pleasure, and
+resume his human shape. He can control spirits, can converse with the
+dead, and can descend to their abodes.
+
+When we begin to examine the gods of MYTHOLOGY, savage or civilised, as
+distinct from deities contemplated, in devotion, as moral and creative
+guardians of ethics, we shall find that, with the general, though
+not invariable addition of immortality, they possess the very same
+accomplishments as the medicine-man, peay, tohunga, jossakeed, birraark,
+or whatever name for sorcerer we may choose. Among the Greeks, Zeus,
+mythically envisaged, enjoys in heaven all the attributes of the
+medicine-man; among the Iroquois, as Pere le Jeune, the old Jesuit
+missionary, observed,(1) the medicine-man enjoys on earth all the
+attributes of Zeus. Briefly, the miraculous and supernatural
+endowments of the gods of MYTH, whether these gods be zoomorphic or
+anthropomorphic, are exactly the magical properties with which the
+medicine-man is credited by his tribe. It does not at all follow, as
+Euemerus and Mr. Herbert Spencer might argue, that the god was once a
+real living medicine-man. But myth-making man confers on the deities of
+myth the magical powers which he claims for himself.
+
+
+(1) Relations (1636), p. 114.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V. NATURE MYTHS.
+
+
+Savage fancy, curiosity and credulity illustrated in nature myths--In
+these all phenomena are explained by belief in the general animation
+of everything, combined with belief in metamorphosis--Sun myths, Asian,
+Australian, African, Melanesian, Indian, Californian, Brazilian,
+Maori, Samoan--Moon myths, Australian, Muysca, Mexican, Zulu, Macassar,
+Greenland, Piute, Malay--Thunder myths--Greek and Aryan sun and moon
+myths--Star myths--Myths, savage and civilised, of animals, accounting
+for their marks and habits--Examples of custom of claiming blood kinship
+with lower animals--Myths of various plants and trees--Myths of stones,
+and of metamorphosis into stones, Greek, Australian and American--The
+whole natural philosophy of savages expressed in myths, and survives in
+folk-lore and classical poetry; and legends of metamorphosis.
+
+
+The intellectual condition of savages which has been presented and
+established by the evidence both of observers and of institutions, may
+now be studied in savage myths. These myths, indeed, would of themselves
+demonstrate that the ideas which the lower races entertain about the
+world correspond with our statement. If any one were to ask himself,
+from what mental conditions do the following savage stories arise? he
+would naturally answer that the minds which conceived the tales were
+curious, indolent, credulous of magic and witchcraft, capable of drawing
+no line between things and persons, capable of crediting all things
+with human passions and resolutions. But, as myths analogous to those
+of savages, when found among civilised peoples, have been ascribed to a
+psychological condition produced by a disease of language acting after
+civilisation had made considerable advances, we cannot take the savage
+myths as proof of what savages think, believe and practice in the course
+of daily life. To do so would be, perhaps, to argue in a circle. We must
+therefore study the myths of the undeveloped races in themselves.
+
+These myths form a composite whole, so complex and so nebulous that it
+is hard indeed to array them in classes and categories. For example,
+if we look at myths concerning the origin of various phenomena, we find
+that some introduce the action of gods or extra-natural beings, while
+others rest on a rude theory of capricious evolution; others, again,
+invoke the aid of the magic of mortals, and most regard the great
+natural forces, the heavenly bodies, and the animals, as so many
+personal characters capable of voluntarily modifying themselves or of
+being modified by the most trivial accidents. Some sort of arrangement,
+however, must be attempted, only the student is to understand that the
+lines are never drawn with definite fixity, that any category may glide
+into any other category of myth.
+
+We shall begin by considering some nature myths--myths, that is to say,
+which explain the facts of the visible universe. These range from tales
+about heaven, day, night, the sun and the stars, to tales accounting
+for the red breast of the ousel, the habits of the quail, the spots and
+stripes of wild beasts, the formation of rocks and stones, the foliage
+of trees, the shapes of plants. In a sense these myths are the science
+of savages; in a sense they are their sacred history; in a sense they
+are their fiction and romance. Beginning with the sun, we find, as Mr.
+Tylor says, that "in early philosophy throughout the world the sun and
+moon are alive, and, as it were, human in their nature".(1) The mass of
+these solar myths is so enormous that only a few examples can be given,
+chosen almost at random out of the heap. The sun is regarded as a
+personal being, capable not only of being affected by charms and
+incantations, but of being trapped and beaten, of appearing on earth, of
+taking a wife of the daughters of men. Garcilasso de la Vega has a
+story of an Inca prince, a speculative thinker, who was puzzled by the
+sun-worship of his ancestors. If the sun be thus all-powerful, the Inca
+inquired, why is he plainly subject to laws? why does he go his daily
+round, instead of wandering at large up and down the fields of heaven?
+The prince concluded that there was a will superior to the sun's will,
+and he raised a temple to the Unknown Power. Now the phenomena which
+put the Inca on the path of monotheistic religion, a path already
+traditional, according to Garcilasso, have also struck the fancy of
+savages. Why, they ask, does the sun run his course like a tamed beast?
+A reply suited to a mind which holds that all things are personal is
+given in myths. Some one caught and tamed the sun by physical force or
+by art magic.
+
+
+(1) Primitive Culture, i. 288.
+
+
+In Australia the myth says that there was a time when the sun did not
+set. "It was at all times day, and the blacks grew weary." Norralie
+considered and decided that the sun should disappear at intervals. He
+addressed the sun in an incantation (couched like the Finnish Kalewala
+in the metre of Longfellow's Hiawatha); and the incantation is thus
+interpreted: "Sun, sun, burn your wood, burn your internal substance,
+and go down". The sun therefore now burns out his fuel in a day, and
+goes below for fresh firewood.(1)
+
+
+(1) Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, i. 430.
+
+
+In New Zealand the taming of the sun is attributed to the great hero
+Maui, the Prometheus of the Maoris. He set snares to catch the sun,
+but in vain, for the sun's rays bit them through. According to another
+account, while Norralie wished to hasten the sun's setting, Maui wanted
+to delay it, for the sun used to speed through the heavens at a racing
+pace. Maui therefore snared the sun, and beat him so unmercifully that
+he has been lame ever since, and travels slowly, giving longer days.
+"The sun, when beaten, cried out and revealed his second great name,
+Taura-mis-te-ra."(1) It will be remembered that Indra, in his abject
+terror when he fled after the slaying of Vrittra, also revealed his
+mystic name. In North America the same story of the trapping and laming
+of the sun is told, and attributed to a hero named Tcha-ka-betch. In
+Samoa the sun had a child by a Samoan woman. He trapped the sun with a
+rope made of a vine and extorted presents. Another Samoan lassoed
+the sun and made him promise to move more slowly.(2) These Samoan and
+Australian fancies are nearly as dignified as the tale in the Aitareya
+Brahmana. The gods, afraid "that the sun would fall out of heaven,
+pulled him up and tied him with five ropes". These ropes are recognised
+as verses in the ritual, but probably the ritual is later than the
+ropes. In Mexico we find that the sun himself (like the stars in most
+myths) was once a human or pre-human devotee, Nanahuatzin, who leapt
+into a fire to propitiate the gods.(3) Translated to heaven as the sun,
+Nanahuatzin burned so very fiercely that he threatened to reduce
+the world to a cinder. Arrows were therefore shot at him, and this
+punishment had as happy an effect as the beatings administered by Maui
+and Tcha-ka-betch. Among the Bushmen of South Africa the sun was once a
+man, from whose armpit a limited amount of light was radiated round his
+hut. Some children threw him up into the sky, and there he stuck, and
+there he shines.(4) In the Homeric hymn to Helios, as Mr. Max Muller
+observes, "the poet looks on Helios as a half god, almost a hero, who
+had once lived on earth," which is precisely the view of the Bushmen.(5)
+Among the Aztecs the sun is said to have been attacked by a hunter
+and grievously wounded by his arrows.(6) The Gallinomeros, in Central
+California, seem at least to know that the sun is material and
+impersonal. They say that when all was dark in the beginning, the
+animals were constantly jostling each other. After a painful encounter,
+the hawk and the coyote collected two balls of inflammable substance;
+the hawk (Indra was occasionally a hawk) flew up with them into heaven,
+and lighted them with sparks from a flint. There they gave light as sun
+and moon. This is an exception to the general rule that the heavenly
+bodies are regarded as persons. The Melanesian tale of the bringing
+of night is a curious contrast to the Mexican, Maori, Australian and
+American Indian stories which we have quoted. In Melanesia, as in
+Australia, the days were long, indeed endless, and people grew tired;
+but instead of sending the sun down below by an incantation when night
+would follow in course of nature, the Melanesian hero went to Night
+(conceived of as a person) and begged his assistance. Night (Qong)
+received Qat (the hero) kindly, darkened his eyes, gave him sleep,
+and, in twelve hours or so, crept up from the horizon and sent the sun
+crawling to the west.(7) In the same spirit Paracelsus is said to have
+attributed night, not to the absence of the sun, but to the apparition
+of certain stars which radiate darkness. It is extraordinary that a myth
+like the Melanesian should occur in Brazil. There was endless day till
+some one married a girl whose father "the great serpent," was the owner
+of night. The father sent night bottled up in a gourd. The gourd was not
+to be uncorked till the messengers reached the bride, but they, in their
+curiosity, opened the gourd, and let night out prematurely.(8)
+
+
+(1) Taylor, New Zealand, p. 131.
+
+(2) Turner, Samoa, p. 20.
+
+(3) Sahagun, French trans., vii. ii.
+
+(4) Bleck, Hottentot Fables, p. 67; Bushman Folk-Lore, pp. 9, 11.
+
+(5) Compare a Californian solar myth: Bancroft, iii. pp. 85, 86.
+
+(6) Bancroft, iii. 73, quoting Burgoa, i. 128, 196.
+
+(7) Codrington, Journ. Anthrop. Inst., February, 1881.
+
+(8) Contes Indiens du Bresil, pp. 1-9, by Couto de Magalhaes. Rio de
+Janeiro, 1883. M. Henri Gaidoz kindly presented the author with this
+work.
+
+
+The myths which have been reported deal mainly with the sun as a person
+who shines, and at fixed intervals disappears. His relations with the
+moon are much more complicated, and are the subject of endless stories,
+all explaining in a romantic fashion why the moon waxes and wanes,
+whence come her spots, why she is eclipsed, all starting from the
+premise that sun and moon are persons with human parts and passions.
+Sometimes the moon is a man, sometimes a woman and the sex of the sun
+varies according to the fancy of the narrators. Different tribes of the
+same race, as among the Australians, have different views of the sex of
+moon and sun. Among the aborigines of Victoria, the moon, like the sun
+among the Bushmen, was a black fellow before he went up into the sky.
+After an unusually savage career, he was killed with a stone hatchet
+by the wives of the eagle, and now he shines in the heavens.(1) Another
+myth explanatory of the moon's phases was found by Mr. Meyer in 1846
+among the natives of Encounter Bay. According to them the moon is a
+woman, and a bad woman to boot. She lives a life of dissipation among
+men, which makes her consumptive, and she wastes away till they drive
+her from their company. While she is in retreat, she lives on nourishing
+roots, becomes quite plump, resumes her gay career, and again wastes
+away. The same tribe, strangely enough, think that the sun also is a
+woman. Every night she descends among the dead, who stand in double
+lines to greet her and let her pass. She has a lover among the dead, who
+has presented her with a red kangaroo skin, and in this she appears at
+her rising. Such is the view of rosy-fingered Dawn entertained by the
+blacks of Encounter Bay. In South America, among the Muyscas of Bogota,
+the moon, Huythaca, is the malevolent wife of the child of the sun; she
+was a woman before her husband banished her to the fields of space.(2)
+The moon is a man among the Khasias of the Himalaya, and he was guilty
+of the unpardonable offence of admiring his mother-in-law. As a general
+rule, the mother-in-law is not even to be spoken to by the savage
+son-in-law. The lady threw ashes in his face to discourage his passion,
+hence the moon's spots. The waning of the moon suggested the most
+beautiful and best known of savage myths, that in which the moon sends
+a beast to tell mortals that, though they die like her, like her they
+shall be born again.(3) Because the spots in the moon were thought to
+resemble a hare they were accounted for in Mexico by the hypothesis
+that a god smote the moon in the face with a rabbit;(4) in Zululand and
+Thibet by a fancied translation of a good or bad hare to the moon.
+
+
+(1) Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, i. 432.
+
+(2) Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 353.
+
+(3) Bleek, Reynard in South Africa, pp. 69-74.
+
+(4) Sahagun, viii. 2.
+
+
+The Eskimos have a peculiar myth to account for the moon's spots. Sun
+and moon were human brother and sister. In the darkness the moon once
+attempted the virtue of the sun. She smeared his face over with ashes,
+that she might detect him when a light was brought. She did discover who
+her assailant had been, fled to the sky, and became the sun. The moon
+still pursues her, and his face is still blackened with the marks of
+ashes.(1) Gervaise(2) says that in Macassar the moon was held to be with
+child by the sun, and that when he pursued her and wished to beat her,
+she was delivered of the earth. They are now reconciled. About the
+alternate appearance of sun and moon a beautifully complete and adequate
+tale is told by the Piute Indians of California. No more adequate
+and scientific explanation could possibly be offered, granting the
+hypothesis that sun and moon are human persons and savage persons. The
+myth is printed as it was taken down by Mr. De Quille from the lips of
+Tooroop Eenah (Desert Father), a chief of the Piutes, and published in a
+San Francisco newspaper.
+
+
+(1) Crantz's History of Greenland, i. 212.
+
+(2) Royaume de Macacar, 1688.
+
+
+"The sun is the father and ruler of the heavens. He is the big chief.
+The moon is his wife and the stars are their children. The sun eats his
+children whenever he can catch them. They flee before him, and are all
+the time afraid when he is passing through the heavens. When he (their
+father) appears in the morning, you see all the stars, his children, fly
+out of sight--go away back into the blue of the above--and they do not
+wake to be seen again until he, their father, is about going to his bed.
+
+"Down deep under the ground--deep, deep, under all the ground--is a
+great hole. At night, when he has passed over the world, looked down on
+everything and finished his work, he, the sun, goes into his hole, and
+he crawls and creeps along it till he comes to his bed in the middle
+part of the earth. So then he, the sun, sleeps there in his bed all
+night.
+
+"This hole is so little, and he, the sun, is so big, that he cannot
+turn round in it; and so he must, when he has had all his sleep, pass
+on through, and in the morning we see him come out in the east. When he,
+the sun, has so come out, he begins to hunt up through the sky to catch
+and eat any that he can of the stars, his children, for if he does not
+so catch and eat he cannot live. He, the sun, is not all seen. The shape
+of him is like a snake or a lizard. It is not his head that we can see,
+but his belly, filled up with the stars that times and times he has
+swallowed.
+
+"The moon is the mother of the heavens and is the wife of the sun. She,
+the moon, goes into the same hole as her husband to sleep her naps. But
+always she has great fear of the sun, her husband, and when he comes
+through the hole to the nobee (tent) deep in the ground to sleep, she
+gets out and comes away if he be cross.
+
+"She, the moon, has great love for her children, the stars, and is happy
+to travel among them in the above; and they, her children, feel safe,
+and sing and dance as she passes along. But the mother, she cannot help
+that some of her children must be swallowed by the father every month.
+It is ordered that way by the Pah-ah (Great Spirit), who lives above the
+place of all.
+
+"Every month that father, the sun, does swallow some of the stars, his
+children, and then that mother, the moon, feels sorrow. She must mourn;
+so she must put the black on her face for to mourn the dead. You see the
+Piute women put black on their faces when a child is gone. But the dark
+will wear away from the face of that mother, the moon, a little and a
+little every day, and after a time again we see all bright the face of
+her. But soon more of her children are gone, and again she must put on
+her face the pitch and the black."
+
+Here all the phenomena are accounted for, and the explanation is as
+advanced as the Egyptian doctrine of the hole under the earth where the
+sun goes when he passes from our view. And still the Great Spirit is
+over all: Religion comes athwart Myth.
+
+Mr. Tylor quotes(1) a nature myth about sun, moon and stars which
+remarkably corresponds to the speculation of the Piutes. The Mintira of
+the Malayan Peninsula say that both sun and moon are women. The stars
+are the moon's children; once the sun had as many. They each agreed
+(like the women of Jerusalem in the famine), to eat their own children;
+but the sun swallowed her whole family, while the moon concealed hers.
+When the sun saw this she was exceedingly angry, and pursued the moon to
+kill her. Occasionally she gets a bite out of the moon, and that is an
+eclipse. The Hos of North-East India tell the same tale, but say
+that the sun cleft the moon in twain for her treachery, and that she
+continues to be cut in two and grow again every month. With these sun
+and moon legends sometimes coexists the RELIGIOUS belief in a Creator of
+these and of all things.
+
+
+(1) Primitive Culture, i. 356.
+
+
+In harmony with the general hypothesis that all objects in nature
+are personal, and human or bestial, in real shape, and in passion
+and habits, are the myths which account for eclipses. These have so
+frequently been published and commented on(1) that a long statement
+would be tedious and superfluous. To the savage mind, and even to the
+Chinese and the peasants of some European countries, the need of an
+explanation is satisfied by the myth that an evil beast is devouring the
+sun or the moon. The people even try by firing off guns, shrieking, and
+clashing cymbals, to frighten the beast (wolf, pig, dragon, or what not)
+from his prey. What the hungry monster in the sky is doing when he is
+not biting the sun or moon we are not informed. Probably he herds with
+the big bird whose wings, among the Dacotahs of America and the Zulus
+of Africa, make thunder; or he may associate with the dragons, serpents,
+cows and other aerial cattle which supply the rain, and show themselves
+in the waterspout. Chinese, Greenland, Hindoo, Finnish, Lithunian and
+Moorish examples of the myth about the moon-devouring beasts are vouched
+for by Grimm.(2) A Mongolian legend has it that the gods wished to
+punish the maleficent Arakho for his misdeeds, but Arakho hid so
+cleverly that their limited omnipotence could not find him. The sun,
+when asked to turn spy, gave an evasive answer. The moon told the truth.
+Arakho was punished, and ever since he chases sun and moon. When he
+nearly catches either of them, there is an eclipse, and the people
+try to drive him off by making a hideous uproar with musical and other
+instruments.(3) Captain Beeckman in 1704 was in Borneo, when the natives
+declared that the devil "was eating the moon".
+
+
+(1) Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. i.; Lefebure, Les Yeux d'Horus.
+
+(2) Teutonic Mythology, English trans., ii. 706.
+
+(3) Moon-Lore by Rev. T. Harley, p. 167.
+
+
+Dr. Brinton in his Myths and Myth-Makers gives examples from Peruvians,
+Tupis, Creeks, Iroquois and Algonkins. It would be easy, and is perhaps
+superfluous, to go on multiplying proofs of the belief that sun and moon
+are, or have been, persons. In the Hervey Isles these two luminaries are
+thought to have been made out of the body of a child cut in twain by his
+parents. The blood escaped from the half which is the moon, hence her
+pallor.(1) This tale is an exception to the general rule, but reminds us
+of the many myths which represent the things in the world as having
+been made out of a mutilated man, like the Vedic Purusha. It is hardly
+necessary, except by way of record, to point out that the Greek myths
+of sun and moon, like the myths of savages, start from the conception
+of the solar and lunar bodies as persons with parts and passions, human
+loves and human sorrows. As in the Mongolian myth of Arakho, the sun
+"sees all and hears all," and, less honourable than the Mongolian sun,
+he plays the spy for Hephaestus on the loves of Ares and Aphrodite. He
+has mistresses and human children, such as Circe and Aeetes.(2)
+
+
+(1) Gill, Myths and Songs, p. 45.
+
+(2) See chapter on Greek Divine Myths.
+
+
+The sun is all-seeing and all-penetrating. In a Greek song of to-day a
+mother sends a message to an absent daughter by the sun; it is but
+an unconscious repetition of the request of the dying Ajax that the
+heavenly body will tell his fate to his old father and his sorrowing
+spouse.(1)
+
+
+(1) Sophocles, Ajax, 846.
+
+
+Selene, the moon, like Helios, the sun, was a person, and amorous.
+Beloved by Zeus, she gave birth to Pandia, and Pan gained her affection
+by the simple rustic gift of a fleece.(1) The Australian Dawn, with her
+present of a red kangaroo skin, was not more lightly won than the chaste
+Selene. Her affection for Endymion is well known, and her cold white
+glance shines through the crevices of his mountain grave, hewn in a
+rocky wall, like the tombs of Phrygia.(2) She is the sister of the sun
+in Hesiod, the daughter (by his sister) of Hyperion in the Homeric hymns
+to Helios.
+
+
+(1) Virgil, Georgics, iii. 391.
+
+(2) Preller, Griech. Myth., i. 163.
+
+
+In Greece the aspects of sun and moon take the most ideal human forms,
+and show themselves in the most gracious myths. But, after all, these
+retain in their anthropomorphism the marks of the earliest fancy, the
+fancy of Eskimos and Australians. It seems to be commonly thought that
+the existence of solar myths is denied by anthropologists. This is a
+vulgar error. There is an enormous mass of solar myths, but they are not
+caused by "a disease of language," and--all myths are not solar!
+
+There is no occasion to dwell long on myths of the same character in
+which the stars are accounted for as transformed human adventurers.
+It has often been shown that this opinion is practically of world-wide
+distribution.(1) We find it in Australia, Persia, Greece, among the
+Bushmen, in North and South America, among the Eskimos, in ancient
+Egypt, in New Zealand, in ancient India--briefly, wherever we look. The
+Sanskrit forms of these myths have been said to arise from confusion
+as to the meaning of words. But is it credible that, in all languages,
+however different, the same kind of unconscious puns should have led to
+the same mistaken beliefs? As the savage, barbarous and Greek star-myths
+(such as that of Callisto, first changed into a bear and then into a
+constellation) are familiar to most readers, a few examples of Sanskrit
+star-stories are offered here from the Satapatha Brahmana.(2) Fires are
+not, according to the Brahmana ritual, to be lighted under the stars
+called Krittikas, the Pleiades. The reason is that the stars were the
+wives of the bears (Riksha), for the group known in Brahmanic times as
+the Rishis (sages) were originally called the Rikshas (bears). But the
+wives of the bears were excluded from the society of their husbands, for
+the bears rise in the north and their wives in the east. Therefore
+the worshipper should not set up his fires under the Pleiades, lest
+he should thereby be separated from the company of his wife. The
+Brahmanas(3) also tell us that Prajapati had an unholy passion for his
+daughter, who was in the form of a doe. The gods made Rudra fire an
+arrow at Prajapati to punish him; he was wounded, and leaped into the
+sky, where he became one constellation and his daughter another, and the
+arrow a third group of stars. In general, according to the Brahmanas,
+"the stars are the lights of virtuous men who go to the heavenly
+world".(4)
+
+
+(1) Custom and Myth, "Star-Myths"; Primitive Culture, i. 288, 291; J. G.
+Muller, Amerikanischen Urreligionen, pp. 52, 53.
+
+(2) Sacred Books of the East, i. 283-286.
+
+(3) Aitareya Bramana, iii. 33.
+
+(4) Satapatha Brahmana, vi. 5, 4, 8. For Greek examples, Hesiod,
+Ovid, and the Catasterismoi, attributed to Eratosthenes, are useful
+authorities. Probably many of the tales in Eratosthenes are late
+fictions consciously moulded on traditional data.
+
+
+Passing from savage myths explanatory of the nature of celestial bodies
+to myths accounting for the formation and colour and habits of beasts,
+birds and fishes, we find ourselves, as an old Jesuit missionary says,
+in the midst of a barbarous version of Ovid's Metamorphoses. It has been
+shown that the possibility of interchange of form between man and beast
+is part of the working belief of everyday existence among the lower
+peoples. They regard all things as on one level, or, to use an old
+political phrase, they "level up" everything to equality with the human
+status. Thus Mr. Im Thurn, a very good observer, found that to the
+Indians of Guiana "all objects, animate or inaminate, seem exactly
+of the same nature, except that they differ by the accident of bodily
+form". Clearly to grasp this entirely natural conception of primitive
+man, the civilised student must make a great effort to forget for a time
+all that science has taught him of the differences between the objects
+which fill the world.(1) "To the ear of the savage, animals certainly
+seem to talk." "As far as the Indians of Guiana are concerned, I do not
+believe that they distinguish such beings as sun and moon, or such other
+natural phenomena as winds and storms, from men and other animals,
+from plants and other inanimate objects, or from any other objects
+whatsoever." Bancroft says about North American myths, "Beasts and birds
+and fishes fetch and carry, talk and act, in a way that leaves even
+Aesop's heroes quite in the shade".(2)
+
+
+(1) Journ. Anthrop. Inst., xi. 366-369. A very large and rich collection
+of testimonies as to metamorphosis will be found in J. G. Muller's
+Amerikanischen Urreligionen, p. 62 et seq.; while, for European
+superstitions, Bodin on La Demonomanie des Sorciers, Lyon, 1598, may be
+consulted.
+
+(2) Vol. iii. p. 127.
+
+
+The savage tendency is to see in inanimate things animals, and in
+animals disguised men. M. Reville quotes in his Religions des Peuples
+Non-Civilise's, i. 64, the story of some <DW64>s, who, the first time
+they were shown a cornemuse, took the instrument for a beast, the two
+holes for its eyes. The Highlander who looted a watch at Prestonpans,
+and observing, "She's teed," sold it cheap when it ran down, was in the
+same psychological condition. A queer bit of savage science is displayed
+on a black stone tobacco-pipe from the Pacific Coast.(1) The savage
+artist has carved the pipe in the likeness of a steamer, as a steamer is
+conceived by him. "Unable to account for the motive power, he imagines
+the paddle to be linked round the tongue of a coiled serpent, fastened
+to the tail of the vessel," and so he represents it on the black stone
+pipe. Nay, a savage's belief that beasts are on his own level is so
+literal, that he actually makes blood-covenants with the lower animals,
+as he does with men, mingling his gore with theirs, or smearing both
+together on a stone;(2) while to bury dead animals with sacred rites is
+as usual among the Bedouins and Malagasies to-day as in ancient Egypt
+or Attica. In the same way the Ainos of Japan, who regard the bear as a
+kinsman, sacrifice a bear once a year. But, to propitiate the animal and
+his connections, they appoint him a "mother," an Aino girl, who looks
+after his comforts, and behaves in a way as maternal as possible. The
+bear is now a kinsman, (Greek text omitted), and cannot avenge himself
+within the kin. This, at least, seems to be the humour of it. In
+Lagarde's Reliquiae Juris Ecclesiastici Antiquissimae a similar Syrian
+covenant of kinship with insects is described. About 700 A. D., when a
+Syrian garden was infested by caterpillars, the maidens were assembled,
+and one caterpillar was caught. Then one of the virgins was "made its
+mother," and the creature was buried with due lamentations. The "mother"
+was then brought to the spot where the pests were, her companions
+bewailed her, and the caterpillars perished like their chosen kinsman,
+but without extorting revenge.(3) Revenge was out of their reach.
+They had been brought within the kin of their foes, and there were no
+Erinnyes, "avengers of kindred blood," to help them. People in this
+condition of belief naturally tell hundreds of tales, in which men,
+stones, trees, beasts, shift shapes, and in which the modifications of
+animal forms are caused by accident, or by human agency, or by magic,
+or by metamorphosis. Such tales survive in our modern folk-lore. To make
+our meaning clear, we may give the European nursery-myth of the
+origin of the donkey's long ears, and, among other illustrations, the
+Australian myth of the origin of the black and white plumage of the
+pelican. Mr. Ralston has published the Russian version of the myth
+of the donkey's ears. The Spanish form, which is identical with the
+Russian, is given by Fernan Caballero in La Gaviota.
+
+
+(1) Magazine of Art, January, 1883.
+
+(2) "Malagasy Folk-Tales," Folk-Lore Journal, October, 1883.
+
+(3) We are indebted to Professor Robertson Smith for this example, and
+to Miss Bird's Journal, pp. 90, 97, for the Aino parallel.
+
+
+"Listen! do you know why your ears are so big?" (the story is told to
+a stupid little boy with big ears). "When Father Adam found himself in
+Paradise with the animals, he gave each its name; those of THY species,
+my child, he named 'donkeys'. One day, not long after, he called the
+beasts together, and asked each to tell him its name. They all answered
+right except the animals of THY sort, and they had forgotten their name!
+Then Father Adam was very angry, and, taking that forgetful donkey by
+the ears, he pulled them out, screaming 'You are called DONKEY!' And
+the donkey's ears have been long ever since." This, to a child, is a
+credible explanation. So, perhaps, is another survival of this form of
+science--the Scotch explanation of the black marks on the haddock; they
+were impressed by St. Peter's finger and thumb when he took the piece of
+money for Caesar's tax out of the fish's mouth.
+
+Turning from folk-lore to savage beliefs, we learn that from one end of
+Africa to another the honey-bird, schneter, is said to be an old woman
+whose son was lost, and who pursued him till she was turned into a bird,
+which still shrieks his name, "Schneter, Schneter".(1) In the same way
+the manners of most of the birds known to the Greeks were accounted for
+by the myth that they had been men and women. Zeus, for example, turned
+Ceyx and Halcyon into sea-fowls because they were too proud in their
+married happiness.(2) To these myths of the origin of various animals
+we shall return, but we must not forget the black and white Australian
+pelican. Why is the pelican parti-?(3) For this reason: After
+the Flood (the origin of which is variously explained by the Murri), the
+pelican (who had been a black fellow) made a canoe, and went about
+like a kind of Noah, trying to save the drowning. In the course of his
+benevolent mission he fell in love with a woman, but she and her friends
+played him a trick and escaped from him. The pelican at once prepared to
+go on the war-path. The first thing to do was to daub himself white,
+as is the custom of the blacks before a battle. They think the white
+pipe-clay strikes terror and inspires respect among the enemy. But when
+the pelican was only half pipe-clayed, another pelican came past, and,
+"not knowing what such a queer black and white thing was, struck the
+first pelican with his beak and killed him. Before that pelicans were
+all black; now they are black and white. That is the reason."(4)
+
+
+(1) Barth, iii. 358.
+
+(2) Apollodorus, i. 7 (13, 12).
+
+(3) Sahagun, viii. 2, accounts for colours of eagle and tiger. A number
+of races explain the habits and marks of animals as the result of a
+curse or blessing of a god or hero. The Hottentots, the Huarochiri of
+Peru, the New Zealanders (Shortland, Traditions, p. 57), are among the
+peoples which use this myth.
+
+(4) Brough Symth, Aborigines of Australia, i. 477, 478.
+
+
+"That is the reason." Therewith native philosopy is satisfied, and does
+not examine in Mr. Darwin's laborious manner the slow evolution of the
+colour of the pelican's plumage. The mythological stories about animals
+are rather difficult to treat, because they are so much mixed up with
+the topic of totemism. Here we only examine myths which account by means
+of a legend for certain peculiarities in the habits, cries, or colours
+and shapes of animals. The Ojibbeways told Kohl they had a story for
+every creature, accounting for its ways and appearance. Among the
+Greeks, as among Australians and Bushmen, we find that nearly every
+notable bird or beast had its tradition. The nightingale and the
+swallow have a story of the most savage description, a story reported
+by Apollodorus, though Homer(1) refers to another, and, as usual, to
+a gentler and more refined form of the myth. Here is the version of
+Apollodorus. "Pandion" (an early king of Athens) "married Zeuxippe, his
+mother's sister, by whom he had two daughters, Procne and Philomela, and
+two sons, Erechtheus and Butes. A war broke out with Labdas about some
+debatable land, and Erechtheus invited the alliance of Tereus of Thrace,
+the son of Ares. Having brought the war, with the aid of Tereus, to a
+happy end, he gave him his daughter Procne to wife. By Procne, Tereus
+had a son, Itys, and thereafter fell in love with Philomela, whom
+he seduced, pretending that Procne was dead, whereas he had really
+concealed her somewhere in his lands. Thereon he married Philomela, and
+cut out her tongue. But she wove into a robe characters that told
+the whole story, and by means of these acquainted Procne with her
+sufferings. Thereon Procne found her sister, and slew Itys, her own son,
+whose body she cooked, and served up to Tereus in a banquet. Thereafter
+Procne and her sister fled together, and Tereus seized an axe and
+followed after them. They were overtaken at Daulia in Phocis, and prayed
+to the gods that they might be turned into birds. So Procne became the
+nightingale, and Philomela the swallow, while Tereus was changed into a
+hoopoe."(2) Pausanias has a different legend; Procne and Philomela died
+of excessive grief.
+
+
+(1) Odyssey, xix. 523.
+
+(2) A Red Indian nightingale-myth is alluded to by J. G. Muller, Amerik.
+Urrel., p. 175. Some one was turned into a nightingale by the sun, and
+still wails for a lost lover.
+
+
+These ancient men and women metamorphosed into birds were HONOURED AS
+ANCESTORS by the Athenians.(1) Thus the unceasing musical wail of the
+nightingale and the shrill cry of the swallow were explained by a
+Greek story. The birds were lamenting their old human sorrow, as the
+honey-bird in Africa still repeats the name of her lost son.
+
+
+(1) Pausanias, i. v. Pausanias thinks such things no longer occur.
+
+
+Why does the red-robin live near the dwellings of men, a bold and
+friendly bird? The Chippeway Indians say he was once a young brave whose
+father set him a task too cruel for his strength, and made him starve
+too long when he reached man's estate. He turned into a robin, and said
+to his father, "I shall always be the friend of man, and keep near their
+dwellings. I could not gratify your pride as a warrior, but I will cheer
+you by my songs."(1) The converse of this legend is the Greek myth of
+the hawk. Why is the hawk so hated by birds? Hierax was a benevolent
+person who succoured a race hated by Poseidon. The god therefore changed
+him into a hawk, and made him as much detested by birds, and as fatal
+to them, as he had been beloved by and gentle to men.(2) The Hervey
+Islanders explain the peculiarities of several fishes by the share they
+took in the adventures of Ina, who stamped, for example, on the sole,
+and so flattened him for ever.(3) In Greece the dolphins were, according
+to the Homeric hymn to Dionysus, metamorphosed pirates who had insulted
+the god. But because the dolphin found the hidden sea-goddess whom
+Poseidon loved, the dolphin, too, was raised by the grateful sea-god to
+the stars.(4) The vulture and the heron, according to Boeo (said to have
+been a priestess in Delphi and the author of a Greek treatise on the
+traditions about birds), were once a man named Aigupios (vulture) and
+his mother, Boulis. They sinned inadvertently, like Oedipus and Jocasta;
+wherefore Boulis, becoming aware of the guilt, was about to put out the
+eyes of her son and slay herself. Then they were changed, Boulis into
+the heron, "which tears out and feeds on the eyes of snakes, birds and
+fishes, and Aigupios into the vulture which bears his name". This
+story, of which the more repulsive details are suppressed, is much less
+pleasing and more savage than the Hervey Islanders' myth of the origin
+of pigs. Maaru was an old blind man who lived with his son Kationgia.
+There came a year of famine, and Kationgia had great difficulty in
+finding food for himself and his father. He gave the blind old man
+puddings of banana roots and fishes, while he lived himself on sea-slugs
+and shellfish, like the people of Terra del Fuego. But blind old Maaru
+suspected his son of giving him the worst share and keeping what was
+best for himself. At last he discovered that Kationgia was really being
+starved; he felt his body, and found that he was a mere living skeleton.
+The two wept together, and the father made a feast of some cocoa-nuts
+and bread-fruit, which he had reserved against the last extremity. When
+all was finished, he said he had eaten his last meal and was about to
+die. He ordered his son to cover him with leaves and grass, and return
+to the spot in four days. If worms were crawling about, he was to throw
+leaves and grass over them and come back four days later. Kationgia did
+as he was instructed, and, on his second visit to the grave, found the
+whole mass of leaves in commotion. A brood of pigs, black, white and
+speckled, had sprung up from the soil; famine was a thing of the past,
+and Kationgia became a great chief in the island.(5)
+
+
+(1) Schoolcraft, ii. 229, 230.
+
+(1) Boeo, quoted by Antoninus Liberalis.
+
+(3) Gill, South Sea Myths, pp. 88-95.
+
+(4) Artemidorus in his Love Elegies, quoted by the Pseud-Eratosthenes.
+
+(5) Gill, Myths and Songs from South Pacific, pp. 135-138.
+
+
+"The owl was a baker's daughter" is the fragment of Christian mythology
+preserved by Ophelia. The baker's daughter behaved rudely to our Lord,
+and was changed into the bird that looks not on the sun. The Greeks had
+a similar legend of feminine impiety by which they mythically explained
+the origin of the owl, the bat and the eagle-owl. Minyas of Orchomenos
+had three daughters, Leucippe, Arsippe and Alcathoe, most industrious
+women, who declined to join the wild mysteries of Dionysus. The god
+took the shape of a maiden, and tried to win them to his worship. They
+refused, and he assumed the form of a bull, a lion, and a leopard as
+easily as the chiefs of the Abipones become tigers, or as the chiefs
+among the African Barotse and Balonda metamorphose themselves into
+lions and alligators.(1) The daughters of Minyas, in alarm, drew lots to
+determine which of them should sacrifice a victim to the god. Leucippe
+drew the lot and offered up her own son. They then rushed to join the
+sacred rites of Dionysus, when Hermes transformed them into the bat,
+the owl and the eagle-owl, and these three hide from the light of the
+sun.(2)
+
+
+(1) Livingstone, Missionary Travels, pp. 615, 642.
+
+(2) Nicander, quoted by Antoninus Liberalis.
+
+
+A few examples of Bushman and Australian myths explanatory of the
+colours and habits of animals will probably suffice to establish the
+resemblance between savage and Hellenic legends of this character. The
+Bushman myth about the origin of the eland (a large antelope) is not
+printed in full by Dr. Bleek, but he observes that it "gives an account
+of the reasons for the colours of the gemsbok, hartebeest, eland, quagga
+and springbok".(1) Speculative Bushmen seem to have been puzzled to
+account for the wildness of the eland. It would be much more convenient
+if the eland were tame and could be easily captured. They explain
+its wildness by saying that the eland was "spoiled" before Cagn, the
+creator, or rather maker of most things, had quite finished it. Cagn's
+relations came and hunted the first eland too soon, after which all
+other elands grew wild. Cagn then said, "Go and hunt them and try to
+kill one; that is now your work, for it was you who spoilt them".(2)
+The Bushmen have another myth explanatory of the white patches on
+the breasts of crows in their country. Some men tarried long at their
+hunting, and their wives sent out crows in search of their husbands.
+Round each crow's neck was hung a piece of fat to serve as food on the
+journey. Hence the crows have white patches on breast and neck.
+
+
+(1) Brief Account of Bushmen Folk-Lore, p. 7.
+
+(2) Cape Monthly Magazine, July, 1874.
+
+
+In Australia the origins of nearly all animals appear to be explained
+in myths, of which a fair collection is printed in Mr. Brough Symth's
+Aborigines of Victoria.(1) Still better examples occur in Mrs. Langloh
+Parker's Australian Legends. Why is the crane so thin? Once he was a
+man named Kar-ween, the second man fashioned out of clay by Pund-jel, a
+singular creative being, whose chequered career is traced elsewhere in
+our chapter on "Savage Myths of the Origin of the World and of Man".
+Kar-ween and Pund-jel had a quarrel about the wives of the former,
+whom Pund-jel was inclined to admire. The crafty Kar-ween gave a dance
+(jugargiull, corobboree), at which the creator Pund-jel was disporting
+himself gaily (like the Great Panjandrum), when Kar-ween pinned him with
+a spear. Pund-jel threw another which took Kar-ween in the knee-joint,
+so that he could not walk, but soon pined away and became a mere
+skeleton. "Thereupon Pund-jel made Kar-ween a crane," and that is why
+the crane has such attenuated legs. The Kortume, Munkari and Waingilhe,
+now birds, were once men. The two latter behaved unkindly to their
+friend Kortume, who shot them out of his hut in a storm of rain, singing
+at the same time an incantation. The three then turned into birds, and
+when the Kortume sings it is a token that rain may be expected.
+
+
+(1) Vol. i. p. 426 et seq.
+
+
+Let us now compare with these Australian myths of the origin of certain
+species of birds the Greek story of the origin of frogs, as told by
+Menecrates and Nicander.(1) The frogs were herdsmen metamorphosed by
+Leto, the mother of Apollo. But, by way of showing how closely akin are
+the fancies of Greeks and Australian black fellows, we shall tell the
+legend without the proper names, which gave it a fictitious dignity.
+
+
+(1) Antoninus Liberalis, xxxv.
+
+
+THE ORIGIN OF FROGS.
+
+"A woman bore two children, and sought for a water-spring wherein to
+bathe them. She found a well, but herdsmen drove her away from it that
+their cattle might drink. Then some wolves met her and led her to a
+river, of which she drank, and in its waters she bathed her children.
+Then she went back to the well where the herdsmen were now bathing, and
+she turned them all into frogs. She struck their backs and shoulders
+with a rough stone and drove them into the waters, and ever since that
+day frogs live in marshes and beside rivers."
+
+A volume might be filled with such examples of the kindred fancies of
+Greeks and savages. Enough has probably been said to illustrate our
+point, which is that Greek myths of this character were inherited from
+the period of savagery, when ideas of metamorphosis and of the kinship
+of men and beasts were real practical beliefs. Events conceived to be
+common in real life were introduced into myths, and these myths were
+savage science, and were intended to account for the Origin of Species.
+But when once this train of imagination has been fired, it burns on both
+in literature and in the legends of the peasantry. Every one who
+writes a Christmas tale for children now employs the machinery of
+metamorphosis, and in European folk-lore, as Fontenelle remarked,
+stories persist which are precisely similar in kind to the minor myths
+of savages.
+
+Reasoning in this wise, the Mundas of Bengal thus account for
+peculiarities of certain animals. Sing Bonga, the chief god, cast
+certain people out of heaven; they fell to earth, found iron ore, and
+began smelting it. The black smoke displeased Sing Bonga, who sent two
+king crows and an owl to bid people cease to pollute the atmosphere.
+But the iron smelters spoiled these birds' tails, and blackened the
+previously white crow, scorched its beak red, and flattened its head.
+Sing Bonga burned man, and turned woman into hills and waterspouts.(1)
+
+
+(1) Dalton, pp. 186, 187.
+
+
+Examples of this class of myth in Indo-Aryan literature are not hard
+to find. Why is dawn red? Why are donkeys slow? Why have mules no young
+ones? Mules have no foals because they were severely burned when Agni
+(fire) drove them in a chariot race. Dawn is red, not because (as in
+Australia) she wears a red kangaroo cloak, but because she competed in
+this race with red cows for her coursers. Donkeys are slow because they
+never recovered from their exertions in the same race, when the Asvins
+called on their asses and landed themselves the winners.(1) And cows
+are accommodated with horns for a reason no less probable and
+satisfactory.(2)
+
+
+(1) Aitareya Brahmana, ii. 272, iv. 9.
+
+(2) iv. 17.
+
+
+Though in the legends of the less developed peoples men and women are
+more frequently metamorphosed into birds and beasts than into stones
+and plants, yet such changes of form are by no means unknown. To the
+north-east of Western Point there lies a range of hills, inhabited,
+according to the natives of Victoria, by a creature whose body is made
+of stone, and weapons make no wound in so sturdy a constitution. The
+blacks refuse to visit the range haunted by the mythic stone beast.
+"Some black fellows were once camped at the lakes near Shaving Point.
+They were cooking their fish when a native dog came up. They did not
+give him anything to eat. He became cross and said, 'You black fellows
+have lots of fish, but you give me none'. So he changed them all into a
+big rock. This is quite true, for the big rock is there to this day, and
+I have seen it with my own eyes."(1) Another native, Toolabar, says that
+the women of the fishing party cried out yacka torn, "very good". A dog
+replied yacka torn, and they were all changed into rocks. This very man,
+Toolabar, once heard a dog begin to talk, whereupon he and his father
+fled. Had they waited they would have become stones. "We should have
+been like it, wallung," that is, stones.
+
+
+(1) Native narrator, ap. Brough Smyth, i. 479.
+
+
+Among the North American Indians any stone which has a resemblance to
+the human or animal figure is explained as an example of metamorphosis.
+Three stones among the Aricaras were a girl, her lover and her dog, who
+fled from home because the course of true love did not run smooth, and
+who were petrified. Certain stones near Chinook Point were sea-giants
+who swallowed a man. His brother, by aid of fire, dried up the bay and
+released the man, still alive, from the body of the giant. Then the
+giants were turned into rocks.(1) The rising sun in Popol Vuh (if the
+evidence of Popol Vuh, the Quichua sacred book, is to be accepted)
+changed into stone the lion, serpent and tiger gods. The Standing Rock
+on the Upper Missouri is adored by the Indians, and decorated with
+ ribbons and skins of animals. This stone was a woman, who, like
+Niobe, became literally petrified with grief when her husband took a
+second wife. Another stone-woman in a cave on the banks of the Kickapoo
+was wont to kill people who came near her, and is even now approached
+with great respect. The Oneidas and Dacotahs claim descent from stones
+to which they ascribe animation.(2) Montesinos speaks of a sacred stone
+which was removed from a mountain by one of the Incas. A parrot flew out
+of it and lodged in another stone, which the natives still worship.(3)
+The Breton myth about one of the great stone circles (the stones were
+peasants who danced on a Sunday) is a well-known example of this kind
+of myth surviving in folk-lore. There is a kind of stone Actaeon(4)
+near Little Muniton Creek, "resembling the bust of a man whose head
+is decorated with the horns of a stag".(5) A crowd of myths of
+metamorphosis into stone will be found among the Iroquois legends in
+Report of Bureau of Ethnology, 1880-81. If men may become stones, on
+the other hand, in Samoa (as in the Greek myth of Deucalion), stones
+may become men.(6) Gods, too, especially when these gods happen to be
+cuttlefish, might be petrified. They were chased in Samoa by an Upolu
+hero, who caught them in a great net and killed them. "They were changed
+into stones, and now stand up in a rocky part of the lagoon on the
+north side of Upolu."(7) Mauke, the first man, came out of a stone.
+In short,(8) men and stones and beasts and gods and thunder have
+interchangeable forms. In Mangaia(9) the god Ra was tossed up into the
+sky by Maui and became pumice-stone. Many samples of this petrified
+deity are found in Mangaia. In Melanesia matters are so mixed that it is
+not easy to decide whether a worshipful stone is the dwelling of a dead
+man's soul or is of spiritual merit in itself, or whether "the stone is
+the spirit's outward part or organ". The Vui, or spirit, has much the
+same relations with snakes, owls and sharks.(10) Qasavara, the mythical
+opponent of Qat, the Melanesian Prometheus, "fell dead from heaven"
+(like Ra in Mangia), and was turned into a stone, on which sacrifices
+are made by those who desire strength in fighting.
+
+
+(1) See authorities ap. Dorman, Primitive Superstitions, pp. 130-138.
+
+(2) Dorman, p. 133.
+
+(3) Many examples are collected by J. G. Muller, Amerikanischen
+Urreligionen, pp. 97, 110, 125, especially when the stones have a
+likeness to human form, p. 17a. "Im der That werden auch einige in
+Steine, oder in Thiere and Pflanzen verwandelt." Cf. p. 220. Instances
+(from Balboa) of men turned into stone by wizards, p. 309.
+
+(4) Preller thinks that Actaeon, devoured by his hounds after being
+changed into a stag, is a symbol of the vernal year. Palaephatus (De
+Fab. Narrat.) holds that the story is a moral fable.
+
+(5) Dorman, p. 137.
+
+(6) Turner's Samoa, p. 299.
+
+(7) Samoa, p. 31.
+
+(8) Op. cit., p. 34.
+
+(9) Gill, Myths and Songs, p. 60.
+
+(10) Codrington, Journ. Anthrop. Inst., February, 1881.
+
+
+Without delaying longer among savage myths of metamorphosis into stones,
+it may be briefly shown that the Greeks retained this with all the other
+vagaries of early fancy. Every one remembers the use which Perseus made
+of the Gorgon's head, and the stones on the coast of Seriphus, which,
+like the stones near Western Point in Victoria, had once been men, the
+enemies of the hero. "Also he slew the Gorgon," sings Pindar, "and bare
+home her head, with serpent tresses decked, to the island folk a stony
+death." Observe Pindar's explanatory remark: "I ween there is no marvel
+impossible if gods have wrought thereto". In the same pious spirit a
+Turk in an isle of the Levant once told Mr. Newton a story of how a man
+hunted a stag, and the stag spoke to him. "The stag spoke?" said Mr.
+Newton. "Yes, by Allah's will," replied the Turk. Like Pindar, he was
+repeating an incident quite natural to the minds of Australians, or
+Bushmen, or Samoans, or Red Men, but, like the religious Pindar, he
+felt that the affair was rather marvellous, and accounted for it by
+the exercise of omnipotent power.(1) The Greek example of Niobe and
+her children may best be quoted in Mr. Bridges' translation from the
+Iliad:--
+
+
+     And somewhere now, among lone mountain rocks
+     On Sipylus, where couch the nymphs at night
+     Who dance all day by Achelous' stream,
+     The once proud mother lies, herself a rook,
+     And in cold breast broods o'er the goddess' wrong.
+                         --Prometheus the fire-bringer.(2)
+
+
+In the Iliad it is added that Cronion made the people into stones. The
+attitude of the later Greek mind towards these myths may be observed
+in a fragment of Philemon, the comic poet. "Never, by the gods, have I
+believed, nor will believe, that Niobe the stone was once a woman. Nay,
+by reason of her calamities she became speechless, and so, from her
+silence, was called a stone."(3)
+
+
+(1) Pindar, Pyth. x., Myers's translation.
+
+(2) xxiv. 611.
+
+(3) The Scholiast on Iliad, xxiv. 6, 7.
+
+
+There is another famous petrification in the Iliad. When the prodigy
+of the snake and the sparrows had appeared to the assembled Achaeans
+at Aulis, Zeus displayed a great marvel, and changed into a stone the
+serpent which swallowed the young of the sparrow. Changes into stone,
+though less common than changes into fishes, birds and beasts, were thus
+obviously not too strange for the credulity of Greek mythology, which
+could also believe that a stone became the mother of Agdestis by Zeus.
+
+As to interchange of shape between men and women and PLANTS, our
+information, so far as the lower races are concerned, is less copious.
+It has already been shown that the totems of many stocks in all parts
+of the world are plants, and this belief in connection with a plant by
+itself demonstrates that the confused belief in all things being on one
+level has thus introduced vegetables into the dominion of myth. As far
+as possessing souls is concerned, Mr. Tylor has proved that plants are
+as well equipped as men or beasts or minerals.(1) In India the doctrine
+of transmigration widely and clearly recognises the idea of trees or
+smaller plants being animated by human souls. In the well-known ancient
+Egyptian story of "The Two Brothers,"(2) the life of the younger is
+practically merged in that of the acacia tree where he has hidden his
+heart; and when he becomes a bull and is sacrificed, his spiritual part
+passes into a pair of Persea trees. The Yarucaris of Bolivia say that a
+girl once bewailed in the forest her loverless estate. She happened to
+notice a beautiful tree, which she adorned with ornaments as well as she
+might. The tree assumed the shape of a handsome young man--
+
+
+     She did not find him so remiss,
+     But, lightly issuing through,
+     He did repay her kiss for kiss,
+     With usury thereto.(3)
+
+
+J. G. Muller, who quotes this tale from Andree, says it has "many
+analogies with the tales of metamorphosis of human beings into trees
+among the ancients, as reported by Ovid". The worship of plants and
+trees is a well-known feature in religion, and probably implies
+(at least in many cases) a recognition of personality. In Samoa,
+metamorphosis into vegetables is not uncommon. For example, the king of
+Fiji was a cannibal, and (very naturally) "the people were melting away
+under him". The brothers Toa and Pale, wishing to escape the royal oven,
+adopted various changes of shape. They knew that straight timber was
+being sought for to make a canoe for the king, so Pale, when he assumed
+a vegetable form, became a crooked stick overgrown with creepers, but
+Toa "preferred standing erect as a handsome straight tree". Poor Toa
+was therefore cut down by the king's shipwrights, though, thanks to
+his brother's magic wiles, they did not make a canoe out of him after
+all.(4) In Samoa the trees are so far human that they not only go to
+war with each other, but actually embark in canoes to seek out distant
+enemies.(5) The Ottawa Indians account for the origin of maize by a
+myth in which a wizard fought with and conquered a little man who had a
+little crown of feathers. From his ashes arose the maize with its crown
+of leaves and heavy ears of corn.(6)
+
+
+(1) Primitive Culture, i. 145; examples of Society Islanders, Dyaks,
+Karens, Buddhists.
+
+(2) Maspero, Contes Egyptiens, p. 25.
+
+(3) J. G. Muller, Amerik. Urrel., p. 264.
+
+(4) Turner's Samoa, p. 219.
+
+(5) Ibid.. p. 213.
+
+(6) Amerik. Urrel., p. 60.
+
+
+In Mangaia the myth of the origin of the cocoa-nut tree is a series
+of transformation scenes, in which the persons shift shapes with the
+alacrity of medicine-men. Ina used to bathe in a pool where an eel
+became quite familiar with her. At last the fish took courage and made
+his declaration. He was Tuna, the chief of all eels. "Be mine," he
+cried, and Ina was his. For some mystical reason he was obliged to leave
+her, but (like the White Cat in the fairy tale) he requested her to cut
+off his eel's head and bury it. Regretfully but firmly did Ina comply
+with his request, and from the buried eel's head sprang two cocoa
+trees, one from each half of the brain of Tuna. As a proof of this be it
+remarked, that when the nut is husked we always find on it "the two
+eyes and mouth of the lover of Ina".(1) All over the world, from ancient
+Egypt to the wigwams of the Algonkins, plants and other matters are said
+to have sprung from a dismembered god or hero, while men are said to
+have sprung from plants.(2) We may therefore perhaps look on it as a
+proved point that the general savage habit of "levelling up" prevails
+even in their view of the vegetable world, and has left traces (as we
+have seen) in their myths.
+
+
+(1) Gill, Myths and Songs, p. 79.
+
+(2) Myths of the Beginning of Things.
+
+
+Turning now to the mythology of Greece, we see that the same rule holds
+good. Metamorphosis into plants and flowers is extremely common; the
+instances of Daphne, Myrrha, Hyacinth, Narcissus and the sisters of
+Phaethon at once occur to the memory.
+
+Most of those myths in which everything in Nature becomes personal and
+human, while all persons may become anything in Nature, we explain,
+then, as survivals or imitations of tales conceived when men were in
+the savage intellectual condition. In that stage, as we demonstrated, no
+line is drawn between things animate and inanimate, dumb or "articulate
+speaking," organic or inorganic, personal or impersonal. Such a mental
+stage, again, is reflected in the nature-myths, many of which are merely
+"aetiological,"--assign a cause, that is, for phenomena, and satisfy an
+indolent and credulous curiosity.
+
+We may be asked again, "But how did this intellectual condition come to
+exist?" To answer that is no part of our business; for us it is enough
+to trace myth, or a certain element in myth, to a demonstrable and
+actual stage of thought. But this stage, which is constantly found to
+survive in the minds of children, is thus explained or described by Hume
+in his Essay on Natural Religion: "There is an universal tendency in
+mankind to conceive all beings like themselves, and to transfer to every
+object those qualities... of which they are intimately conscious".(1)
+Now they believe themselves to be conscious of magical and supernatural
+powers, which they do not, of course, possess. These powers of effecting
+metamorphosis, of "shape-shifting," of flying, of becoming invisible
+at will, of conversing with the dead, of miraculously healing the sick,
+savages pass on to their gods (as will be shown in a later chapter),
+and the gods of myth survive and retain the miraculous gifts after their
+worshippers (become more reasonable) have quite forgotten that they
+themselves once claimed similar endowments. So far, then, it has
+been shown that savage fancy, wherever studied, is wild; that savage
+curiosity is keen; that savage credulity is practically boundless. These
+considerations explain the existence of savage myths of sun, stars,
+beasts, plants and stones; similar myths fill Greek legend and the
+Sanskrit Brahmanes. We conclude that, in Greek and Sanskrit, the myths
+are relics (whether borrowed or inherited) of the savage mental STATUS.
+
+
+(1) See Appendix B.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI. NON-ARYAN MYTHS OF THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD AND OF MAN.
+
+
+Confusions of myth--Various origins of man and of things--Myths of
+Australia, Andaman Islands, Bushmen, Ovaherero, Namaquas, Zulus, Hurons,
+Iroquois, Diggers, Navajoes, Winnebagoes, Chaldaeans, Thlinkeets,
+Pacific Islanders, Maoris, Aztecs, Peruvians--Similarity of ideas
+pervading all those peoples in various conditions of society and
+culture.
+
+
+The difficulties of classification which beset the study of mythology
+have already been described. Nowhere are they more perplexing than when
+we try to classify what may be styled Cosmogonic Myths. The very word
+cosmogonic implies the pre-existence of the idea of a cosmos, an orderly
+universe, and this was exactly the last idea that could enter the mind
+of the myth-makers. There is no such thing as orderliness in their
+mythical conceptions, and no such thing as an universe. The natural
+question, "Who made the world, or how did the things in the world come
+to be?" is the question which is answered by cosmogonic myths. But it is
+answered piecemeal. To a Christian child the reply is given, "God made
+all things". We have known this reply discussed by some little girls of
+six (a Scotch minister's daughters, and naturally metaphysical), one of
+whom solved all difficulties by the impromptu myth, "God first made a
+little place to stand on, and then he made the rest". But savages and
+the myth-makers, whose stories survive into the civilised religions,
+could adhere firmly to no such account as this. Here occurs in the first
+edition of this book the following passage: "They (savages) have not,
+and had not, the conception of God as we understand what we mean by
+the word. They have, and had at most, only the small-change of the idea
+God,"--here the belief in a moral being who watches conduct; here
+again the hypothesis of a pre-human race of magnified, non-natural
+medicine-men, or of extra-natural beings with human and magical
+attributes, but often wearing the fur, and fins, and feathers of the
+lower animals. Mingled with these faiths (whether earlier, later, or
+coeval in origin with these) are the dread and love of ancestral ghosts,
+often transmuting themselves into worship of an imaginary and ideal
+first parent of the tribe, who once more is often a beast or a bird.
+Here is nothing like the notion of an omnipotent, invisible, spiritual
+being, the creator of our religion; here is only la monnaie of the
+conception."
+
+It ought to have occurred to the author that he was here traversing the
+main theory of his own book, which is that RELIGION is one thing, myth
+quite another thing. That many low races of savages entertain, in hours
+of RELIGIOUS thought, an elevated conception of a moral and undying
+Maker of Things, and Master of Life, a Father in Heaven, has already
+been stated, and knowledge of the facts has been considerably increased
+since this work first appeared (1887). But the MYTHICAL conceptions
+described in the last paragraph coexist with the religious conception in
+the faiths of very low savages, such as the Australians and Andamanese,
+just as the same contradictory coexistence is notorious in ancient
+Greece, India, Egypt and Anahuac. In a sense, certain low savages HAVE
+the "conception of God, as we understand what we mean by the word". But
+that sense, when savages come to spinning fables about origins, is apt
+to be overlaid and perplexed by the frivolity of their mythical fancy.
+
+With such shifting, grotesque and inadequate fables, the cosmogonic
+myths of the world are necessarily bewildered and perplexed. We have
+already seen in the chapter on "Nature Myths" that many things, sun,
+moon, the stars, "that have another birth," and various animals and
+plants, are accounted for on the hypothesis that they are later than the
+appearance of man--that they originally WERE men. To the European mind
+it seems natural to rank myths of the gods before myths of the making or
+the evolution of the world, because our religion, like that of the more
+philosophic Greeks, makes the deity the fount of all existences, causa
+causans, "what unmoved moves," the beginning and the end. But the
+myth-makers, deserting any such ideas they may possess, find it
+necessary, like the child of whom we spoke, to postulate a PLACE for the
+divine energy to work from, and that place is the earth or the heavens.
+Then, again, heaven and earth are themselves often regarded in the
+usual mythical way, as animated, as persons with parts and passions, and
+finally, among advancing races, as gods. Into this medley of incongruous
+and inconsistent conceptions we must introduce what order we may, always
+remembering that the order is not native to the subject, but is brought
+in for the purpose of study.
+
+The origin of the world and of man is naturally a problem which has
+excited the curiosity of the least developed minds. Every savage race
+has its own myths on this subject, most of them bearing the marks of the
+childish and crude imagination, whose character we have investigated,
+and all varying in amount of what may be called philosophical thought.
+
+All the cosmogonic myths, as distinct from religious belief in a
+Creator, waver between the theory of construction, or rather of
+reconstruction, and the theory of evolution, very rudely conceived.
+The earth, as a rule, is mythically averred to have grown out of some
+original matter, perhaps an animal, perhaps an egg which floated on
+the waters, perhaps a handful of mud from below the waters. But this
+conception does not exclude the idea that many of the things in the
+world, minerals, plants and what not, are fragments of the frame of a
+semi-supernatural and gigantic being, human or bestial, belonging to
+a race which preceded the advent of man.(1) Such were the Titans,
+demi-gods, Nurrumbunguttias in Australia. Various members of this race
+are found active in myths of the creation, or rather the construction,
+of man and of the world. Among the lowest races it is to be noted that
+mythical animals of supernatural power often take the place of
+beings like the Finnish Wainamoinen, the Greek Prometheus, the Zulu
+Unkulunkulu, the Red Indian Manabozho, himself usually a great hare.
+
+
+(1) Macrobius, Saturnal., i. xx.
+
+
+The ages before the development or creation of man are filled up, in the
+myths, with the loves and wars of supernatural people. The appearance of
+man is explained in three or four contradictory ways, each of which
+is represented in the various myths of most mythologies. Often man is
+fashioned out of clay, or stone, or other materials, by a Maker of all
+things, sometimes half-human or bestial, but also half-divine. Sometimes
+the first man rises out of the earth, and is himself confused with the
+Creator, a theory perhaps illustrated by the Zulu myth of Unkulunkulu,
+"The Old, Old One". Sometimes man arrives ready made, with most of the
+animals, from his former home in a hole in the ground, and he furnishes
+the world for himself with stars, sun, moon and everything else he
+needs. Again, there are many myths which declare that man was evolved
+out of one or other of the lower animals. This myth is usually employed
+by tribesmen to explain the origin of their own peculiar stock of
+kindred. Once more, man is taken to be the fruit of some tree or plant,
+or not to have emerged ready-made, but to have grown out of the ground
+like a plant or a tree. In some countries, as among the Bechuanas, the
+Boeotians, and the Peruvians, the spot where men first came out on
+earth is known to be some neighbouring marsh or cave. Lastly, man is
+occasionally represented as having been framed out of a piece of the
+body of the Creator, or made by some demiurgic potter out of clay. All
+these legends are told by savages, with no sense of their inconsistency.
+There is no single orthodoxy on the matter, and we shall see that all
+these theories coexist pell-mell among the mythological traditions of
+civilised races. In almost every mythology, too, the whole theory of
+the origin of man is crossed by the tradition of a Deluge, or some other
+great destruction, followed by revival or reconstruction of the species,
+a tale by no means necessarily of Biblical origin.
+
+In examining savage myths of the origin of man and of the world,
+we shall begin by considering those current among the most backward
+peoples, where no hereditary or endowed priesthood has elaborated and
+improved the popular beliefs. The natives of Australia furnish us
+with myths of a purely popular type, the property, not of professional
+priests and poets, but of all the old men and full-grown warriors of
+the country. Here, as everywhere else, the student must be on his
+guard against accepting myths which are disguised forms of missionary
+teaching.(1)
+
+
+(1) Taplin, The Narrinyeri. "He must also beware of supposing that the
+Australians believe in a creator in our sense, because the Narrinyeri,
+for example, say that Nurundere 'made everything'. Nurundere is but an
+idealised wizard and hunter, with a rival of his species." This occurs
+in the first edition, but "making all things" is one idea, wizardry is
+another.
+
+
+In Southern Australia we learn that the Boonoorong, an Australian
+coast tribe, ascribe the creation of things to a being named Bun-jel or
+Pund-jel. He figures as the chief of an earlier supernatural class of
+existence, with human relationships; thus he "has a wife, WHOSE FACE HE
+HAS NEVER SEEN," brothers, a son, and so on. Now this name Bun-jel means
+"eagle-hawk," and the eagle-hawk is a totem among certain stocks. Thus,
+when we hear that Eagle-hawk is the maker of men and things we are
+reminded of the Bushman creator, Cagn, who now receives prayers of
+considerable beauty and pathos, but who is (in some theories) identified
+with kaggen, the mantis insect, a creative grasshopper, and the chief
+figure in Bushman mythology.(1) Bun-jel or Pund-jel also figures in
+Australian belief, neither as the creator nor as the eagle-hawk, but
+"as an old man who lives at the sources of the Yarra river, where he
+possesses great multitudes of cattle".(2) The term Bun-jel is also
+used, much like our "Mr.," to denote the older men of the Kurnai and
+Briakolung, some of whom have magical powers. One of them, Krawra, or
+"West Wind," can cause the wind to blow so violently as to prevent the
+natives from climbing trees; this man has semi-divine attributes. From
+these facts it appears that this Australian creator, in myth, partakes
+of the character of the totem or worshipful beast, and of that of the
+wizard or medicine-man. He carried a large knife, and, when he made
+the earth, he went up and down slicing it into creeks and valleys. The
+aborigines of the northern parts of Victoria seem to believe in Pund-jel
+in what may perhaps be his most primitive mythical shape, that of an
+eagle.(3) This eagle and a crow created everything, and separated the
+Murray blacks into their two main divisions, which derive their names
+from the crow and the eagle. The Melbourne blacks seem to make Pund-jel
+more anthropomorphic. Men are his (Greek text omitted) figures kneaded
+of clay, as Aristophanes says in the Birds. Pund-jel made two clay
+images of men, and danced round them. "He made their hair--one had
+straight, one curly hair--of bark. He danced round them. He lay on them,
+and breathed his breath into their mouths, noses and navels, and danced
+round them. Then they arose full-grown young men." Some blacks seeing a
+brickmaker at work on a bridge over the Yarra exclaimed, "Like 'em that
+Pund-jel make 'em Koolin". But other blacks prefer to believe that, as
+Pindar puts the Phrygian legend, the sun saw men growing like trees.
+
+
+(1) Bleek, Brief Account of Bushman Mythology, p. 6; Cape Monthly
+Magazine, July, 1874, pp. 1-13; Kamilaroi and Kurnai, pp. 210, 324.
+
+(2) Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 210.
+
+(3) Brough Smyth, Natives of Victoria, vol. i. p. 423.
+
+
+The first man was formed out of the gum of a wattle-tree, and came out
+of the knot of a wattle-tree. He then entered into a young woman (though
+he was the first man) and was born.(1) The Encounter Bay people have
+another myth, which might have been attributed by Dean Swift to the
+Yahoos, so foul an origin does it allot to mankind.
+
+
+(1) Meyer, Aborigines of Encounter Bay. See, later, "Gods of the Lowest
+Races".
+
+
+Australian myths of creation are by no means exclusive of a hypothesis
+of evolution. Thus the Dieyrie, whose notions Mr. Gason has recorded,
+hold a very mixed view. They aver that "the good spirit" Moora-Moora
+made a number of small black lizards, liked them, and promised them
+dominion. He divided their feet into toes and fingers, gave them noses
+and lips, and set them upright. Down they fell, and Moora-Moora cut off
+their tails. Then they walked erect and were men.(1) The conclusion of
+the adventures of one Australian creator is melancholy. He has ceased to
+dwell among mortals whom he watches and inspires. The Jay possessed many
+bags full of wind; he opened them, and Pund-jel was carried up by the
+blast into the heavens. But this event did not occur before Pund-jel had
+taught men and women the essential arts of life. He had shown the former
+how to spear kangaroos, he still exists and inspires poets. From the
+cosmogonic myths of Australia (the character of some of which is in
+contradiction with the higher religious belief of the people to be
+later described) we may turn, without reaching a race of much higher
+civilisation, to the dwellers in the Andaman Islands and their opinions
+about the origin of things.
+
+
+(1) Gason's Dieyries, ap. Native Tribes of South Australia, p. 20.
+
+
+The Andaman Islands, in the Bay of Bengal, are remote from any shores,
+and are protected from foreign influences by dangerous coral reefs,
+and by the reputed ferocity and cannibalism of the natives. These are
+Negritos, and are commonly spoken of as most abject savages. They are
+not, however, without distinctions of rank; they are clean, modest,
+moral after marriage, and most strict in the observance of prohibited
+degrees. Unlike the Australians, they use bows and arrows, but are
+said to be incapable of striking a light, and, at all events, find the
+process so difficult that, like the Australians and the farmer in the
+Odyssey,(1) they are compelled "to hoard the seeds of fire". Their
+mythology contains explanations of the origin of men and animals, and of
+their own customs and language.
+
+
+(1) Odyssey, v. 490.
+
+
+The Andamanese, long spoken of as "godless," owe much to Mr. Man, an
+English official, who has made a most careful study of their beliefs.(1)
+So extraordinary is the contradiction between the relative purity
+and morality of the RELIGION and the savagery of the myths of the
+Andamanese, that, in the first edition of this work, I insisted that
+the "spiritual god" of the faith must have been "borrowed from the same
+quarter as the stone house" in which he is mythically said to live. But
+later and wider study, and fresh information from various quarters, have
+convinced me that the relative purity of Andamanese religion, with its
+ethical sanction of conduct, may well be, and probably is, a natural
+unborrowed development. It is easy for MYTH to borrow the notion of a
+stone house from our recent settlement at Port Blair. But it would not
+be easy for RELIGION to borrow many new ideas from an alien creed, in
+a very few years, while the noted ferocity of the islanders towards
+strangers, and the inaccessibility of their abode, makes earlier
+borrowing, on a large scale at least, highly improbable. The Andamanese
+god, Puluga, is "like fire" but invisible, unborn and immortal, knowing
+and punishing or rewarding, men's deeds, even "the thoughts of their
+hearts". But when once mythical fancy plays round him, and stories are
+told about him, he is credited with a wife who is an eel or a shrimp,
+just as Zeus made love as an ant or a cuckoo. Puluga was the maker of
+men; no particular myth as to how he made them is given. They tried to
+kill him, after the deluge (of which a grotesque myth is told), but
+he replied that he was "as hard as wood". His legend is in the usual
+mythical contradiction with the higher elements in his religion.
+
+
+(1) Journ. Anthrop. Soc., vol. xii. p. 157 et seq.
+
+
+Leaving the Andaman islanders, but still studying races in the lowest
+degree of civilisation, we come to the Bushmen of South Africa. This
+very curious and interesting people, far inferior in material equipment
+to the Hottentots, is sometimes regarded as a branch of that race.(1)
+The Hottentots call themselves "Khoi-khoi," the Bushmen they style "Sa".
+The poor Sa lead the life of pariahs, and are hated and chased by all
+other natives of South Africa. They are hunters and diggers for roots,
+while the Hottentots, perhaps their kinsmen, are cattle-breeders.(2)
+Being so ill-nourished, the Bushmen are very small, but sturdy. They
+dwell in, or rather wander through, countries which have been touched
+by some ancient civilisation, as is proved by the mysterious mines
+and roads of Mashonaland. It is singular that the Bushmen possess a
+tradition according to which they could once "make stone things that
+flew over rivers". They have remarkable artistic powers, and their
+drawings of men and animals on the walls of caves are often not inferior
+to the designs on early Greek vases.(3)
+
+
+(1) See "Divine Myths of the Lower Races".
+
+(2) Hahu, Tsuni Goam, p. 4. See other accounts in Waitz, Anthropologie,
+ii. 328.
+
+(3) Custom and Myth, where illustrations of Bushman art are given, pp.
+290-295.
+
+
+Thus we must regard the Bushmen as possibly degenerated from a higher
+status, though there is nothing (except perhaps the tradition about
+bridge-making) to show that it was more exalted than that of their
+more prosperous neighbours, the Hottentots. The myths of the Bushmen,
+however, are almost on the lowest known level. A very good and authentic
+example of Bushman cosmogonic myth was given to Mr. Orpen, chief
+magistrate of St. John's territory, by Qing, King Nqusha's huntsman.
+Qing "had never seen a white man, but in fighting," till he became
+acquainted with Mr. Orpen.(1) The chief force in Bushmen myth is by Dr.
+Bleek identified with the mantis, a sort of large grasshopper. Though he
+seems at least as "chimerical a beast" as the Aryan creative boar, the
+"mighty big hare" of the Algonkins, the large spider who made the
+world in the opinion of the Gold Coast people, or the eagle of the
+Australians, yet the insect (if insect he be), like the others, has
+achieved moral qualities and is addressed in prayer. In his religious
+aspect he is nothing less than a grasshopper. He is called Cagn. "Cagn
+made all things and we pray to him," said Qing. "Coti is the wife of
+Cagn." Qing did not know where they came from; "perhaps with the men who
+brought the sun". The fact is, Qing "did not dance that dance," that is,
+was not one of the Bushmen initiated into the more esoteric mysteries
+of Cagn. Till we, too, are initiated, we can know very little of Cagn in
+his religious aspect. Among the Bushmen, as among the Greeks, there is
+"no religious mystery without dancing". Qing was not very consistent.
+He said Cagn gave orders and caused all things to appear and to be made,
+sun, moon, stars, wind, mountains, animals, and this, of course, is a
+lofty theory of creation. Elsewhere myth avers that Cagn did not so
+much create as manufacture the objects in nature. In his early day "the
+snakes were also men". Cagn struck snakes with his staff and turned them
+into men, as Zeus, in the Aeginetan myth, did with ants. He also turned
+offending men into baboons. In Bushman myth, little as we really know
+of it, we see the usual opposition of fable and faith, a kind creator in
+religion is apparently a magician in myth.
+
+
+(1) Cape Monthly Magazine, July, 1874.
+
+
+Neighbours of the Bushmen, but more fortunate in their wealth of sheep
+and cattle, are the Ovaherero. The myths of the Ovaherero, a tribe
+dwelling in a part of Hereraland "which had not yet been under the
+influence of civilisation and Christianity," have been studied by the
+Rev. H. Reiderbecke, missionary at Otyozondyupa. The Ovaherero, he says,
+have a kind of tree Ygdrasil, a tree out of which men are born, and
+this plays a great part in their myth of creation. The tree, which still
+exists, though at a great age, is called the Omumborombonga tree. Out of
+it came, in the beginning, the first man and woman. Oxen stepped
+forth from it too, but baboons, as Caliban says of the stars, "came
+otherwise," and sheep and goats sprang from a flat rock. Black people
+are so , according to the Ovaherero, because when the first
+parents emerged from the tree and slew an ox, the ancestress of the
+blacks appropriated the black liver of the victim. The Ovakuru Meyuru or
+"OLD ONES in heaven," once let the skies down with a run, but drew them
+up again (as the gods of the Satapatha Brahmana drew the sun) when most
+of mankind had been drowned.(1) The remnant pacified the OLD ONES (as
+Odysseus did the spirits of the dead) by the sacrifice of a BLACK ewe, a
+practice still used to appease ghosts by the Ovaherero. The neighbouring
+Omnambo ascribe the creation of man to Kalunga, who came out of the
+earth, and made the first three sheep.(2)
+
+
+(1) An example of a Deluge myth in Africa, where M. Lenormant found
+none.
+
+(2) South African Folk-Lore Journal, ii. pt. v. p. 95.
+
+
+Among the Namaquas, an African people on the same level of nomadic
+culture as the Ovaherero, a divine or heroic early being called Heitsi
+Eibib had a good deal to do with the origin of things. If he did not
+exactly make the animals, he impressed on them their characters, and
+their habits (like those of the serpent in Genesis) are said to have
+been conferred by a curse, the curse of Heitsi Eibib. A precisely
+similar notion was found by Avila among the Indians of Huarochiri, whose
+divine culture-hero imposed, by a curse or a blessing, their character
+and habits on the beasts.(1) The lion used to live in a nest up a tree
+till Heitsi Eibib cursed him and bade him walk on the ground. He also
+cursed the hare, "and the hare ran away, and is still running".(2) The
+name of the first man is given as Eichaknanabiseb (with a multitude of
+"clicks"), and he is said to have met all the animals on a flat rock,
+and played a game with them for copper beads. The rainbow was made by
+Gaunab, who is generally a malevolent being, of whom more hereafter.
+
+
+(1) Fables of Yncas (Hakluyt Society), p. 127.
+
+(2) Tsuni Goam, pp. 66, 67.
+
+
+Leaving these African races, which, whatever their relative degrees of
+culture, are physically somewhat contemptible, we reach their northern
+neighbours, the Zulus. They are among the finest, and certainly among
+the least religious, of the undeveloped peoples. Their faith is mainly
+in magic and ghosts, but there are traces of a fading and loftier
+belief.
+
+The social and political condition of the Zulu is well understood. They
+are a pastoral, but not a nomadic people, possessing large kraals or
+towns. They practise agriculture, and they had, till quite recently, a
+centralised government and a large army, somewhat on the German system.
+They appear to have no regular class of priests, and supernatural power
+is owned by the chiefs and the king, and by diviners and sorcerers, who
+conduct the sacrifices. Their myths are the more interesting because,
+whether from their natural scepticism, which confuted Bishop Colenso in
+his orthodox days, or from acquaintance with European ideas, they have
+begun to doubt the truth of their own traditions.(1) The Zulu theory
+of the origin of man and of the world commences with the feats of
+Unkulunkulu, "the old, old one," who, in some legends, was the first
+man, "and broke off in the beginning". Like Manabozho among the Indians
+of North America, and like Wainamoinen among the Finns, Unkulunkulu
+imparted to men a knowledge of the arts, of marriage, and so forth. His
+exploits in this direction, however, must be considered in another part
+of this work. Men in general "came out of a bed of reeds".(2) But there
+is much confusion about this bed of reeds, named "Uthlanga". The younger
+people ask where the bed of reeds was; the old men do not know, and
+neither did their fathers know. But they stick to it that "that bed of
+reeds still exists". Educated Zulus appear somewhat inclined to take the
+expression in an allegorical sense, and to understand the reeds either
+as a kind of protoplasm or as a creator who was mortal. "He exists no
+longer. As my grandfather no longer exists, he too no longer exists;
+he died." Chiefs who wish to claim high descent trace their pedigree to
+Uthlanga, as the Homeric kings traced theirs to Zeus. The myths given by
+Dr. Callaway are very contradictory.
+
+
+(1) These legends have been carefully collected and published by Bishop
+Callaway (Trubner & Co., 1868).
+
+(2) Callaway, p. 9.
+
+
+In addition to the legend that men came out of a bed of reeds, other and
+perhaps even more puerile stories are current. "Some men say that they
+were belched up by a cow;" others "that Unkulunkulu split them out of
+a stone,"(1) which recalls the legend of Pyrrha and Deucalion. The myth
+about the cow is still applied to great chiefs. "He was not born; he was
+belched up by a cow." The myth of the stone origin corresponds to the
+Homeric saying about men "born from the stone or the oak of the old
+tale".(2)
+
+
+(1) Without anticipating a later chapter, the resemblances of these
+to Greek myths, as arrayed by M. Bouche Leclercq (De Origine Generis
+Humani), is very striking.
+
+(2) Odyssey, xix. 103.
+
+
+In addition to the theory of the natal bed of reeds, the Zulus, like
+the Navajoes of New Mexico, and the Bushmen, believe in the subterranean
+origin of man. There was a succession of emigrations from below of
+different tribes of men, each having its own Unkulunkulu. All accounts
+agree that Unkulunkulu is not worshipped, and he does not seem to
+be identified with "the lord who plays in heaven"--a kind of fading
+Zeus--when there is thunder. Unkulunkulu is not worshipped, though
+ancestral spirits are worshipped, because he lived so long ago that no
+one can now trace his pedigree to the being who is at once the first man
+and the creator. His "honour-giving name is lost in the lapse of years,
+and the family rites have become obsolete."(1)
+
+
+(1) See Zulu religion in The Making of Religion, pp. 225-229, where it
+is argued that ghost worship has superseded a higher faith, of which
+traces are discernible.
+
+
+The native races of the North American continent (concerning whose
+civilisation more will be said in the account of their divine myths)
+occupy every stage of culture, from the truly bestial condition in
+which some of the Digger Indians at present exist, living on insects and
+unacquainted even with the use of the bow, to the civilisation which the
+Spaniards destroyed among the Aztecs.
+
+The original facts about religion in America are much disputed, and
+will be more appropriately treated later. It is now very usual for
+anthropologists to say, like Mr. Dorman, "no approach to monotheismn had
+been made before the discovery of America by Europeans, and the
+Great Spirit mentioned in these (their) books is an introduction by
+Christianity".(1) "This view will not bear examination," says Mr. Tylor,
+and we shall later demonstrate the accuracy of his remark.(2) But at
+present we are concerned, not with what Indian religion had to say about
+her Gods, but with what Indian myth had to tell about the beginnings of
+things.
+
+
+(1) Origin of Primitive Superstitions, p. 15.
+
+(2) Primitive Culture, 1873, ii. p. 340.
+
+
+The Hurons, for example (to choose a people in a state of middle
+barbarism), start in myth from the usual conception of a powerful
+non-natural race of men dwelling in the heavens, whence they descended,
+and colonised, not to say constructed, the earth. In the Relation de la
+Nouvelle France, written by Pere Paul le Jeune, of the Company of Jesus,
+in 1636, there is a very full account of Huron opinion, which, with some
+changes of names, exists among the other branches of the Algonkin family
+of Indians.
+
+They recognise as the founder of their kindred a woman named Ataentsic,
+who, like Hephaestus in the Iliad, was banished from the sky. In the
+upper world there are woods and plains, as on earth. Ataentsic fell down
+a hole when she was hunting a bear, or she cut down a heaven-tree, and
+fell with the fall of this Huron Ygdrasil, or she was seduced by an
+adventurer from the under world, and was tossed out of heaven for her
+fault. However it chanced, she dropped on the back of the turtle in the
+midst of the waters. He consulted the other aquatic animals, and one of
+them, generally said to have been the musk-rat, fished(1) up some soil
+and fashioned the earth.(2) Here Ataentsic gave birth to twins, Ioskeha
+and Tawiscara. These represent the usual dualism of myth; they answer
+to Osiris and Set, to Ormuzd and Ahriman, and were bitter enemies.
+According to one form of the myth, the woman of the sky had twins, and
+what occurred may be quoted from Dr. Brinton. "Even before birth one of
+them betrayed his restless and evil nature by refusing to be born in
+the usual manner, but insisting on breaking through his parent's side
+or arm-pit. He did so, but it cost his mother her life. Her body was
+buried, and from it sprang the various vegetable productions," pumpkins,
+maize, beans, and so forth.(3)
+
+
+(1) Relations, 1633. In this myth one Messon, the Great Hare, is the
+beginner of our race. He married a daughter of the Musk-rat.
+
+(2) Here we first meet in this investigation a very widely distributed
+myth. The myths already examined have taken the origin of earth for
+granted. The Hurons account for its origin; a speck of earth was fished
+out of the waters and grew. In M. H. de Charencey's tract Une Legende
+Cosmogonique (Havre, 1884) this legend is traced. M. de Charencey
+distinguishes (1) a continental version; (2) an insular version; (3) a
+mixed and Hindoo version. Among continental variants he gives a Vogul
+version (Revue de Philologie et d'Ethnographie, Paris, 1874, i. 10).
+Numi Tarom (a god who cooks fish in heaven) hangs a male and female
+above the abyss of waters in a silver cradle. He gives them, later, just
+earth enough to build a house on. Their son, in the guise of a
+squirrel, climbs to Numi Tarom, and receives from him a duck-skin and
+a goose-skin. Clad in these, like Yehl in his raven-skin or Odin in
+his hawk-skin, he enjoys the powers of the animals, dives and brings up
+three handfuls of mud, which grow into our earth. Elempi makes men
+out of clay and snow. The American version M. de Charencey gives from
+Nicholas Perrot (Mem. sur les Moers, etc., Paris, 1864, i. 3). Perrot
+was a traveller of the seventeenth century. The Great Hare takes a hand
+in the making of earth out of fished-up soil. After giving other North
+American variants, and comparing the animals that, after three attempts,
+fish up earth to the dove and raven of Noah, M. de Charencey reaches the
+Bulgarians. God made Satan, in the skin of a diver, fish up earth out
+of Lake Tiberias. Three doves fish up earth, in the beginning, in the
+Galician popular legend (Chodzko, Contes des Paysans Slaves, p. 374). In
+the INSULAR version, as in New Zealand, the island is usually fished up
+with a hook by a heroic angler (Japan, Tonga, Tahiti, New Zealand). The
+Hindoo version, in which the boar plays the part of musk-rat, or duck,
+or diver, will be given in "Indian Cosmogonic Myths".
+
+(3) Brinton, American Hero-Myths, p. 54. Nicholas Perrot and various
+Jesuit Relations are the original authorities. See "Divine Myths of
+America". Mr. Leland, in his Algonkin Tales, prints the same story, with
+the names altered to Glooskap and Malsumis, from oral tradition. Compare
+Schoolcraft, v. 155, and i. 317, and the versions of PP. Charlevoix
+and Lafitau. In Charlevoix the good and bad brothers are Manabozho and
+Chokanipok or Chakekanapok, and out of the bones and entrails of the
+latter many plants and animals were fashioned, just as, according to a
+Greek myth preserved by Clemens Alexandrinus, parsley and pomegranates
+arose from the blood and scattered members of Dionysus Zagreus. The tale
+of Tawiscara's violent birth is told of Set in Egypt, and of Indra in
+the Veda, as will be shown later. This is a very common fable, and, as
+Mr. Whitley Stokes tells me, it recurs in old Irish legends of the birth
+of our Lord, Myth, as usual, invading religion, even Christian religion.
+
+
+According to another version of the origin of things, the maker of them
+was one Michabous, or Michabo, the Great Hare. His birthplace was shown
+at an island called Michilimakinak, like the birthplace of Apollo at
+Delos. The Great Hare made the earth, and, as will afterwards appear,
+was the inventor of the arts of life. On the whole, the Iroquois and
+Algonkin myths agree in finding the origin of life in an upper world
+beyond the sky. The earth was either fished up (as by Brahma when he
+dived in the shape of a boar) by some beast which descended to the
+bottom of the waters, or grew out of the tortoise on whose back
+Ataentsic fell. The first dwellers in the world were either beasts like
+Manabozho or Michabo, the Great Hare, or the primeval wolves of the
+Uinkarets,(1) or the creative musk-rat, or were more anthropomorphic
+heroes, such as Ioskeha and Tawiscara. As for the things in the world,
+some were made, some evolved, some are transformed parts of an early
+non-natural man or animal. There is a tendency to identify Ataentsic,
+the sky-woman, with the moon, and in the Two Great Brethren, hostile as
+they are, to recognise moon and sun.(2)
+
+
+(1) Powell, Bureau of Ethnology, i. 44.
+
+(2) Dr. Brinton has endeavoured to demonstrate by arguments drawn from
+etymology that Michabos, Messou, Missibizi or Manabozho, the Great Hare,
+is originally a personification of Dawn (Myths of the New World, p.
+178). I have examined his arguments in the Nineteenth Century, January,
+1886, which may be consulted, and in Melusine, January, 1887. The hare
+appears to be one out of the countless primeval beast-culture heroes. A
+curious piece of magic in a tradition of the Dene Hareskins may seem to
+aid Dr. Brinton's theory: "Pendant la nuit il entra, jeta au feu une
+tete de lievre blanc et aussitot le jour se fit".--Petitot, Traditions
+Indiennes, p. 173. But I take it that the sacrifice of a white hare's
+head makes light magically, as sacrifice of black beasts and columns of
+black smoke make rainclouds.
+
+
+Some of the degraded Digger Indians of California have the following
+myth of the origin of species. In this legend, it will be noticed, a
+species of evolution takes the place of a theory of creation. The story
+was told to Mr. Adam Johnston, who "drew" the narrator by communicating
+to a chief the Biblical narrative of the creation.(1) The chief said it
+was a strange story, and one that he had never heard when he lived at
+the Mission of St. John under the care of a Padre. According to this
+chief (he ruled over the Po-to-yan-te tribe or Coyotes), the first
+Indians were coyotes. When one of their number died, his body became
+full of little animals or spirits. They took various shapes, as of deer,
+antelopes, and so forth; but as some exhibited a tendency to fly off to
+the moon, the Po-to-yan-tes now usually bury the bodies of their dead,
+to prevent the extinction of species. Then the Indians began to assume
+the shape of man, but it was a slow transformation. At first they
+walked on all fours, then they would begin to develop an isolated human
+feature, one finger, one toe, one eye, like the ascidian, our first
+parent in the view of modern science. Then they doubled their organs,
+got into the habit of sitting up, and wore away their tails, which they
+unaffectedly regret, "as they consider the tail quite an ornament".
+Ideas of the immortality of the soul are said to be confined to the old
+women of the tribe, and, in short, according to this version, the Digger
+Indians occupy the modern scientific position.
+
+
+(1) Schoolcraft, vol. v.
+
+
+The Winnebagoes, who communicated their myths to Mr. Fletcher,(1) are
+suspected of having been influenced by the Biblical narrative. They say
+that the Great Spirit woke up as from a dream, and found himself sitting
+in a chair. As he was all alone, he took a piece of his body and a piece
+of earth, and made a man. He next made a woman, steadied the earth
+by placing beasts beneath it at the corners, and created plants and
+animals. Other men he made out of bears. "He created the white man
+to make tools for the poor Indians"--a very pleasing example of
+a teleological hypothesis and of the doctrine of final causes as
+understood by the Winnebagoes. The Chaldean myth of the making of man is
+recalled by the legend that the Great Spirit cut out a piece of
+himself for the purpose; the Chaldean wisdom coincides, too, with the
+philosophical acumen of the Po-to-yan-te or Coyote tribe of Digger
+Indians. Though the Chaldean theory is only connected with that of the
+Red Men by its savagery, we may briefly state it in this place.
+
+
+(1) Ibid., iv. 228.
+
+
+According to Berosus, as reported by Alexander Polyhistor, the universe
+was originally (as before Manabozho's time) water and mud. Herein all
+manner of mixed monsters, with human heads, goat's horns, four legs,
+and tails, bred confusedly. In place of the Iroquois Ataentsic, a woman
+called Omoroca presided over the mud and the menagerie. She, too, like
+Ataentsic, is sometimes recognised as the moon. Affairs being in this
+state, Bel-Maruduk arrived and cut Omoroca in two (Chokanipok destroyed
+Ataentsic), and out of Omoroca Bel made the world and the things in it.
+We have already seen that in savage myth many things are fashioned out
+of a dead member of the extra-natural race. Lastly, Bel cut his own head
+off, and with the blood the gods mixed clay and made men. The Chaldeans
+inherited very savage fancies.(1)
+
+
+(1) Cf. Syncellus, p. 29; Euseb., Chronic. Armen., ed. Mai, p. 10;
+Lenormant, Origines de l'Histoire, i. 506.
+
+
+One ought, perhaps, to apologise to the Chaldeans for inserting their
+myths among the fables of the least cultivated peoples; but it will
+scarcely be maintained that the Oriental myths differ in character from
+the Digger Indian and Iroquois explanations of the origin of things. The
+Ahts of Vancouver Island, whom Mr. Sproat knew intimately, and of whose
+ideas he gives a cautious account (for he was well aware of the limits
+of his knowledge), tell a story of the usual character.(1) They believe
+in a member of the extra-natural race, named Quawteaht, of whom we shall
+hear more in his heroic character. As a demiurge "he is undoubtedly
+represented as the general framer, I do not say creator, of all things,
+though some special things are excepted. He made the earth and water,
+the trees and rocks, and all the animals. Some say that Quawteaht made
+the sun and moon, but the majority of the Indians believe that he had
+nothing to do with their formation, and that they are deities superior
+to himself, though now distant and less active. He gave names to
+everything; among the rest, to all the Indian houses which then existed,
+although inhabited only by birds and animals. Quawteaht went away before
+the apparent change of the birds and beasts into Indians, which took
+place in the following manner:--
+
+"The birds and beasts of old had the spirits of the Indians dwelling
+in them, and occupied the various coast villages, as the Ahts do at
+present. One day a canoe manned by two Indians from an unknown country
+approached the shore. As they coasted along, at each house at which they
+landed, the deer, bear, elk, and other brute inhabitants fled to the
+mountains, and the geese and other birds flew to the woods and rivers.
+But in this flight, the Indians, who had hitherto been contained in the
+bodies of the various creatures, were left behind, and from that time
+they took possession of the deserted dwellings and assumed the condition
+in which we now see them."
+
+
+(1) Sproat, Scenes and Studies of Savage Life, pp. 210, 211.
+
+
+Crossing the northern continent of America to the west, we are in the
+domains of various animal culture-heroes, ancestors and teachers of the
+human race and the makers, to some extent, of the things in the world.
+As the eastern tribes have their Great Hare, so the western tribes have
+their wolf hero and progenitor, or their coyote, or their raven, or
+their dog. It is possible, and even certain in some cases, that the
+animal which was the dominant totem of a race became heir to any
+cosmogonic legends that were floating about.
+
+The country of the Papagos, on the eastern side of the Gulf of
+California, is the southern boundary of the province of the coyote or
+prairie wolf. The realm of his influence as a kind of Prometheus, or
+even as a demiurge, extends very far northwards. In the myth related by
+Con Quien, the chief of the central Papagos,(1) the coyote acts the
+part of the fish in the Sanskrit legend of the flood, while Montezuma
+undertakes the role of Manu. This Montezuma was formed, like the Adams
+of so many races, out of potter's clay in the hands of the Great Spirit.
+In all this legend it seems plain enough that the name of Montezuma is
+imported from Mexico, and has been arbitrarily given to the hero of the
+Papagos. According to Mr. Powers, whose manuscript notes Mr. Bancroft
+quotes (iii. 87), all the natives of California believe that their
+first ancestors were created directly from the earth of their present
+dwelling-places, and in very many cases these ancestors were coyotes.
+
+
+(1) Davidson, Indian Affairs Report, 1865, p. 131; Bancroft, iii. 75.
+
+
+The Pimas, a race who live near the Papagos on the eastern coast of
+the Gulf of California, say that the earth was made by a being named
+Earth-prophet. At first it appeared like a spider's web, reminding one
+of the West African legend that a great spider created the world.
+Man was made by the Earth-prophet out of clay kneaded with sweat. A
+mysterious eagle and a deluge play a great part in the later mythical
+adventures of war and the world, as known to the Pimas.(1)
+
+
+(1) Communicated to Mr. Bancroft by Mr. Stout of the Pima Agency.
+
+
+In Oregon the coyote appears as a somewhat tentative demiurge, and the
+men of his creation, like the beings first formed by Prajapati in
+the Sanskrit myth, needed to be reviewed, corrected and considerably
+augmented. The Chinooks of Oregon believe in the usual race of magnified
+non-natural men, who preceded humanity.
+
+These semi-divine people were called Ulhaipa by the Chinooks, and
+Sehuiab by the Lummies. But the coyote was the maker of men. As the
+first of Nature's journeymen, he made men rather badly, with closed eyes
+and motionless feet. A kind being, named Ikanam, touched up the coyote's
+crude essays with a sharp stone, opening the eyes of men, and giving
+their hands and feet the powers of movement. He also acted as a
+"culture-hero," introducing the first arts. (1)
+
+
+(1) (Frauchere's Narrative, 258; Gibb's Chinook Vocabulary; Parker's
+exploring Tour, i. 139;) Bancroft, iii. 96.
+
+
+Moving up the West Pacific coast we reach British Columbia, where the
+coyote is not supposed to have been so active as our old friend the
+musk-rat in the great work of the creation. According to the Tacullies,
+nothing existed in the beginning but water and a musk-rat. As the animal
+sought his food at the bottom of the water, his mouth was frequently
+filled with mud. This he spat out, and so gradually formed by alluvial
+deposit an island. This island was small at first, like earth in the
+Sanskrit myth in the Satapatha Brahmana, but gradually increased in
+bulk. The Tacullies have no new light to throw on the origin of man.(1)
+
+
+(1) Bancroft, iii. 98; Harmon's Journey, pp. 302, 303.
+
+
+The Thlinkeets, who are neighbours of the Tacullies on the north,
+incline to give crow or raven the chief role in the task of creation,
+just as some Australians allot the same part to the eagle-hawk, and the
+Yakuts to a hawk, a crow and a teal-duck. We shall hear much of
+Yehl later, as one of the mythical heroes of the introduction of
+civilisation. North of the Thlinkeets, a bird and a dog take the
+creative duties, the Aleuts and Koniagas being descended from a dog.
+Among the more northern Tinnehs, the dog who was the progenitor of the
+race had the power of assuming the shape of a handsome young man. He
+supplied the protoplasm of the Tinnehs, as Purusha did that of the Aryan
+world, out of his own body. A giant tore him to pieces, as the gods tore
+Purusha, and out of the fragments thrown into the rivers came fish, the
+fragments tossed into the air took life as birds, and so forth.(1) This
+recalls the Australian myth of the origin of fish and the Ananzi stories
+of the origin of whips.(2)
+
+
+(1) Hearne, pp. 342, 343; Bancroft, iii. 106.
+
+(2) See "Divine Myths of Lower Races". M. Cosquin, in Contes de
+Lorraine, vol. i. p. 58, gives the Ananzi story.
+
+
+Between the cosmogonic myths of the barbarous or savage American tribes
+and those of the great cultivated American peoples, Aztecs, Peruvians
+and Quiches, place should be found for the legends of certain races
+in the South Pacific. Of these, the most important are the Maoris or
+natives of New Zealand, the Mangaians and the Samoans. Beyond the usual
+and world-wide correspondences of myth, the divine tales of the various
+South Sea isles display resemblances so many and essential that they
+must be supposed to spring from a common and probably not very distant
+centre. As it is practically impossible to separate Maori myths of the
+making of things from Maori myths of the gods and their origin, we must
+pass over here the metaphysical hymns and stories of the original
+divine beings, Rangi and Papa, Heaven and Earth, and of their cruel but
+necessary divorce by their children, who then became the usual Titanic
+race which constructs and "airs" the world for the reception of man.(1)
+Among these beings, more fully described in our chapter on the gods
+of the lower races, is Tiki, with his wife Marikoriko, twilight. Tane
+(male) is another of the primordial race, children of earth and heaven,
+and between him and Tiki lies the credit of having made or begotten
+humanity. Tane adorned the body of his father, heaven (Rangi), by
+sticking stars all over it, as disks of pearl-shells are stuck all
+over images. He was the parent of trees and birds, but some trees are
+original and divine beings. The first woman was not born, but formed out
+of the sun and the echo, a pretty myth. Man was made by Tiki, who took
+red clay, and kneaded it with his own blood, or with the red water of
+swamps. The habits of animals, some of which are gods, while others are
+descended from gods, follow from their conduct at the moment when heaven
+and earth were violently divorced. New Zealand itself, or at least one
+of the isles, was a huge fish caught by Maui (of whom more hereafter).
+Just as Pund-jel, in Australia, cut out the gullies and vales with his
+knife, so the mountains and dells of New Zealand were produced by the
+knives of Maui's brothers when they crimped his big fish.(2) Quite apart
+from those childish ideas are the astonishing metaphysical hymns about
+the first stirrings of light in darkness, of "becoming" and "being,"
+which remind us of Hegel and Heraclitus, or of the most purely
+speculative ideas in the Rig-Veda.(3) Scarcely less metaphysical are the
+myths of Mangaia, of which Mr. Gill(4) gives an elaborate account.
+
+
+(1) See "Divine Myths of Lower Races".
+
+(2) Taylor, New Zealand, pp. 115-121; Bastian, Heilige Sage der
+Polynesier, pp. 36-50; Shortland, Traditions of New Zealanders.
+
+(3) See chapter on "Divine Myths of the Lower Races," and on "Indian
+Cosmogonic Myths"
+
+(4) Myths and Songs from the South Pacific, pp. 1-22.
+
+
+The Mangaian ideas of the world are complex, and of an early scientific
+sort. The universe is like the hollow of a vast cocoa-nut shell, divided
+into many imaginary circles like those of mediaeval speculation. There
+is a demon at the stem, as it were, of the cocoa-nut, and, where the
+edges of the imaginary shell nearly meet, dwells a woman demon, whose
+name means "the very beginning". In this system we observe efforts at
+metaphysics and physical speculation. But it is very characteristic
+of rude thought that such extremely abstract conceptions as "the very
+beginning" are represented as possessing life and human form. The
+woman at the bottom of the shell was anxious for progeny, and therefore
+plucked a bit out of her own right side, as Eve was made out of the rib
+of Adam. This piece of flesh became Vatea, the father of gods and men.
+Vatea (like Oannes in the Chaldean legend) was half man, half fish. "The
+Very Beginning" begat other children in the same manner, and some
+of these became departmental gods of ocean, noon-day, and so forth.
+Curiously enough, the Mangaians seem to be sticklers for primogeniture.
+Vatea, as the first-born son, originally had his domain next above
+that of his mother. But she was pained by the thought that his younger
+brothers each took a higher place than his; so she pushed his land
+up, and it is now next below the solid crust on which mortals live in
+Mangaia. Vatea married a woman from one of the under worlds named Papa,
+and their children had the regular human form. One child was born either
+from Papa's head, like Athene from the head of Zeus, or from her armpit,
+like Dionysus from the thigh of Zeus. Another child may be said, in the
+language of dog-breeders, to have "thrown back," for he wears the form
+of a white or black lizard. In the Mangaian system the sky is a solid
+vault of blue stone. In the beginning of things the sky (like Ouranos in
+Greece and Rangi in New Zealand) pressed hard on earth, and the god Ru
+was obliged to thrust the two asunder, or rather he was engaged in this
+task when Maui tossed both Ru and the sky so high up that they never
+came down again. Ru is now the Atlas of Mangaia, "the sky-supporting
+Ru".(1) His lower limbs fell to earth, and became pumice-stone. In these
+Mangaian myths we discern resemblances to New Zealand fictions, as
+is natural, and the tearing of the body of "the Very Beginning" has
+numerous counterparts in European, American and Indian fable. But on the
+whole, the Mangaian myths are more remarkable for their semi-scientific
+philosophy than for their coincidences with the fancies of other early
+peoples.
+
+
+(1) Gill, p. 59.
+
+
+The Samoans, like the Maoris and Greeks, hold that heaven at first fell
+down and lay upon earth.(1) The arrowroot and another plant pushed up
+heaven, and "the heaven-pushing place" is still known and pointed out.
+Others say the god Ti-iti-i pushed up heaven, and his feet made holes
+six feet deep in the rocks during this exertion. The other Samoan myths
+chiefly explain the origin of fire, and the causes of the characteristic
+forms and habits of animals and plants. The Samoans, too, possess
+a semi-mythical, metaphysical cosmogony, starting from NOTHING, but
+rapidly becoming the history of rocks, clouds, hills, dew and various
+animals, who intermarried, and to whom the royal family of Samoa trace
+their origin through twenty-three generations. So personal are Samoan
+abstract conceptions, that "SPACE had a long-legged stool," on to which
+a head fell, and grew into a companion for Space. Yet another myth says
+that the god Tangaloa existed in space, and made heaven and earth, and
+sent down his daughter, a snipe. Man he made out of the mussel-fish. So
+confused are the doctrines of the Samoans.(2)
+
+
+(1) Turner's Samoa, p. 198.
+
+(2) Turner's Samoa, pp. 1-9.
+
+
+Perhaps the cosmogonic myths of the less cultivated races have now been
+stated in sufficient number. As an example of the ideas which prevailed
+in an American race of higher culture, we may take the Quiche legend as
+given in the Popol Vuh, a post-Christian collection of the sacred myths
+of the nation, written down after the Spanish conquest, and published in
+French by the Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg.(1)
+
+
+(1) See Popol Vuh in Mr. Max Muller's Chips from a German Workshop, with
+a discussion of its authenticity. In his Annals of the Cakchiquels, a
+nation bordering on the Quiches, Dr. Brinton expresses his belief in the
+genuine character of the text. Compare Bancroft, iii. p. 45. The
+ancient and original Popol Vuh, the native book in native characters,
+disappeared during the Spanish conquest.
+
+
+The Quiches, like their neighbours the Cakchiquels, were a highly
+civilised race, possessing well-built towns, roads and the arts of life,
+and were great agriculturists. Maize, the staple of food among these
+advanced Americans, was almost as great a god as Soma among the
+Indo-Aryans. The Quiches were acquainted with a kind of picture-writing,
+and possessed records in which myth glided into history. The Popol Vuh,
+or book of the people, gives itself out as a post-Columbian copy of
+these traditions, and may doubtless contain European ideas. As we see
+in the Commentarias Reales of the half-blood Inca Garcilasso de la Vega,
+the conquered people were anxious to prove that their beliefs were by
+no means so irrational and so "devilish" as to Spanish critics they
+appeared. According to the Popol Vuh, there was in the beginning nothing
+but water and the feathered serpent, one of their chief divine beings;
+but there also existed somehow, "they that gave life". Their names mean
+"shooter of blow-pipe at coyote," "at opossum," and so forth. They
+said "Earth," and there WAS earth, and plants growing thereon. Animals
+followed, and the Givers of life said "Speak our names," but the animals
+could only cluck and croak. Then said the Givers, "Inasmuch as ye cannot
+praise us, ye shall be killed and eaten". They then made men out of
+clay; these men were weak and watery, and by water they were destroyed.
+Next they made men of wood and women of the pith of trees. These puppets
+married and gave in marriage, and peopled earth with wooden mannikins.
+This unsatisfactory race was destroyed by a rain of resin and by the
+wild beasts. The survivors developed into apes. Next came a period
+occupied by the wildest feats of the magnified non-natural race and
+of animals. The record is like the description of a supernatural
+pantomime--the nightmare of a god. The Titans upset hills, are turned
+into stone, and behave like Heitsi Eibib in the Namaqua myths.
+
+Last of all, men were made of yellow and white maize, and these gave
+more satisfaction, but their sight was contracted. These, however,
+survived, and became the parents of the present stock of humanity.
+
+Here we have the conceptions of creation and of evolution combined. Men
+are MADE, but only the fittest survive; the rest are either destroyed or
+permitted to develop into lower species. A similar mixture of the same
+ideas will be found in one of the Brahmanas among the Aryans of India.
+It is to be observed that the Quiche myths, as recorded in Popol Vuh,
+contain not only traces of belief in a creative word and power, but many
+hymns of a lofty and beautifully devotional character.
+
+"Hail! O Creator, O Former! Thou that hearest and understandest us,
+abandon us not, forsake us not! O God, thou that art in heaven and on
+the earth, O Heart of Heaven, O Heart of Earth, give us descendants and
+posterity as long as the light endures."
+
+This is an example of the prayers of the men made out of maize, made
+especially that they might "call on the name" of the god or gods.
+Whether we are to attribute this and similar passages to Christian
+influence (for Popol Vuh, as we have it, is but an attempt to collect
+the fragments of the lost book that remained in men's minds after the
+conquest), or whether the purer portions of the myth be due to untaught
+native reflection and piety, it is not possible to determine. It is
+improbable that the ideas of a hostile race would be introduced into
+religious hymns by their victims. Here, as elsewhere in the sacred
+legends of civilised peoples, various strata of mythical and religious
+thought coexist.
+
+No American people reached such a pitch of civilisation as the Aztecs
+of Anahuac, whose capital was the city of Mexico. It is needless here
+to repeat the story of their grandeur and their fall. Obscure as their
+history, previous to the Spanish invasion, may be, it is certain that
+they possessed a highly organised society, fortified towns, established
+colleges or priesthoods, magnificent temples, an elaborate calendar,
+great wealth in the precious metals, the art of picture-writing in
+considerable perfection, and a despotic central government. The higher
+classes in a society like this could not but develop speculative
+systems, and it is alleged that shortly before the reign of Montezuma
+attempts had been made to introduce a pure monotheistic religion. But
+the ritual of the Aztecs remained an example of the utmost barbarity.
+Never was a more cruel faith, not even in Carthage. Nowhere did temples
+reek with such pools of human blood; nowhere else, not in Dahomey and
+Ashanti, were human sacrifice, cannibalism and torture so essential
+to the cult that secured the favour of the gods. In these dark
+fanes--reeking with gore, peopled by monstrous shapes of idols
+bird-headed or beast-headed, and adorned with the hideous carvings in
+which we still see the priest, under the mask of some less ravenous
+forest beast, tormenting the victim--in these abominable temples the
+Castilian conquerors might well believe that they saw the dwellings of
+devils.
+
+Yet Mexican religion had its moral and beautiful aspect, and the gods,
+or certain of the gods, required from their worshippers not only bloody
+hands, but clean hearts.
+
+To the gods we return later. The myths of the origin of things may
+be studied without a knowledge of the whole Aztec Pantheon. Our
+authorities, though numerous, lack complete originality and are
+occasionally confused. We have first the Aztec monuments and
+hieroglyphic scrolls, for the most part undeciphered. These merely
+attest the hideous and cruel character of the deities. Next we have the
+reports of early missionaries, like Sahagun and Mendieta, of conquerors,
+like Bernal Diaz, and of noble half-breeds, such as Ixtlilxochitl.(1)
+
+
+(1) Bancroft's Native Races of Pacific Coast of North America, vol.
+iii., contains an account of the sources, and, with Sahagun and Acosta,
+is mainly followed here. See also J. G. Muller, Ur. Amerik. Rel., p.
+507. See chapter on the "Divine Myths of Mexico".
+
+
+There are two elements in Mexican, as in Quiche, and Indo-Aryan, and
+Maori, and even Andaman cosmogonic myth. We find the purer religion
+and the really philosophic speculation concurrent with such crude and
+childish stories as usually satisfy the intellectual demands of Ahts,
+Cahrocs and Bushmen; but of the purer and more speculative opinions we
+know little. Many of the noble, learned and priestly classes of Aztecs
+perished at the conquest. The survivors were more or less converted to
+Catholicism, and in their writings probably put the best face possible
+on the native religion. Like the Spanish clergy, their instructors,
+they were inclined to explain away their national gods by a system of
+euhemerism, by taking it for granted that the gods and culture-heroes
+had originally been ordinary men, worshipped after their decease. This
+is almost invariably the view adopted by Sahagun. Side by side with the
+confessions, as it were, of the clergy and cultivated classes coexisted
+the popular beliefs, the myths of the people, partaking of the nature of
+folk-lore, but not rejected by the priesthood.
+
+Both strata of belief are represented in the surviving cosmogonic
+myths of the Aztecs. Probably we may reckon in the first or learned and
+speculative class of tales the account of a series of constructions and
+reconstructions of the world. This idea is not peculiar to the higher
+mythologies, the notion of a deluge and recreation or renewal of things
+is almost universal, and even among the untutored Australians there are
+memories of a flood and of an age of ruinous winds. But the theory of
+definite epochs, calculated in accordance with the Mexican calendar,
+of epochs in which things were made and re-made, answers closely to
+the Indo-Aryan conception of successive kalpas, and can only have been
+developed after the method of reckoning time had been carried to some
+perfection. "When heaven and earth were fashioned, they had already been
+four times created and destroyed," say the fragments of what is called
+the Chimalpopoca manuscript. Probably this theory of a series of kalpas
+is only one of the devices by which the human mind has tried to cheat
+itself into the belief that it can conceive a beginning of things. The
+earth stands on an elephant, the elephant on a tortoise, and it is going
+too far to ask what the tortoise stands on. In the same way the world's
+beginning seems to become more intelligible or less puzzling when it is
+thrown back into a series of beginnings and endings. This method also
+was in harmony with those vague ideas of evolution and of the survival
+of the fittest which we have detected in myth. The various tentative
+human races of the Popol Vuh degenerated or were destroyed because they
+did not fulfil the purposes for which they were made. In Brahmanic myth
+we shall see that type after type was condemned and perished because it
+was inadequate, or inadequately equipped--because it did not harmonise
+with its environment.(1) For these series of experimental creations and
+inefficient evolutions vast spaces of time were required, according to
+the Aztec and Indo-Aryan philosophies. It is not impossible that actual
+floods and great convulsions of nature may have been remembered
+in tradition, and may have lent colour and form to these somewhat
+philosophic myths of origins. From such sources probably comes the
+Mexican hypothesis of a water-age (ending in a deluge), an earth-age
+(ending in an earthquake), a wind-age (ending in hurricanes), and the
+present dispensation, to be destroyed by fire.
+
+
+(1) As an example of a dim evolutionary idea, note the myths of the
+various ages as reported by Mendieta, according to which there were five
+earlier ages "or suns" of bad quality, so that the contemporary human
+beings were unable to live on the fruits of the earth.
+
+
+The less philosophic and more popular Aztec legend of the commencement
+of the world is mainly remarkable for the importance given in it to
+objects of stone. For some reason, stones play a much greater part in
+American than in other mythologies. An emerald was worshipped in the
+temple of Pachacamac, who was, according to Garcilasso, the supreme and
+spiritual deity of the Incas. The creation legend of the Cakchiquels of
+Guatemala(1) makes much of a mysterious, primeval and animated obsidian
+stone. In the Iroquois myths(2) stones are the leading characters. Nor
+did Aztec myth escape this influence.
+
+
+(1) Brinton, Annals of the Cakchiquels.
+
+(2) Erminie Smith, Bureau of Ethnol. Report, ii.
+
+
+There was a god in heaven named Citlalatonac, and a goddess, Citlalicue.
+When we speak of "heaven" we must probably think of some such world of
+ordinary terrestrial nature above the sky as that from which Ataentsic
+fell in the Huron story. The goddess gave birth to a flint-knife, and
+flung the flint down to earth. This abnormal birth partly answers to
+that of the youngest of the Adityas, the rejected abortion in the Veda,
+and to the similar birth and rejection of Maui in New Zealand. From
+the fallen flint-knife sprang our old friends the magnified non-natural
+beings with human characteristics, "the gods," to the number of 1600.
+The gods sent up the hawk (who in India and Australia generally comes
+to the front on these occasions), and asked their mother, or rather
+grandmother, to help them to make men, to be their servants. Citlalicue
+rather jeered at her unconsidered offspring. She advised them to go to
+the lord of the homes of the departed, Mictlanteuctli, and borrow a
+bone or some ashes of the dead who are with him. We must never ask for
+consistency from myths. This statement implies that men had already
+been in existence, though they were not yet created. Perhaps they had
+perished in one of the four great destructions. With difficulty and
+danger the gods stole a bone from Hades, placed it in a bowl, and
+smeared it with their own blood, as in Chaldea and elsewhere. Finally, a
+boy and a girl were born out of the bowl. From this pair sprang men, and
+certain of the gods, jumping into a furnace, became sun and moon. To the
+sun they then, in Aztec fashion, sacrificed themselves, and there,
+one might think, was an end of them. But they afterwards appeared in
+wondrous fashions to their worshippers, and ordained the ritual of
+religion. According to another legend, man and woman (as in African
+myths) struggled out of a hole in the ground.(1)
+
+
+(1) Authorities: Ixtlil.; Kingsborough, ix. pp. 205, 206; Sahagun, Hist.
+Gen., i. 3, vii. 2; J. G. Muller, p. 510, where Muller compares the
+Delphic conception of ages of the world; Bancroft, iii. pp. 60, 65.
+
+
+The myths of the peoples under the empire of the Incas in Peru are
+extremely interesting, because almost all mythical formations are found
+existing together, while we have historical evidence as to the order and
+manner of their development. The Peru of the Incas covered the modern
+state of the same name, and included Ecuador, with parts of Chili and
+Bolivia. M. Reville calculates that the empire was about 2500 miles in
+length, four times as long as France, and that its breadth was from 250
+to 500 miles. The country, contained three different climatic regions,
+and was peopled by races of many different degrees of culture, all more
+or less subject to the dominion of the Children of the Sun. The three
+regions were the dry strip along the coast, the fertile and cultivated
+land about the spurs of the Cordilleras, and the inland mountain
+regions, inhabited by the wildest races. Near Cuzco, the Inca capital,
+was the Lake of Titicaca, the Mediterranean, as it were, of Peru, for
+on the shores of this inland sea was developed the chief civilisation of
+the new world.
+
+As to the institutions, myths and religion of the empire, we have
+copious if contradictory information. There are the narratives of the
+Spanish conquerors, especially of Pizarro's chaplain, Valverde, an
+ignorant bigoted fanatic. Then we have somewhat later travellers and
+missionaries, of whom Cieza de Leon (his book was published thirty years
+after the conquest, in 1553) is one of the most trustworthy. The "Royal
+Commentaries" of Garcilasso de la Vega, son of an Inca lady and a
+Spanish conqueror, have often already been quoted. The critical spirit
+and sound sense of Garcilasso are in remarkable contrast to the stupid
+orthodoxy of the Spaniards, but some allowance must be made for his
+fervent Peruvian patriotism. He had heard the Inca traditions repeated
+in boyhood, and very early in life collected all the information
+which his mother and maternal uncle had to give him, or which could be
+extracted from the quipus (the records of knotted cord), and from
+the commemorative pictures of his ancestors. Garcilasso had access,
+moreover, to the "torn papers" of Blas Valera, an early Spanish
+missionary of unusual sense and acuteness. Christoval de Moluna is also
+an excellent authority, and much may be learned from the volume of Rites
+and Laws of the Yncas.(1)
+
+
+(1) A more complete list of authorities, including the garrulous Acosta,
+is published by M. Reville in his Hibbert Lectures, pp. 136, 137.
+Garcilasso, Cieza de Leon, Christoval de Moluna, Acosta and the Rites
+and Laws have all been translated by Mr. Clements Markham, and are
+published, with the editor's learned and ingenious notes, in the
+collection of the Hakluyt Society. Care must be taken to discriminate
+between what is reported about the Indians of the various provinces,
+who were in very different grades of culture, and what is told about the
+Incas themselves.
+
+
+The political and religious condition of the Peruvian empire is very
+clearly conceived and stated by Garcilasso. Without making due allowance
+for that mysterious earlier civilisation, older than the Incas, whose
+cyclopean buildings are the wonder of travellers, Garcilasso attributes
+the introduction of civilisation to his own ancestors. Allowing for what
+is confessedly mythical in his narrative, it must be admitted that
+he has a firm grasp of what the actual history must have been. He
+recognises a period of savagery before the Incas, a condition of the
+rudest barbarism, which still existed on the fringes and mountain
+recesses of the empire. The religion of that period was mere magic and
+totemism. From all manner of natural objects, but chiefly from beasts
+and birds, the various savage stocks of Peru claimed descent, and they
+revered and offered sacrifice to their totemic ancestors.(1) Garcilasso
+adds, what is almost incredible, that the Indians tamely permitted
+themselves to be eaten by their totems, when these were carnivorous
+animals. They did this with the less reluctance as they were cannibals,
+and accustomed to breed children for the purposes of the cuisine from
+captive women taken in war.(2) Among the huacas or idols, totems,
+fetishes and other adorable objects of the Indians, worshipped before
+and retained after the introduction of the Inca sun-totem and solar
+cult, Garcilasso names trees, hills, rocks, caves, fountains, emeralds,
+pieces of jasper, tigers, lions, bears, foxes, monkeys, condors, owls,
+lizards, toads, frogs, sheep, maize, the sea, "for want of larger gods,
+crabs" and bats. The bat was also the totem of the Zotzil, the chief
+family of the Cakchiquels of Guatemala, and the most high god of the
+Cakchiquels was worshipped in the shape of a bat. We are reminded of
+religion as it exists in Samoa. The explanation of Blas Valera was that
+in each totem (pacarissa) the Indians adored the devil.
+
+
+(1) Com. Real., vol. i., chap. ix., x. xi. pp. 47-53.
+
+(2) Cieza de Leon, xii., xv., xix., xxi., xxiii., xxvi., xxviii., xxxii.
+Cieza is speaking of people in the valley of Cauca, in New Granada.
+
+
+Athwart this early religion of totems and fetishes came, in Garcilasso's
+narrative, the purer religion of the Incas, with what he regards as a
+philosophic development of a belief in a Supreme Being. According to
+him, the Inca sun-worship was really a totemism of a loftier
+character. The Incas "knew how to choose gods better than the Indians".
+Garcilasso's theory is that the earlier totems were selected chiefly as
+distinguishing marks by the various stocks, though, of course, this
+does not explain why the animals or other objects of each family were
+worshipped or were regarded as ancestors, and the blood-connections of
+the men who adored them. The Incas, disdaining crabs, lizards, bats
+and even serpents and lions, "chose" the sun. Then, just like the other
+totemic tribes, they feigned to be of the blood and lineage of the sun.
+
+This fable is, in brief, the Inca myth of the origin of civilisation and
+of man, or at least of their breed of men. As M. Reville well remarks,
+it is obvious that the Inca claim is an adaptation of the local myth
+of Lake Titicaca, the inland sea of Peru. According to that myth, the
+Children of the Sun, the ancestors of the Incas, came out of the earth
+(as in Greek and African legends) at Lake Titicaca, or reached its
+shores after wandering from the hole or cave whence they first emerged.
+The myth, as adapted by the Incas, takes for granted the previous
+existence of mankind, and, in some of its forms, the Inca period is
+preceded by the deluge.
+
+Of the Peruvian myth concerning the origin of things, the following
+account is given by a Spanish priest, Christoval de Moluna, in a report
+to the Bishop of Cuzco in 1570.(1) The story was collected from the
+lips of ancient Peruvians and old native priests, who again drew their
+information in part from the painted records reserved in the temple of
+the sun near Cuzco. The legend begins with a deluge myth; a cataclysm
+ended a period of human existence. All mankind perished except a man and
+woman, who floated in a box to a distance of several hundred miles
+from Cuzco. There the creator commanded them to settle, and there, like
+Pund-jel in Australia, he made clay images of men of all races, attired
+in their national dress, and then animated them. They were all fashioned
+and painted as correct models, and were provided with their national
+songs and with seed-corn. They then were put into the earth, and emerged
+all over the world at the proper places, some (as in Africa and Greece)
+coming out of fountains, some out of trees, some out of caves. For this
+reason they made huacas (worshipful objects or fetishes) of the trees,
+caves and fountains. Some of the earliest men were changed into stones,
+others into falcons, condors and other creatures which we know were
+totems in Peru. Probably this myth of metamorphosis was invented to
+account for the reverence paid to totems or pacarissas as the Peruvians
+called them. In Tiahuanaco, where the creation, or rather manufacture of
+men took place, the creator turned many sinners into stones. The sun was
+made in the shape of a man, and, as he soared into heaven, he called out
+in a friendly fashion to Manco Ccapac, the Ideal first Inca, "Look upon
+me as thy father, and worship me as thy father". In these fables the
+creator is called Pachyachachi, "Teacher of the world". According to
+Christoval, the creator and his sons were "eternal and unchangeable".
+Among the Canaris men descend from the survivor of the deluge, and a
+beautiful bird with the face of a woman, a siren in fact, but known
+better to ornithologists as a macaw. "The chief cause," says the good
+Christoval, "of these fables was ignorance of God."
+
+
+(1) Rites and Laws of the Yncas, p. 4, Hakluyt Society, 1873.
+
+
+The story, as told by Cieza de Leon, runs thus:(1) A white man of great
+stature (in fact, "a magnified non-natural man") came into the world,
+and gave life to beasts and human beings. His name was Ticiviracocha,
+and he was called the Father of the Sun.(2) There are likenesses of
+him in the temple, and he was regarded as a moral teacher. It was owing
+apparently to this benevolent being that four mysterious brothers and
+sisters emerged from a cave--Children of the Sun, fathers of the Incas,
+teachers of savage men. Their own conduct, however, was not exemplary,
+and they shut up in a hole in the earth the brother of whom they were
+jealous. This incident is even more common in the marchen or household
+tales than in the regular tribal or national myths of the world.(3) The
+buried brother emerged again with wings, and "without doubt he must
+have been some devil," says honest Cieza de Leon. This brother was Manco
+Ccapac, the heroic ancestor of the Incas, and he turned his jealous
+brethren into stones. The whole tale is in the spirit illustrated by the
+wilder romances of the Popol Vuh.
+
+
+(1) Second Part of the Chronicles of Peru, p 5.
+
+(2) See Making of Religion, pp. 265-270. Name and God are much disputed.
+
+(3) The story of Joseph and the marchen of Jean de l'Ours are well-known
+examples.
+
+
+Garcilasso gives three forms of this myth. According to "the old Inca,"
+his maternal uncle, it was the sun which sent down two of his children,
+giving them a golden staff, which would sink into the ground at the
+place where they were to rest from wandering. It sank at Lake Titicaca.
+About the current myths Garcilasso says generally that they were "more
+like dreams" than straightforward stories; but, as he adds, the Greeks
+and Romans also "invented fables worthy to be laughed at, and in greater
+number than the Indians. The stories of one age of heathenism may be
+compared with those of the other, and in many points they will be found
+to agree." This critical position of Garcilasso's will be proved correct
+when we reach the myths of Greeks and Indo-Aryans. The myth as narrated
+north-east of Cuzco speaks of the four brothers and four sisters who
+came out of caves, and the caves in Inca times were panelled with gold
+and silver.
+
+Athwart all these lower myths, survivals from the savage stage, comes
+what Garcilasso regards as the philosophical Inca belief in Pachacamac.
+This deity, to Garcilasso's mind, was purely spiritual: he had no image
+and dwelt in no temple; in fact, he is that very God whom the Spanish
+missionaries proclaimed. This view, though the fact has been doubted,
+was very probably held by the Amautas, or philosophical class in
+Peru.(1) Cieza de Leon says "the name of this devil, Pachacamac, means
+creator of the world". Garcilasso urges that Pachacamac was the animus
+mundi; that he did not "make the world," as Pund-jel and other savage
+demiurges made it, but that he was to the universe what the soul is to
+the body.
+
+
+(1) Com. Real., vol. i. p. 106.
+
+
+Here we find ourselves, if among myths at all, among the myths of
+metaphysics--rational myths; that is, myths corresponding to our present
+stage of thought, and therefore intelligible to us. Pachacamac "made the
+sun, and lightning, and thunder, and of these the sun was worshipped
+by the Incas". Garcilasso denies that the moon was worshipped. The
+reflections of the sceptical or monotheistic Inca, who declared that the
+sun, far from being a free agent, "seems like a thing held to its task,"
+are reported by Garcilasso, and appear to prove that solar worship was
+giving way, in the minds of educated Peruvians, a hundred years before
+the arrival of Pizarro and Valverde with his missal.(1)
+
+
+(1) Garcilasso, viii. 8, quoting Blas Valera.
+
+
+From this summary it appears that the higher Peruvian religion had
+wrested to its service, and to the dynastic purposes of the Incas, a
+native myth of the familiar class, in which men come ready made out of
+holes in the ground. But in Peru we do not find nearly such abundance of
+other savage origin myths as will be proved to exist in the legends of
+Greeks and Indo-Aryans. The reason probably is that Peru left no
+native literature; the missionaries disdained stories of "devils," and
+Garcilasso's common sense and patriotism were alike revolted by the
+incidents of stories "more like dreams" than truthful records. He
+therefore was silent about them. In Greece and India, on the other hand,
+the native religious literature preserved myths of the making of man out
+of clay, of his birth from trees and stones, of the fashioning of things
+out of the fragments of mutilated gods and Titans, of the cosmic egg, of
+the rending and wounding of a personal heaven and a personal earth, of
+the fishing up from the waters of a tiny earth which grew greater, of
+the development of men out of beasts, with a dozen other such notions as
+are familiar to contemporary Bushmen, Australians, Digger Indians, and
+Cahrocs. But in Greece and India these ideas coexist with myths and
+religious beliefs as purely spiritual and metaphysical as the belief in
+the Pachacamac of Garcilasso and the Amautas of Peru.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII. INDO-ARYAN MYTHS--SOURCES OF EVIDENCE.
+
+
+Authorities--Vedas--Brahmanas--Social condition of Vedic
+India--Arts--Ranks--War--Vedic fetishism--Ancestor worship--Date
+of Rig-Veda Hymns doubtful--Obscurity of the Hymns--Difficulty
+of interpreting the real character of Veda--Not primitive but
+sacerdotal--The moral purity not innocence but refinement.
+
+
+Before examining the myths of the Aryans of India, it is necessary to
+have a clear notion of the nature of the evidence from which we derive
+our knowledge of the subject. That evidence is found in a large and
+incongruous mass of literary documents, the heritage of the Indian
+people. In this mass are extremely ancient texts (the Rig-Veda, and
+the Atharva-Veda), expository comments of a date so much later that
+the original meaning of the older documents was sometimes lost (the
+Brahmanas), and poems and legendary collections of a period later still,
+a period when the whole character of religious thought had sensibly
+altered. In this literature there is indeed a certain continuity; the
+names of several gods of the earliest time are preserved in the legends
+of the latest. But the influences of many centuries of change, of
+contending philosophies, of periods of national growth and advance, and
+of national decadence and decay, have been at work on the mythology of
+India. Here we have myths that were perhaps originally popular tales,
+and are probably old; here again, we have later legends that certainly
+were conceived in the narrow minds of a pedantic and ceremonious
+priesthood. It is not possible, of course, to analyse in this place all
+the myths of all the periods; we must be content to point out some which
+seem to be typical examples of the working of the human intellect in
+its earlier or its later childhood, in its distant hours of barbaric
+beginnings, or in the senility of its sacerdotage.
+
+The documents which contain Indian mythology may be divided, broadly
+speaking, into four classes. First, and most ancient in date of
+composition, are the collections of hymns known as the Vedas. Next, and
+(as far as date of collection goes) far less ancient, are the expository
+texts called the Brahmanas. Later still, come other manuals of devotion
+and of sacred learning, called Sutras and Upanishads; and last are the
+epic poems (Itihasas), and the books of legends called Puranas. We are
+chiefly concerned here with the Vedas and Brahmanas. A gulf of time, a
+period of social and literary change, separates the Brahmanas from the
+Vedas. But the epics and Puranas differ perhaps even still more from the
+Brahmanas, on account of vast religious changes which brought new gods
+into the Indian Olympus, or elevated to the highest place old gods
+formerly of low degree. From the composition of the first Vedic hymn to
+the compilation of the latest Purana, religious and mythopoeic fancy was
+never at rest.
+
+Various motives induced various poets to assign, on various occasions
+the highest powers to this or the other god. The most antique legends
+were probably omitted or softened by some early Vedic bard (Rishi) of
+noble genius, or again impure myths were brought from the obscurity of
+oral circulation and foisted into literature by some poet less divinely
+inspired. Old deities were half-forgotten, and forgotten deities were
+resuscitated. Sages shook off superstitious bonds, priests forged new
+fetters on ancient patterns for themselves and their flocks. Philosophy
+explained away the more degrading myths; myths as degrading were
+suggested to dark and servile hearts by unscientific etymologies. Over
+the whole mass of ancient mythology the new mythology of a debased
+Brahmanic ritualism grew like some luxurious and baneful parasite. It is
+enough for our purpose if we can show that even in the purest and most
+antique mythology of India the element of traditional savagery survived
+and played its part, and that the irrational legends of the Vedas and
+Brahmanas can often be explained as relics of savage philosophy or
+faith, or as novelties planned on the ancient savage model, whether
+borrowed or native to the race.
+
+The oldest documents of Indian mythology are the Vedas, usually reckoned
+as four in number. The oldest, again, of the four, is the Sanhita
+("collection") of the Rig-Veda. It is a purely lyrical assortment of the
+songs "which the Hindus brought with them from their ancient homes on
+the banks of the Indus". In the manuscripts, the hymns are classified
+according to the families of poets to whom they are ascribed. Though
+composed on the banks of the Indus by sacred bards, the hymns were
+compiled and arranged in India proper. At what date the oldest hymns of
+which this collection is made up were first chanted it is impossible to
+say with even approximate certainty. Opinions differ, or have differed,
+between 2400 B.C. and 1400 B.C. as the period when the earliest sacred
+lyrics of the Veda may first have been listened by gods and men. In
+addition to the Rig-Veda we have the Sanhita of the Sama-Veda, "an
+anthology taken from the Rik-Samhita, comprising those of its verses
+which were intended to be chanted at the ceremonies of the soma
+sacrifice".(1) It is conjectured that the hymns of the Sama-Veda
+were borrowed from the Rig-Veda before the latter had been edited and
+stereotyped into its present form. Next comes the Yajur-Veda, "which
+contains the formulas for the entire sacrificial ceremonial, and indeed
+forms its proper foundations," the other Vedas being devoted to the soma
+sacrifice.(2) The Yajur-Veda has two divisions, known as the Black and
+the White Yajur, which have common matter, but differ in arrangement.
+The Black Yajur-Veda is also called the Taittirya, and it is described
+as "a motley undigested jumble of different pieces".(3) Last comes
+Atharva-Veda, not always regarded as a Veda properly speaking. It
+derives its name from an old semi-mythical priestly family, the
+Atharvans, and is full of magical formulae, imprecations, folk-lore and
+spells. There are good reasons for thinking this late as a collection,
+however early may be the magical ideas expressed in its contents.(4)
+
+
+(1) Weber, History of Indian Literature, Eng. transl., p. 63.
+
+(2) Ibid., p. 86.
+
+(3) Ibid, p. 87. The name Taittirya is derived from a partridge, or from
+a Rishi named Partridge in Sanskrit. There is a story that the pupils of
+a sage were turned into partridges, to pick up sacred texts.
+
+(4) Barth (Les Religions de l'Inde, p. 6) thinks that the existence of
+such a collection as the Atharva-Veda is implied, perhaps, in a text of
+the Rig-Veda, x. 90, 9.
+
+
+Between the Vedas, or, at all events, between the oldest of the Vedas,
+and the compilation of the Brahmanas, these "canonised explanations of
+a canonised text,"(1) it is probable that some centuries and many social
+changes intervened.(2)
+
+
+(1) Whitney, Oriental and Linguistic studies, First Series, p. 4.
+
+(2) Max Muller, Biographical Essays, p. 20. "The prose portions
+presuppose the hymns, and, to judge from the utter inability of the
+authors of the Brahmanas to understand the antiquated language of the
+hymns, these Brahmanas must be ascribed to a much later period than that
+which gave birth to the hymns."
+
+
+If we would criticise the documents for Indian mythology in a scientific
+manner, it is now necessary that we should try to discover, as far as
+possible, the social and religious condition of the people among whom
+the Vedas took shape. Were they in any sense "primitive," or were
+they civilised? Was their religion in its obscure beginnings or was it
+already a special and peculiar development, the fruit of many ages of
+thought? Now it is an unfortunate thing that scholars have constantly,
+and as it were involuntarily, drifted into the error of regarding
+the Vedas as if they were "primitive," as if they exhibited to us the
+"germs" and "genesis" of religion and mythology, as if they contained
+the simple though strange utterances of PRIMITIVE thought.(1) Thus Mr.
+Whitney declares, in his Oriental and Linguistic Studies, "that the
+Vedas exhibit to us the very earliest germs of the Hindu culture". Mr.
+Max Muller avers that "no country can be compared to India as
+offering opportunities for a real study of the genesis and growth of
+religion".(2) Yet the same scholar observes that "even the earliest
+specimens of Vedic poetry belong to the modern history of the race, and
+that the early period of the historical growth of religion had passed
+away before the Rishis (bards) could have worshipped their Devas
+or bright beings with sacred hymns and invocations". Though this is
+manifestly true, the sacred hymns and invocations of the Rishis are
+constantly used as testimony bearing on the beginning of the historical
+growth of religion. Nay, more; these remains of "the modern history of
+the race" are supposed to exhibit mythology in the process of making, as
+if the race had possessed no mythology before it reached a comparatively
+modern period, the Vedic age. In the same spirit, Dr. Muir, the learned
+editor of Sanskrit Texts, speaks in one place as if the Vedic hymns
+"illustrated the natural workings of the human mind in the period of
+its infancy".(3) A brief examination of the social and political and
+religious condition of man, as described by the poets of the Vedas,
+will prove that his infancy had long been left behind him when the first
+Vedic hymns were chanted.
+
+
+(1) Ibid., Rig-Veda Sanhita, p. vii.
+
+(2) Hibbert Lectures, p. 131.
+
+(3) Nothing can prove more absolutely and more briefly the late
+character of Vedic faith than the fact that the faith had already to
+be defended against the attacks of sceptics. The impious denied the
+existence of Indra because he was invisible. Rig-Veda, ii. 12, 5; viii.
+89, 3; v. 30, 1-2; vi. 27, 3. Bergaigne, ii. 167. "Es gibt keinen Indra,
+so hat der eine und der ander gesagt" (Ludwig's version).
+
+
+As Barth observes, the very ideas which permeate the Veda, the idea of
+the mystic efficacy of sacrifice, of brahma, prove that the poems are
+profoundly sacerdotal; and this should have given pause to the writers
+who have persisted in representing the hymns as the work of primitive
+shepherds praising their gods as they feed their flocks.(1) In the Vedic
+age the ranks of society are already at least as clearly defined as in
+Homeric Greece. "We men," says a poet of the Rig-Veda,(2) "have all our
+different imaginations and designs. The carpenter seeks something that
+is broken, the doctor a patient, the priest some one who will offer
+libations.... The artisan continually seeks after a man with plenty of
+gold.... I am a poet, my father is a doctor, and my mother is a grinder
+of corn." Chariots and the art of the chariot-builder are as frequently
+spoken of as in the Iliad. Spears, swords, axes and coats of mail were
+in common use. The art of boat-building or of ship-building was well
+known. Kine and horses, sheep and dogs, had long been domesticated. The
+bow was a favourite weapon, and warriors fought in chariots, like the
+Homeric Greeks and the Egyptians. Weaving was commonly practised. The
+people probably lived, as a rule, in village settlements, but cities or
+fortified places were by no means unknown.(3) As for political society,
+"kings are frequently mentioned in the hymns," and "it was regarded as
+eminently beneficial for a king to entertain a family priest," on whom
+he was expected to confer thousands of kine, lovely slaves and lumps of
+gold. In the family polygamy existed, probably as the exception. There
+is reason to suppose that the brother-in-law was permitted, if
+not expected, to "raise up seed" to his dead brother, as among the
+Hebrews.(4) As to literature, the very structure of the hymns proves
+that it was elaborate and consciously artistic. M. Barth writes: "It
+would be a great mistake to speak of the primitive naivete of the Vedic
+poetry and religion".(5) Both the poetry and the religion, on the other
+hand, display in the highest degree the mark of the sacerdotal spirit.
+The myths, though originally derived from nature-worship, in an infinite
+majority of cases only reflect natural phenomena through a veil of
+ritualistic corruptions.(6) The rigid division of castes is seldom
+recognised in the Rig-Veda. We seem to see caste in the making.(7)
+The Rishis and priests of the princely families were on their way to
+becoming the all-powerful Brahmans. The kings and princes were on their
+way to becoming the caste of Kshatriyas or warriors. The mass of the
+people was soon to sink into the caste of Vaisyas and broken men.
+Non-Aryan aborigines and others were possibly developing into the caste
+of Sudras. Thus the spirit of division and of ceremonialism had still
+some of its conquests to achieve. But the extraordinary attention given
+and the immense importance assigned to the details of sacrifice, and
+the supernatural efficacy constantly attributed to a sort of magical
+asceticism (tapas, austere fervour), prove that the worst and most
+foolish elements of later Indian society and thought were in the Vedic
+age already in powerful existence.
+
+
+(1) Les Religions de l'Inde, p. 27.
+
+(2) ix. 112.
+
+(3) Ludwig, Rig-Veda, iii. 203. The burgs were fortified with wooden
+palisades, capable of being destroyed by fire. "Cities" may be too
+magnificent a word for what perhaps were more like pahs. But compare
+Kaegi, The Rig-Veda, note 42, Engl. transl. Kaegi's book (translated by
+Dr. Arrowsmith, Boston, U.S., 1886) is probably the best short manual of
+the subject.
+
+(4) Deut. xxv. 5; Matt. xxii. 24.
+
+(5) Revue de l'Histoire des Religions, i. 245.
+
+(6) Ludwig, iii. 262.
+
+(7) On this subject see Muir, i. 192, with the remarks of Haug. "From
+all we know, the real origin of caste seems to go back to a time
+anterior to the composition of the Vedic hymns, though its development
+into a regular system with insurmountable barriers can be referred only
+to the later period of the Vedic times." Roth approaches the subject
+from the word brahm, that is, prayer with a mystical efficacy, as his
+starting-point. From brahm, prayer, came brahma, he who pronounces the
+prayers and performs the rite. This celebrant developed into a priest,
+whom to entertain brought blessings on kings. This domestic chaplaincy
+(conferring peculiar and even supernatural benefits) became hereditary
+in families, and these, united by common interests, exalted themselves
+into the Brahman caste. But in the Vedic age gifts of prayer and poetry
+alone marked out the purohitas, or men put forward to mediate between
+gods and mortals. Compare Ludwig, iii. 221.
+
+
+Thus it is self-evident that the society in which the Vedic poets lived
+was so far from being PRIMITIVE that it was even superior to the higher
+barbarisms (such as that of the Scythians of Herodotus and Germans of
+Tacitus), and might be regarded as safely arrived at the threshold of
+civilisation. Society possessed kings, though they may have been kings
+of small communities, like those who warred with Joshua or fought under
+the walls of Thebes or Troy. Poets were better paid than they seem to
+have been at the courts of Homer or are at the present time. For the
+tribal festivals special priests were appointed, "who distinguished
+themselves by their comprehensive knowledge of the requisite rites
+and by their learning, and amongst whom a sort of rivalry is gradually
+developed, according as one tribe or another is supposed to have more or
+less prospered by its sacrifices".(1) In the family marriage is sacred,
+and traces of polyandry and of the levirate, surviving as late as the
+epic poems, were regarded as things that need to be explained away.
+Perhaps the most barbaric feature in Vedic society, the most singular
+relic of a distant past, is the survival, even in a modified and
+symbolic form, of human sacrifice.(2)
+
+
+(1) Weber, p. 37.
+
+(2) Wilson, Rig-Veda, i. p. 59-63; Muir, i. ii.; Wilson, Rig-Veda i. p.
+xxiv., ii. 8 (ii. 90); Aitareya Brahmana, Haug's version, vol. ii. pp.
+462, 469.
+
+
+As to the religious condition of the Vedic Aryans, we must steadily
+remember that in the Vedas we have the views of the Rishis only, that
+is, of sacred poets on their way to becoming a sacred caste. Necessarily
+they no more represent the POPULAR creeds than the psalmists and
+prophets, with their lofty monotheistic morality, represent the popular
+creeds of Israel. The faith of the Rishis, as will be shown later, like
+that of the psalmists, has a noble moral aspect. Yet certain elements of
+this higher creed are already found in the faiths of the lowest savages.
+The Rishis probably did not actually INVENT them. Consciousness of sin,
+of imperfection in the sight of divine beings, has been developed (as
+it has even in Australia) and is often confessed. But on the whole
+the religion of the Rishis is practical--it might almost be said, is
+magical. They desire temporal blessings, rain, sunshine, long life,
+power, wealth in flocks and herds. The whole purpose of the sacrifices
+which occupy so much of their time and thought is to obtain these good
+things. The sacrifice and the sacrificer come between gods and men. On
+the man's side is faith, munificence, a compelling force of prayer and
+of intentness of will. The sacrifice invigorates the gods to do the will
+of the sacrificer; it is supposed to be mystically celebrated in heaven
+as well as on earth--the gods are always sacrificing. Often (as when
+rain is wanted) the sacrifice imitates the end which it is desirable to
+gain.(1) In all these matters a minute ritual is already observed. The
+mystic word brahma, in the sense of hymn or prayer of a compelling and
+magical efficacy, has already come into use. The brahma answers
+almost to the Maori karakia or incantation and charm. "This brahma of
+Visvamitra protects the tribe of Bharata." "Atri with the fourth prayer
+discovered the sun concealed by unholy darkness."(2) The complicated
+ritual, in which prayer and sacrifice were supposed to exert a
+constraining influence on the supernatural powers, already existed, Haug
+thinks, in the time of the chief Rishis or hymnists of the Rig-Veda.(3)
+
+
+(1) Compare "The Prayers of Savages" in J. A. Farrer's Primitive
+Manners, and Ludwig, iii. 262-296, and see Bergaigne, La Religion
+Vedique, vol. i. p. 121.
+
+(2) See texts in Muir, i. 242.
+
+(3) Preface to translation of Aitareya Brahmana, p. 36.
+
+
+In many respects the nature of the idea of the divine, as entertained
+by the Rishis of the Rig-Veda, is still matter for discussion. In the
+chapter on Vedic gods such particulars as can be ascertained will be
+given. Roughly speaking, the religion is mainly, though not wholly,
+a cult of departmental gods, originally, in certain cases, forces of
+Nature, but endowed with moral earnestness. As to fetishism in the Vedas
+the opinions of the learned are divided. M. Bergaigne(1) looks on
+the whole ritual as, practically, an organised fetishism, employed
+to influence gods of a far higher and purer character. Mr. Max Muller
+remarks, "that stones, bones, shells, herbs and all the other so-called
+fetishes, are simply absent in the old hymns, though they appear in more
+modern hymns, particularly those of the Atharva-Veda. When artificial
+objects are mentioned and celebrated in the Rig-Veda, they are only
+such as might be praised even by Wordsworth or Tennyson--chariots, bows,
+quivers, axes, drums, sacrificial vessels and similar objects. They
+never assume any individual character; they are simply mentioned as
+useful or precious, it may be as sacred."(2)
+
+
+(1) La Religion Vedique, vol. i. p. 123. "Le culte est assimilable dans
+une certaine mesure aux incantations, aux pratiques magiques."
+
+(2) Hibbert Lectures, p. 198.
+
+
+When the existence of fetish "herbs" is denied by Mr. Max Muller, he
+does not, of course, forget Soma, that divine juice. It is also to be
+noted that in modern India, as Mr. Max Muller himself observes, Sir
+Alfred Lyall finds that "the husbandman prays to his plough and the
+fisher to his net," these objects being, at present, fetishes. In
+opposition to Mr. Max Muller, Barth avers that the same kind of
+fetishism which flourishes to-day flourishes in the Rig-Veda.
+"Mountains, rivers, springs, trees, herbs are invoked as so many powers.
+The beasts which live with man--the horse, the cow, the dog, the bird
+and the animals which imperil his existence--receive a cult of praise
+and prayer. Among the instruments of ritual, some objects are more
+than things consecrated--they are divinities; and the war-chariot, the
+weapons of defence and offence, the plough, are the objects not only
+of benedictions but of prayers."(1) These absolute contradictions on
+matters of fact add, of course, to the difficulty of understanding the
+early Indo-Aryan religion. One authority says that the Vedic people were
+fetish-worshippers; another authority denies it.
+
+
+(1) Barth, Les Religions de l'Inde, p. 7, with the Vedic texts.
+
+
+Were the Rishis ancestor-worshippers? Barth has no doubt whatever that
+they were. In the pitris or fathers he recognises ancestral spirits, now
+"companions of the gods, and gods themselves. At their head appear the
+earliest celebrants of the sacrifice, Atharvan, the Angiras, the Kavis
+(the pitris, par excellence) equals of the greatest gods, spirits who,
+BY DINT OF SACRIFICE, drew forth the world from chaos, gave birth to the
+sun and lighted the stars,"--cosmical feats which, as we have seen,
+are sometimes attributed by the lower races to their idealised mythic
+ancestors, the "old, old ones" of Australians and Ovahereroes.
+
+A few examples of invocations of the ancestral spirits may not be out
+of place.(1) "May the Fathers protect me in my invocation of the gods."
+Here is a curious case, especially when we remember how the wolf, in
+the North American myth, scattered the stars like spangles over the sky:
+"The fathers have adorned the sky with stars".(2)
+
+
+(1) Rig-Veda, vi. 52,4.
+
+(2) Ibid., x. 68, xi.
+
+Mr. Whitney (Oriental and Linguistic Studies, First Series, p. 59) gives
+examples of the ceremony of feeding the Aryan ghosts. "The fathers are
+supposed to assemble, upon due invocation, about the altar of him who
+would pay them homage, to seat themselves upon the straw or matting
+spread for each of the guests invited, and to partake of the offerings
+set before them." The food seems chiefly to consist of rice, sesame and
+honey.
+
+
+Important as is the element of ancestor-worship in the evolution of
+religion, Mr. Max Muller, in his Hibbert Lectures, merely remarks that
+thoughts and feelings about the dead "supplied some of the earliest and
+most important elements of religion"; but how these earliest elements
+affect his system does not appear. On a general view, then, the
+religion of the Vedic poets contained a vast number of elements in
+solution--elements such as meet us in every quarter of the globe. The
+belief in ancestral ghosts, the adoration of fetishes, the devotion to
+a moral ideal, contemplated in the persons of various deities, some of
+whom at least have been, and partly remain, personal natural forces, are
+all mingled, and all are drifting towards a kind of pantheism, in which,
+while everything is divine, and gods are reckoned by millions, the
+worshipper has glimpses of one single divine essence. The ritual, as we
+have seen, is more or less magical in character. The general elements
+of the beliefs are found, in various proportions, everywhere; the
+pantheistic mysticism is almost peculiar to India. It is, perhaps,
+needless to repeat that a faith so very composite, and already so
+strongly differentiated, cannot possibly be "primitive," and that the
+beliefs and practices of a race so highly organised in society and
+so well equipped in material civilisation as the Vedic Aryans cannot
+possibly be "near the beginning". Far from expecting to find in the
+Veda the primitive myths of the Aryans, we must remember that myth had
+already, when these hymns were sung, become obnoxious to the religious
+sentiment. "Thus," writes Barth, "the authors of the hymns have
+expurgated, or at least left in the shade, a vast number of legends
+older than their time; such, for example, as the identity of soma with
+the moon, as the account of the divine families, of the parricide of
+Indra, and a long list might be made of the reticences of the Veda....
+It would be difficult to extract from the hymns a chapter on the loves
+of the gods. The goddesses are veiled, the adventures of the gods are
+scarcely touched on in passing.... We must allow for the moral delicacy
+of the singers, and for their dislike of speaking too precisely about
+the gods. Sometimes it seems as if their chief object was to avoid plain
+speaking.... But often there is nothing save jargon and indolence of
+mind in this voluntary obscurity, for already in the Veda the Indian
+intellect is deeply smitten with its inveterate malady of affecting
+mystery the more, the more it has nothing to conceal; the mania for
+scattering symbols which symbolise no reality, and for sporting with
+riddles which it is not worth while to divine."(1) Barth, however, also
+recognises amidst these confusions, "the inquietude of a heart deeply
+stirred, which seeks truth and redemption in prayer". Such is the
+natural judgment of the clear French intellect on the wilfully obscure,
+tormented and evasive intellect of India.
+
+
+(1) Les Religions de l'Inde, p. 21.
+
+
+It would be interesting were it possible to illuminate the criticism of
+Vedic religion by ascertaining which hymns in the Rig-Veda are the most
+ancient, and which are later. Could we do this, we might draw inferences
+as to the comparative antiquity of the religious ideas in the poems.
+But no such discrimination of relative antiquity seems to be within
+the reach of critics. M. Bergaigne thinks it impossible at present to
+determine the relative age of the hymns by any philological test. The
+ideas expressed are not more easily arrayed in order of date. We might
+think that the poems which contain most ceremonial allusions were the
+latest. But Mr. Max Muller says that "even the earliest hymns have
+sentiments worthy of the most advanced ceremonialists".(1)
+
+
+(1) History of Sanskrit Literature, p. 556.
+
+
+The first and oldest source of our knowledge of Indo-Aryan myths is the
+Rig-Veda, whose nature and character have been described. The second
+source is the Atharva-Veda with the Brahmanas. The peculiarity of the
+Atharva is its collection of magical incantations spells and fragments
+of folklore. These are often, doubtless, of the highest antiquity.
+Sorcery and the arts of medicine-men are earlier in the course of
+evolution than priesthood. We meet them everywhere among races who have
+not developed the institution of an order of priests serving national
+gods. As a collection, the Atharva-Veda is later than the Rig-Veda,
+but we need not therefore conclude that the IDEAS of the Atharva are "a
+later development of the more primitive ideas of the Rig-Veda". Magic is
+quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus; the ideas of the Atharva-Veda
+are everywhere; the peculiar notions of the Rig-Veda are the special
+property of an advanced and highly differentiated people. Even in the
+present collected shape, M. Barth thinks that many hymns of the Atharva
+are not much later than those of the Rig-Veda. Mr. Whitney, admitting
+the lateness of the Atharva as a collection, says, "This would not
+necessarily imply that the main body of the Atharva hymns were
+not already in existence when the compilation of the Rig-Veda took
+place".(1) The Atharva refers to some poets of the Rig (as certain
+hymnists in the Rig also do) as earlier men. If in the Rig (as Weber
+says) "there breathes a lively natural feeling, a warm love of nature,
+while in the Atharva, on the contrary, there predominates an anxious
+apprehension of evil spirits and their magical powers," it by no means
+follows that this apprehension is of later origin than the lively
+feeling for Nature. Rather the reverse. There appears to be no doubt(2)
+that the style and language of the Atharva are later than those of
+the Rig. Roth, who recognises the change, in language and style, yet
+considers the Atharva "part of the old literature".(3) He concludes that
+the Atharva contains many pieces which, "both by their style and ideas,
+are shown to be contemporary with the older hymns of the Rig-Veda".
+In religion, according to Muir,(4) the Atharva shows progress in the
+direction of monotheism in its celebration of Brahman, but it also
+introduces serpent-worship.
+
+
+(1) Journal of the American Oriental Society. iv. 253.
+
+(2) Muir, ii. 446.
+
+(3) Ibid., ii. 448.
+
+(4) Ibid., ii. 451.
+
+
+As to the Atharva, then, we are free to suppose, if we like, that the
+dark magic, the evil spirits, the incantations, are old parts of Indian,
+as of all other popular beliefs, though they come later into literature
+than the poetry about Ushas and the morality of Varuna. The same remarks
+apply to our third source of information, the Brahmanas. These are
+indubitably comments on the sacred texts very much more modern in form
+than the texts themselves. But it does not follow, and this is most
+important for our purpose, that the myths in the Brahmanas are all later
+than the Vedic myths or corruptions of the Veda. Muir remarks,(1) "The
+Rig-Veda, though the oldest collection, does not necessarily contain
+everything that is of the greatest age in Indian thought or tradition.
+We know, for example, that certain legends, bearing the impress of
+the highest antiquity, such as that of the deluge, appear first in the
+Brahmanas." We are especially interested in this criticism, because most
+of the myths which we profess to explain as survivals of savagery are
+narrated in the Brahmanas. If these are necessarily late corruptions of
+Vedic ideas, because the collection of the Brahmanas is far more modern
+than that of the Veda, our argument is instantly disproved. But if ideas
+of an earlier stratum of thought than the Vedic stratum may appear in
+a later collection, as ideas of an earlier stratum of thought than
+the Homeric appear in poetry and prose far later than Homer, then our
+contention is legitimate. It will be shown in effect that a number of
+myths of the Brahmanas correspond in character and incident with the
+myths of savages, such as Cahrocs and Ahts. Our explanation is, that
+these tales partly survived, in the minds perhaps of conservative local
+priesthoods, from the savage stage of thought, or were borrowed from
+aborigines in that stage, or were moulded in more recent times on
+surviving examples of that wild early fancy.
+
+
+(1) Muir, iv. 450.
+
+
+In the age of the Brahmanas the people have spread southwards from the
+basin of the Indus to that of the Ganges. The old sacred texts have
+begun to be scarcely comprehensible. The priesthood has become much more
+strictly defined and more rigorously constituted. Absurd as it may seem,
+the Vedic metres, like the Gayatri, have been personified, and appear as
+active heroines of stories presumably older than this personification.
+The Asuras have descended from the rank of gods to that of the heavenly
+opposition to Indra's government; they are now a kind of fiends, and the
+Brahmanas are occupied with long stories about the war in heaven,
+itself a very ancient conception. Varuna becomes cruel on occasion, and
+hostile. Prajapati becomes the great mythical hero, and inherits the
+wildest myths of the savage heroic beasts and birds.
+
+The priests are now Brahmans, a hereditary divine caste, who possess all
+the vast and puerile knowledge of ritual and sacrificial minutiae. As
+life in the opera is a series of songs, so life in the Brahmanas is a
+sequence of sacrifices. Sacrifice makes the sun rise and set, and the
+rivers run this way or that.
+
+The study of Indian myth is obstructed, as has been shown, by the
+difficulty of determining the relative dates of the various legends, but
+there are a myriad of other obstacles to the study of Indian mythology.
+A poet of the Vedas says, "The chanters of hymns go about enveloped in
+mist, and unsatisfied with idle talk".(1) The ancient hymns are still
+"enveloped in mist," owing to the difficulty of their language and the
+variety of modern renderings and interpretations. The heretics of
+Vedic religion, the opponents of the orthodox commentators in ages
+comparatively recent, used to complain that the Vedas were simply
+nonsense, and their authors "knaves and buffoons". There are moments
+when the modern student of Vedic myths is inclined to echo this petulant
+complaint. For example, it is difficult enough to find in the Rig-Veda
+anything like a categoric account of the gods, and a description of
+their personal appearance. But in Rig-Veda, viii. 29, 1, we read of one
+god, "a youth, brown, now hostile, now friendly; a golden lustre
+invests him". Who is this youth? "Soma as the moon," according to the
+commentators. M. Langlois thinks the sun is meant. Dr. Aufrecht thinks
+the troop of Maruts (spirits of the storm), to whom, he remarks, the
+epithet "dark-brown, tawny" is as applicable as it is to their master,
+Rudra. This is rather confusing, and a mythological inquirer would like
+to know for certain whether he is reading about the sun or soma, the
+moon, or the winds.
+
+
+(1) Rig-Veda, x. 82, 7, but compare Bergaigne, op. cit., iii. 72,
+"enveloppes de nuees et de murmures".
+
+
+To take another example; we open Mr. Max Muller's translation of the
+Rig-Veda at random, say at page 49. In the second verse of the hymn
+to the Maruts, Mr. Muller translates, "They who were born together,
+self-luminous, with the spotted deer (the clouds), the spears, the
+daggers, the glittering ornaments. I hear their whips almost close by,
+as they crack them in their hands; they gain splendour on their way."
+Now Wilson translates this passage, "Who, borne by spotted deer, were
+born self-luminous, with weapons, war-cries and decorations. I hear the
+cracking of their whips in their hands, wonderfully inspiring courage in
+the fight." Benfey has, "Who with stags and spears, and with thunder and
+lightning, self-luminous, were born. Hard by rings the crack of their
+whip as it sounds in their hands; bright fare they down in storm."
+Langlois translates, "Just born are they, self-luminous. Mark ye their
+arms, their decorations, their car drawn by deer? Hear ye their clamour?
+Listen! 'tis the noise of the whip they hold in their hands, the sound
+that stirs up courage in the battle." This is an ordinary example of the
+diversities of Vedic translation. It is sufficiently puzzling, nor is
+the matter made more transparent by the variety of opinion as to the
+meaning of the "deer" along with which the Maruts are said (by some of
+the translators) to have been born. This is just the sort of passage
+on which a controversy affecting the whole nature of Vedic mythological
+ideas might be raised. According to a text in the Yajur Veda, gods, and
+men, and beasts, and other matters were created from various portions of
+the frame of a divine being named Prajapati.(1) The god Agni, Brahmans
+and the goat were born from the mouth of Prajapati. From his breast and
+arms came the god Indra (sometimes spoken of as a ram), the sheep, and
+of men the Rajanya. Cows and gods called Visvadevas were born together
+from his middle. Are we to understand the words "they who were born
+together with the spotted deer" to refer to a myth of this kind--a myth
+representing the Maruts and deer as having been born at the same birth,
+as Agni came with the goat, and Indra with the sheep? This is just the
+point on which the Indian commentators were divided.(2) Sayana, the old
+commentator, says, "The legendary school takes them for deer with white
+spots; the etymological school, for the many- lines of
+clouds". The modern legendary (or anthropological) and etymological (or
+philological) students of mythology are often as much at variance in
+their attempts to interpret the traditions of India.
+
+
+(1) Muir, Sanskrit Texts, 2nd edit., i. 16.
+
+(2) Max Muller, Rig-Veda Sanhita, trans., vol. i. p. 59.
+
+
+Another famous, and almost comic, example of the difficulty of Vedic
+interpretation is well known. In Rig-Veda, x. 16, 4, there is a funeral
+hymn. Agni, the fire-god, is supplicated either to roast a goat or to
+warm the soul of the dead and convey it to paradise. Whether the soul
+is to be thus comforted or the goat is to be grilled, is a question that
+has mightily puzzled Vedic doctors.(1) Professor Muller and M. Langlois
+are all for "the immortal soul", the goat has advocates, or had
+advocates, in Aufrecht, Ludwig and Roth. More important difficulties
+of interpretation are illustrated by the attitude of M. Bergaigne in
+La Religion Vedique, and his controversy with the great German
+lexicographers. The study of mythology at one time made the Vedas its
+starting-point. But perhaps it would be wise to begin from something
+more intelligible, something less perplexed by difficulties of language
+and diversities of interpretation.
+
+
+(1) Muir, v. 217.
+
+
+In attempting to criticise the various Aryan myths, we shall be guided,
+on the whole, by the character of the myths themselves. Pure and
+elevated conceptions we shall be inclined to assign to a pure and
+elevated condition of thought (though such conceptions do, recognisably,
+occur in the lowest known religious strata), and we shall make no
+difficulty about believing that Rishis and singers capable of noble
+conceptions existed in an age very remote in time, in a society which
+had many of the features of a lofty and simple civilisation. But we
+shall not, therefore, assume that the hymns of these Rishis are in any
+sense "primitive," or throw much light on the infancy of the human mind,
+or on the "origin" of religious and heroic myths. Impure, childish
+and barbaric conceptions, on the other hand, we shall be inclined to
+attribute to an impure, childish, and barbaric condition of thought; and
+we shall again make no difficulty about believing that ideas originally
+conceived when that stage of thought was general have been retained and
+handed down to a far later period. This view of the possible, or rather
+probable, antiquity of many of the myths preserved in the Brahmanas
+is strengthened, if it needed strengthening, by the opinion of Dr.
+Weber.(1) "We must indeed assume generally with regard to many of those
+legends (in the Brahmanas of the Rig-Veda) that they had already gained
+a rounded independent shape in tradition before they were incorporated
+into the Brahmanas; and of this we have frequent evidence in the
+DISTINCTLY ARCHAIC CHARACTER OF THEIR LANGUAGE, compared with that of
+the rest of the text."
+
+
+(1) History of Indian Literature, English trans., p. 47.
+
+
+We have now briefly stated the nature and probable relative antiquity of
+the evidence which is at the disposal of Vedic mythologists. The chief
+lesson we would enforce is the necessity of suspending the judgment when
+the Vedas are represented as examples of primitive and comparatively
+pure and simple natural religion. They are not primitive; they are
+highly differentiated, highly complex, extremely enigmatic expressions
+of fairly advanced and very peculiar religious thought. They are not
+morally so very pure as has been maintained, and their purity, such as
+it is, seems the result of conscious reticence and wary selection rather
+than of primeval innocence. Yet the bards or editors have by no means
+wholly excluded very ancient myths of a thoroughly savage character.
+These will be chiefly exposed in the chapter on "Indo-Aryan Myths of the
+Beginnings of Things," which follows.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII. INDIAN MYTHS OF THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD AND OF MAN.
+
+Comparison of Vedic and savage myths--The metaphysical Vedic account of
+the beginning of things--Opposite and savage fable of world made out
+of fragments of a man--Discussion of this hymn--Absurdities of
+Brahmanas--Prajapati, a Vedic Unkulunkulu or Qat--Evolutionary
+myths--Marriage of heaven and earth--Myths of Puranas, their savage
+parallels--Most savage myths are repeated in Brahmanas.
+
+
+In discussing the savage myths of the origin of the world and of man, we
+observed that they were as inconsistent as they were fanciful. Among the
+fancies embodied in the myths was noted the theory that the world,
+or various parts of it, had been formed out of the body of some
+huge non-natural being, a god, or giant, or a member of some ancient
+mysterious race. We also noted the myths of the original union of heaven
+and earth, and their violent separation as displayed in the tales
+of Greeks and Maoris, to which may be added the Acagchemem nation
+in California.(1) Another feature of savage cosmogonies, illustrated
+especially in some early Slavonic myths, in Australian legends, and in
+the faith of the American races, was the creation of the world, or the
+recovery of a drowned world by animals, as the raven, the dove and
+the coyote. The hatching of all things out of an egg was another rude
+conception, chiefly noted among the Finns. The Indian form occurs in the
+Satapatha Brahmana.(2) The preservation of the human race in the Deluge,
+or the creation of the race after the Deluge, was yet another detail
+of savage mythology; and for many of these fancies we seemed to find a
+satisfactory origin in the exceedingly credulous and confused state of
+savage philosophy and savage imagination.
+
+
+(1) Bancroft, v. 162.
+
+(2) Sacred Books of the East, i. 216.
+
+
+The question now to be asked is, do the traditions of the Aryans of
+India supply us with myths so closely resembling the myths of Nootkas,
+Maoris and Australians that we may provisionally explain them as
+stories originally due to the invention of savages? This question may
+be answered in the affirmative. The Vedas, the Epics and the Puranas
+contain a large store of various cosmogonic traditions as inconsistent
+as the parallel myths of savages. We have an Aryan Ilmarinen, Tvashtri,
+who, like the Finnish smith, forged "the iron vault of hollow heaven"
+and the ball of earth.(1) Again, the earth is said to have sprung, as
+in some Mangaian fables, "from a being called Uttanapad".(2) Again,
+Brahmanaspati, "blew the gods forth like a blacksmith," and the gods had
+a hand in the making of things. In contrast with these childish pieces
+of anthropomorphism, we have the famous and sublime speculations of an
+often-quoted hymn.(3) It is thus that the poet dreams of the days before
+being and non-being began:--
+
+
+(1) Muir, v. 354.
+
+(2) Rig-Veda, x. 72, 4.
+
+(3) Ibid., x. 126.
+
+
+"There was then neither non-entity nor entity; there was no atmosphere
+nor sky above. What enveloped (all)?... Was it water, the profound
+abyss? Death was not then, nor immortality: there was no distinction of
+day or night. That One breathed calmly, self-supported; then was nothing
+different from it, or above it. In the beginning darkness existed,
+enveloped in darkness. All this was undistinguishable water. That One
+which lay void and wrapped in nothingness was developed by the power
+of fervour. Desire first arose in It, which was the primal germ of mind
+(and which) sages, searching with their intellect, have discovered to be
+the bond which connects entity with non-entity. The ray (or cord) which
+stretched across these (worlds), was it below or was it above? There
+were there impregnating powers and mighty forces, a self-supporting
+principle beneath and energy aloft. Who knows? who here can declare
+whence has sprung, whence this creation? The gods are subsequent to the
+development of this (universe); who then knows whence it arose? From
+what this creation arose, and whether (any one) made it or not, he who
+in the highest heaven is its ruler, he verily knows, or (even) he does
+not know."(1)
+
+
+(1) Muir, Sanskrit Texts, 2nd edit., v. 357.
+
+
+Here there is a Vedic hymn of the origin of things, from a book, it is
+true, supposed to be late, which is almost, if not absolutely, free from
+mythological ideas. The "self-supporting principle beneath and energy
+aloft" may refer, as Dr. Muir suggests, to the father, heaven above, and
+the mother, earth beneath. The "bond between entity and non-entity" is
+sought in a favourite idea of the Indian philosophers, that of tapas or
+"fervour". The other speculations remind us, though they are much more
+restrained and temperate in character, of the metaphysical chants of the
+New Zealand priests, of the Zunis, of Popol Vuh, and so on. These belong
+to very early culture.
+
+What is the relative age of this hymn? If it could be proved to be the
+oldest in the Veda, it would demonstrate no more than this, that in time
+exceedingly remote the Aryans of India possessed a philosopher, perhaps
+a school of philosophers, who applied the minds to abstract speculations
+on the origin of things. It could not prove that mythological
+speculations had not preceded the attempts of a purer philosophy. But
+the date cannot be ascertained. Mr. Max Muller cannot go farther than
+the suggestion that the hymn is an expression of the perennis quaedam
+philosophia of Leibnitz. We are also warned that a hymn is not
+necessarily modern because it is philosophical.(1) Certainly that
+is true; the Zunis, Maoris, and Mangaians exhibit amazing powers of
+abstract thought. We are not concerned to show that this hymn is late;
+but it seems almost superfluous to remark that ideas like those which it
+contains can scarcely be accepted as expressing man's earliest theory
+of the origin of all things. We turn from such ideas to those which the
+Aryans of India have in common with black men and red men, with far-off
+Finns and Scandinavians, Chaldaeans, Haidahs, Cherokees, Murri and
+Maori, Mangaians and Egyptians.
+
+
+(1) History of Sanskrit Literature, p. 568.
+
+
+The next Vedic account of creation which we propose to consider is as
+remote as possible in character from the sublime philosophic poem. In
+the Purusha Sukta, the ninetieth hymn of the tenth book of the Rig-Veda
+Sanhita, we have a description of the creation of all things out of the
+severed limbs of a magnified non-natural man, Purusha. This conception
+is of course that which occurs in the Norse myths of the rent body
+of Ymir. Borr's sons took the body of the Giant Ymir and of his flesh
+formed the earth, of his blood seas and waters, of his bones mountains,
+of his teeth rocks and stones, of his hair all manner of plants, of his
+skull the firmament, of his brains the clouds, and so forth. In Chaldean
+story, Bel cuts in twain the magnified non-natural woman Omorca,
+and converts the halves of her body into heaven and earth. Among the
+Iroquois in North America, Chokanipok was the giant whose limbs, bones
+and blood furnished the raw material of many natural objects; while
+in Mangaia portions of Ru, in Egypt of Set and Osiris, in Greece of
+Dionysus Zagreus were used in creating various things, such as stones,
+plants and metals. The same ideas precisely are found in the ninetieth
+hymn of the tenth book of the Rig-Veda. Yet it is a singular thing that,
+in all the discussions as to the antiquity and significance of this
+hymn which have come under our notice, there has not been one single
+reference made to parallel legends among Aryan or non-Aryan peoples. In
+accordance with the general principles which guide us in this work, we
+are inclined to regard any ideas which are at once rude in character
+and widely distributed, both among civilised and uncivilised races, as
+extremely old, whatever may be the age of the literary form in which
+they are presented. But the current of learned opinions as to the date
+of the Purusha Sukta, the Vedic hymn about the sacrifice of Purusha
+and the creation of the world out of fragments of his body, runs in the
+opposite direction. The hymn is not regarded as very ancient by most
+Sanskrit scholars. We shall now quote the hymn, which contains the data
+on which any theory as to its age must be founded:--(1)
+
+
+(1) Rig-Veda, x. 90; Muir, Sanskrit Texts, 2nd edit., i. 9.
+
+
+"Purusha has a thousand heads, a thousand eyes, a thousand feet. On
+every side enveloping the earth, he overpassed (it) by a space of ten
+fingers. Purusha himself is this whole (universe), whatever is and
+whatever shall be.... When the gods performed a sacrifice with Purusha
+as the oblation, the spring was its butter, the summer its fuel, and the
+autumn its (accompanying) offering. This victim, Purusha, born in the
+beginning, they immolated on the sacrificial grass. With him the gods,
+the Sadhyas, and the Rishis sacrificed. From that universal sacrifice
+were provided curds and butter. It formed those aerial (creatures) and
+animals both wild and tame. From that universal sacrifice sprang the Ric
+and Saman verses, the metres and Yajush. From it sprang horses, and all
+animals with two rows of teeth; kine sprang from it; from it goats and
+sheep. When (the gods) divided Purusha, into how many parts did they cut
+him up? What was his mouth? What arms (had he)? What (two objects) are
+said (to have been) his thighs and feet? The Brahman was his mouth; the
+Rajanya was made his arms; the being (called) the Vaisya, he was his
+thighs; the Sudra sprang from his feet. The moon sprang from his soul
+(Mahas), the sun from his eye, Indra and Agni from his mouth, and Yaiyu
+from his breath. From his navel arose the air, from his head the sky,
+from his feet the earth, from his ear the (four) quarters; in this
+manner (the gods) formed the world. When the gods, performing sacrifice,
+bound Purusha as a victim, there were seven sticks (stuck up) for it
+(around the fire), and thrice seven pieces of fuel were made. With
+sacrifice the gods performed the sacrifice. These were the earliest
+rites. These great powers have sought the sky, where are the former
+Sadhyas, gods."
+
+The myth here stated is plain enough in its essential facts. The gods
+performed a sacrifice with a gigantic anthropomorphic being (Purusha =
+Man) as the victim. Sacrifice is not found, as a rule, in the religious
+of the most backward races of all; it is, relatively, an innovation, as
+shall be shown later. His head, like the head of Ymir, formed the sky,
+his eye the sun, animals sprang from his body. The four castes are
+connected with, and it appears to be implied that they sprang from, his
+mouth, arms, thighs and feet. It is obvious that this last part of the
+myth is subsequent to the formation of castes. This is one of the chief
+arguments for the late date of the hymn, as castes are not distinctly
+recognised elsewhere in the Rig-Veda. Mr. Max Muller(1) believes the
+hymn to be "modern both in its character and in its diction," and this
+opinion he supports by philological arguments. Dr. Muir(2) says that the
+hymn "has every character of modernness both in its diction and ideas".
+Dr Haug, on the other hand,(3) in a paper read in 1871, admits that the
+present form of the hymn is not older than the greater part of the hymns
+of the tenth book, and than those of the Atharva Veda; but he adds, "The
+ideas which the hymn contains are certainly of a primeval antiquity....
+In fact, the hymn is found in the Yajur-Veda among the formulas
+connected with human sacrifices, which were formerly practised in
+India." We have expressly declined to speak about "primeval antiquity,"
+as we have scarcely any evidence as to the myths and mental condition
+for example, even of palaeolithic man; but we may so far agree with
+Dr. Haug as to affirm that the fundamental idea of the Purusha Sukta,
+namely, the creation of the world or portions of the world out of the
+fragments of a fabulous anthropomorphic being is common to Chaldeans,
+Iroquois, Egyptians, Greeks, Tinnehs, Mangaians and Aryan Indians. This
+is presumptive proof of the antiquity of the ideas which Dr. Muir and
+Mr. Max Muller think relatively modern. The savage and brutal character
+of the invention needs no demonstration. Among very low savages, for
+example, the Tinnehs of British North America, not a man, not a god, but
+a DOG, is torn up, and the fragments are made into animals.(4) On the
+Paloure River a beaver suffers in the manner of Purusha. We may,
+for these reasons, regard the chief idea of the myth as extremely
+ancient--infinitely more ancient than the diction of the hymn.
+
+
+(1) Ancient Sanskrit Literature, 570.
+
+(2) Sanskrit Texts, 2nd edit., i. 12.
+
+(3) Sanskrit Text, 2nd edit., ii. 463.
+
+(4) Hearne's Journey, pp. 342-343.
+
+
+As to the mention of the castes, supposed to be a comparatively modern
+institution, that is not an essential part of the legend. When the
+idea of creation out of a living being was once received it was easy
+to extend the conception to any institution, of which the origin was
+forgotten. The Teutonic race had a myth which explained the origin of
+the classes eorl, ceorl and thrall (earl, churl and slave). A South
+American people, to explain the different ranks in society, hit on the
+very myth of Plato, the legend of golden, silver and copper races,
+from which the ranks of society have descended. The Vedic poet, in our
+opinion, merely extended to the institution of caste a myth which had
+already explained the origin of the sun, the firmament, animals, and so
+forth, on the usual lines of savage thought. The Purusha Sukta is the
+type of many other Indian myths of creation, of which the following(1)
+one is extremely noteworthy. "Prajapati desired to propagate. He formed
+the Trivrit (stoma) from his mouth. After it were produced the deity
+Agni, the metre Gayatri,... of men the Brahman, of beasts the goat;...
+from his breast, and from his arms he formed the Panchadasa (stoma).
+After it were created the God Indra, the Trishtubh metre,... of men the
+Rajanya, of beasts the sheep. Hence they are vigorous, because they were
+created from vigour. From his middle he formed the Saptadasa (stoma).
+After it were created the gods called the Yisvadevas, the Jagati
+metre,... of men the Vaisya, of beasts kine. Hence they are to be eaten,
+because they were created from the receptacle of food." The form in
+which we receive this myth is obviously later than the institution of
+caste and the technical names for metres. Yet surely any statement that
+kine "are to be eaten" must be older than the universal prohibition to
+eat that sacred animal the cow. Possibly we might argue that when this
+theory of creation was first promulgated, goats and sheep were forbidden
+food.(2)
+
+
+(1) Taittirya Sanhita, or Yajur-Veda, vii. i. 1-4; Muir, 2nd edit., i.
+15.
+
+(2) Mr. M'Lennan has drawn some singular inferences from this passage,
+connecting, as it does, certain gods and certain classes of men with
+certain animals, in a manner somewhat suggestive of totemism (Fornightly
+Review), February, 1870.
+
+
+Turning from the Vedas to the Brahmanas, we find a curiously savage myth
+of the origin of species.(1) According to this passage of the Brahmana,
+"this universe was formerly soul only, in the form of Purusha". He
+caused himself to fall asunder into two parts. Thence arose a husband
+and a wife. "He cohabited with her; from them men were born. She
+reflected, 'How does he, after having produced me from himself, cohabit
+with me? Ah, let me disappear.' She became a cow, and the other a bull,
+and he cohabited with her. From them kine were produced." After a series
+of similar metamorphoses of the female into all animal shapes, and a
+similar series of pursuits by the male in appropriate form, "in this
+manner pairs of all sorts of creatures down to ants were created". This
+myth is a parallel to the various Greek legends about the amours in
+bestial form of Zeus, Nemesis, Cronus, Demeter and other gods and
+goddesses. In the Brahmanas this myth is an explanation of the origin
+of species, and such an explanation as could scarcely have occurred to
+a civilised mind. In other myths in the Brahmanas, Prajapati creates men
+from his body, or rather the fluid of his body becomes a tortoise,
+the tortoise becomes a man (purusha), with similar examples of
+speculation.(2)
+
+
+(1) Satapatha Brahmana, xiv. 4, 2; Muir, 2nd edit., i. 25.
+
+(2) Similar tales are found among the Khonds.
+
+
+Among all these Brahmana myths of the part taken by Prajapati in the
+creation or evoking of things, the question arises who WAS Prajapati?
+His role is that of the great Hare in American myth; he is a kind of
+demiurge, and his name means "The Master of Things Created," like
+the Australian Biamban, "Master," and the American title of the chief
+Manitou, "Master of Life",(1) Dr. Muir remarks that, as the Vedic
+mind advances from mere divine beings who "reside and operate in fire"
+(Agni), "dwell and shine in the sun" (Surya), or "in the atmosphere"
+(Indra), towards a conception of deity, "the farther step would be
+taken of speaking of the deity under such new names as Visvakarman and
+Prajapati". These are "appellatives which do not designate any limited
+functions connected with any single department of Nature, but the more
+general and abstract notions of divine power operating in the production
+and government of the universe". Now the interesting point is that round
+this new and abstract NAME gravitate the most savage and crudest myths,
+exactly the myths we meet among Hottentots and Nootkas. For example,
+among the Hottentots it is Heitsi Eibib, among the Huarochiri Indians
+it is Uiracocha, who confers, by curse or blessing, on the animals their
+proper attributes and characteristics.(2) In the Satapatha Brahmana it
+is Prajapati who takes this part, that falls to rude culture-heroes of
+Hottentots and Huarochiris.(3) How Prajapati made experiments in a kind
+of state-aided evolution, so to speak, or evolution superintended and
+assisted from above, will presently be set forth.
+
+
+(1) Bergaigne, iii. 40.
+
+(2) Avila, Fables of the Yncas, p. 127.
+
+(3) English translation, ii. 361.
+
+
+In the Puranas creation is a process renewed after each kalpa, or vast
+mundane period. Brahma awakes from his slumber, and finds the world a
+waste of water. Then, just as in the American myths of the coyote, and
+the Slavonic myths of the devil and the doves, a boar or a fish or
+a tortoise fishes up the world out of the waters. That boar, fish,
+tortoise, or what not, is Brahma or Vishnu. This savage conception of
+the beginnings of creation in the act of a tortoise, fish, or boar is
+not first found in the Puranas, as Mr. Muir points out, but is indicated
+in the Black Yajur Veda and in the Satapatha Brahmana.(1) In the
+Satapatha Brahmana, xiv. 1, 2, 11, we discover the idea, so common in
+savage myths--for example, in that of the Navajoes--that the earth was
+at first very small, a mere patch, and grew bigger after the animal
+fished it up. "Formerly this earth was only so large, of the size of
+a span. A boar called Emusha raised her up." Here the boar makes no
+pretence of being the incarnation of a god, but is a mere boar sans
+phrase, like the creative coyote of the Papogas and Chinooks, or the
+musk-rat of the Tacullies. This is a good example of the development
+of myths. Savages begin, as we saw, by mythically regarding various
+animals, spiders, grasshoppers, ravens, eagles, cockatoos, as the
+creators or recoverers of the world. As civilisation advances, those
+animals still perform their beneficent functions, but are looked on
+as gods in disguise. In time the animals are often dropped altogether,
+though they hold their place with great tenacity in the cosmogonic
+traditions of the Aryans in India. When we find the Satapatha Brahmana
+alleging(2) "that all creatures are descended from a tortoise," we seem
+to be among the rude Indians of the Pacific Coast. But when the tortoise
+is identified with Aditya, and when Adityas prove to be solar deities,
+sons of Aditi, and when Aditi is recognised by Mr. Muller as the Dawn,
+we see that the Aryan mind has not been idle, but has added a good deal
+to the savage idea of the descent of men and beasts from a tortoise.(3)
+
+
+(1) Muir, 2nd edit., vol. i. p. 52.
+
+(2) Muir, 2nd edit., vol. i. p. 54.
+
+(3) See Ternaux Compans' Nouvelles Annales des Voyages, lxxxvi. p. 5.
+For Mexican traditions, "Mexican and Australian Hurricane World's End,"
+Bancroft, v. 64.
+
+
+Another feature of savage myths of creation we found to be the
+introduction of a crude theory of evolution. We saw that among the
+Potoyante tribe of the Digger Indians, and among certain Australian
+tribes, men and beasts were supposed to have been slowly evolved and
+improved out of the forms first of reptiles and then of quadrupeds. In
+the mythologies of the more civilised South American races, the idea
+of the survival of the fittest was otherwise expressed. The gods made
+several attempts at creation, and each set of created beings proving in
+one way or other unsuited to its environment, was permitted to die out
+or degenerated into apes, and was succeeded by a set better adapted for
+survival.(1) In much the same way the Satapatha Brahmana(2) represents
+mammals as the last result of a series of creative experiments.
+"Prajapati created living beings, which perished for want of food. Birds
+and serpents perished thus. Prajapati reflected, 'How is it that my
+creatures perish after having been formed?' He perceived this: 'They
+perish from want of food'. In his own presence he caused milk to be
+supplied to breasts. He created living beings, which, resorting to the
+breasts, were thus preserved. These are the creatures which did not
+perish."
+
+
+(1) This myth is found in Popol Vuh. A Chinook myth of the same sort,
+Bancroft, v. 95.
+
+(2) ii. 5, 11; Muir, 2nd edit., i. 70.
+
+
+The common myth which derives the world from a great egg--the myth
+perhaps most familiar in its Finnish shape--is found in the Satapatha
+Brahmana.(1) "In the beginning this universe was waters, nothing but
+waters. The waters desired: 'How can we be reproduced?' So saying, they
+toiled, they performed austerity. While they were performing austerity,
+a golden egg came into existence. It then became a year.... From it in
+a year a man came into existence, who was Prajapati.... He conceived
+progeny in himself; with his mouth he created the gods." According to
+another text,(2) "Prajapati took the form of a tortoise". The tortoise
+is the same as Aditya.(3)
+
+
+(1) xi. 1, 6, 1; Muir, Journal of Royal Asiatic Society, 1863.
+
+(2) Satapatha Brahmana, vii. 4, 3, 5.
+
+(3) Aitareya Brahmana, iii. 34 (11, 219), a very discreditable origin of
+species.
+
+
+It is now time to examine the Aryan shape of the widely spread myth
+about the marriage of heaven and earth, and the fortunes of their
+children. We have already seen that in New Zealand heaven and earth
+were regarded as real persons, of bodily parts and passions, united in
+a secular embrace. We shall apply the same explanation to the Greek
+myth of Gaea and of the mutilation of Cronus. In India, Dyaus (heaven)
+answers to the Greek Uranus and the Maori Rangi, while Prithivi (earth)
+is the Greek Gaea, the Maori Papa. In the Veda, heaven and earth are
+constantly styled "parents";(1) but this we might regard as a mere
+metaphorical expression, still common in poetry. A passage of the
+Aitareya Brahmana, however, retains the old conception, in which there
+was nothing metaphorical at all.(2) These two worlds, heaven and earth,
+were once joined. Subsequently they were separated (according to
+one account, by Indra, who thus plays the part of Cronus and of Tane
+Mahuta). "Heaven and earth," says Dr. Muir, "are regarded as the parents
+not only of men, but of the gods also, as appears from the various texts
+where they are designated by the epithet Devapatre, 'having gods for
+their children'." By men in an early stage of thought this myth was
+accepted along with others in which heaven and earth were regarded
+as objects created by one of their own children, as by Indra,(3) who
+"stretched them out like a hide," who, like Atlas, "sustains and upholds
+them"(4) or, again, Tvashtri, the divine smith, wrought them by his
+craft; or, once more, heaven and earth sprung from the head and feet
+of Purusha. In short, if any one wished to give an example of that
+recklessness of orthodoxy or consistency which is the mark of early
+myth, he could find no better example than the Indian legends of the
+origin of things. Perhaps there is not one of the myths current among
+the lower races which has not its counterpart in the Indian Brahmanas.
+It has been enough for us to give a selection of examples.
+
+
+(1) Muir, v. 22.
+
+(2) iv. 27; Haug, ii. 308.
+
+(3) Rig-Veda, viii. 6, 5.
+
+(4) Ibid., iii. 32, 8.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX. GREEK MYTHS OF THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD AND MAN.
+
+The Greeks practically civilised when we first meet them in Homer--Their
+mythology, however, is full of repulsive features--The hypothesis that
+many of these are savage survivals--Are there other examples of such
+survival in Greek life and institutions?--Greek opinion was constant
+that the race had been savage--Illustrations of savage survival from
+Greek law of homicide, from magic, religion, human sacrifice, religious
+art, traces of totemism, and from the mysteries--Conclusion: that savage
+survival may also be expected in Greek myths.
+
+
+The Greeks, when we first make their acquaintance in the Homeric poems,
+were a cultivated people, dwelling, under the government of royal
+families, in small city states. This social condition they must have
+attained by 1000 B.C., and probably much earlier. They had already a
+long settled past behind them, and had no recollection of any national
+migration from the "cradle of the Aryan race". On the other hand, many
+tribes thought themselves earth-born from the soil of the place where
+they were settled. The Maori traditions prove that memories of a
+national migration may persist for several hundred years among men
+ignorant of writing. Greek legend, among a far more civilised race, only
+spoke of occasional foreign settlers from Sidon, Lydia, or Egypt. The
+Homeric Greeks were well acquainted with almost all the arts of life,
+though it is not absolutely certain that they could write, and certainly
+they were not addicted to reading. In war they fought from chariots,
+like the Egyptians and Assyrians; they were bold seafarers, being
+accustomed to harry the shores even of Egypt, and they had large
+commercial dealings with the people of Tyre and Sidon. In the matter of
+religion they were comparatively free and unrestrained. Their deities,
+though, in myth, capricious in character, might be regarded in many
+ways as "making for righteousness". They protected the stranger and the
+suppliant; they sanctioned the oath, they frowned on the use of poisoned
+arrows; marriage and domestic life were guarded by their good-will;
+they dispensed good and evil fortune, to be accepted with humility and
+resignation among mortals.
+
+The patriarchal head of each family performed the sacrifices for his
+household, the king for the state, the ruler of Mycenae, Agamemnon, for
+the whole Achaean host encamped before the walls of Troy. At the same
+time, prophets, like Calchas, possessed considerable influence,
+due partly to an hereditary gift of second-sight, as in the case of
+Theoclymenus,(1) partly to acquired professional skill in observing
+omens, partly to the direct inspiration of the gods. The oracle at
+Delphi, or, as it is called by Homer, Pytho, was already famous, and
+religion recognised, in various degrees, all the gods familiar to the
+later cult of Hellas. In a people so advanced, so much in contact with
+foreign races and foreign ideas, and so wonderfully gifted by nature
+with keen intellect and perfect taste, it is natural to expect, if
+anywhere, a mythology almost free from repulsive elements, and almost
+purged of all that we regard as survivals from the condition of
+savagery. But while Greek mythology is richer far than any other in
+beautiful legend, and is thronged with lovely and majestic forms of
+gods and goddesses, nymphs and oreads ideally fair, none the less a very
+large proportion of its legends is practically on a level with the myths
+of Maoris, Thlinkeets, Cahrocs and Bushmen.
+
+
+(1) Odyssey, xx. 354.
+
+
+This is the part of Greek mythology which has at all times excited
+most curiosity, and has been made the subject of many systems of
+interpretation. The Greeks themselves, from almost the earliest
+historical ages, were deeply concerned either to veil or explain
+away the blasphemous horrors of their own "sacred chapters," poetic
+traditions and temple legends. We endeavour to account for these
+as relics of an age of barbarism lying very far behind the time of
+Homer--an age when the ancestors of the Greeks either borrowed, or more
+probably developed for themselves, the kind of myths by which savage
+peoples endeavour to explain the nature and origin of the world and all
+phenomena.
+
+The correctness of this explanation, resting as it does on the belief
+that the Greeks were at one time in the savage status, might be
+demonstrated from the fact that not only myths, but Greek life in
+general, and especially Greek ritual, teemed with surviving examples of
+institutions and of manners which are found everywhere among the most
+backward and barbarous races. It is not as if only the myths of Greece
+retained this rudeness, or as if the Greeks supposed themselves to have
+been always civilised. The whole of Greek life yields relics of savagery
+when the surface is excavated ever so slightly. Moreover, that the
+Greeks, as soon as they came to reflect on these matters at all,
+believed themselves to have emerged from a condition of savagery is
+undeniable. The poets are entirely at one on this subject with Moschion,
+a writer of the school of Euripides. "The time hath been, yea, it HATH
+been," he says, "when men lived like the beasts, dwelling in mountain
+caves, and clefts unvisited of the sun.... Then they broke not the soil
+with ploughs nor by aid of iron, but the weaker man was slain to make
+the supper of the stronger," and so on.(1) This view of the savage
+origin of mankind was also held by Aristotle:(2) "It is probable that
+the first men, whether they were produced by the earth (earth-born)
+or survived from some deluge, were on a level of ignorance and
+darkness".(3) This opinion, consciously held and stated by philosophers
+and poets, reveals itself also in the universal popular Greek traditions
+that men were originally ignorant of fire, agriculture, metallurgy and
+all the other arts and conveniences of life, till they were instructed
+by ideal culture-heroes, like Prometheus, members of a race divine
+or half divine. A still more curious Athenian tradition (preserved by
+Varro) maintained, not only that marriage was originally unknown,
+but that, as among Australians and some Red Indians, the family name,
+descended through the mother, and kinship was reckoned on the female
+side before the time of Cecrops.(4)
+
+
+(1) Moschion; cf. Preller, Ausgewahlte Aufsatze, p. 206.
+
+(2) Politics, ii. 8-21; Plato, Laws, 667-680.
+
+(3) Compare Horace, Satires, i. 3, 99; Lucretius, v. 923.
+
+(4) Suidas, s.v. "Prometheus"; Augustine, De Civitate Dei, xviii. 9.
+
+
+While Greek opinion, both popular and philosophical, admitted, or
+rather asserted, that savagery lay in the background of the historical
+prospect, Greek institutions retained a thousand birth-marks of
+savagery. It is manifest and undeniable that the Greek criminal law,
+as far as it effected murder, sprang directly from the old savage
+blood-feud.(1) The Athenian law was a civilised modification of the
+savage rule that the kindred of a slain man take up his blood-feud.
+Where homicide was committed WITHIN the circle of blood relationship,
+as by Orestes, Greek religion provided the Erinnyes to punish an offence
+which had, as it were, no human avenger. The precautions taken by
+murderers to lay the ghost of the slain man were much like those in
+favour among the Australians. The Greek cut off the extremities of his
+victim, the tips of the hands and feet, and disposed them neatly beneath
+the arm-pits of the slain man.(2) In the same spirit, and for the same
+purpose, the Australian black cuts off the thumbs of his dead enemy,
+that the ghost too may be mutilated and prevented from throwing at him
+with a ghostly spear. We learn also from Apollonius Rhodius and his
+scholiast that Greek murderers used thrice to suck in and spit out the
+gore of their victims, perhaps with some idea of thereby partaking of
+their blood, and so, by becoming members of their kin, putting it beyond
+the power of the ghosts to avenge themselves. Similar ideas inspire the
+worldwide savage custom of making an artificial "blood brotherhood" by
+mingling the blood of the contracting parties. As to the ceremonies of
+cleansing from blood-guiltiness among the Greeks, we may conjecture
+that these too had their primitive side; for Orestes, in the Eumenides,
+maintains that he has been purified of his mother's slaughter by
+sufficient blood of swine. But this point will be illustrated presently,
+when we touch on the mysteries.
+
+
+(1) Duncker, History of Greece, Engl. transl., vol. ii. p. 129.
+
+(2) See "Arm-pitting in Ancient Greece," in the American Journal of
+Philology, October, 1885, where a discussion of the familiar texts in
+Aeschylus and Apollonius Rhodius will be found.
+
+
+Ritual and myth, as might be expected, retained vast masses of savage
+rites and superstitious habits and customs. To be "in all things too
+superstitious," too full of deisidaimonia, was even in St. Paul's time
+the characteristic of the Athenians. Now superstition, or deisidaimonia,
+is defined by Theophrastus,(1) as "cowardice in regard to the
+supernatural" ((Greek text omitted)). This "cowardice" has in all ages
+and countries secured the permanence of ritual and religious traditions.
+Men have always argued, like one of the persons in M. Renan's play, Le
+Pretre de Nemi, that "l'ordre du monde depend de l'ordre des rites qu'on
+observe". The familiar endurable sequence of the seasons of spring, and
+seed-sowing, and harvest depend upon the due performance of immemorial
+religious acts. "In the mystic deposits," says Dinarchus, "lies the
+safety of the city."(2) What the "mystic deposits" were nobody knows
+for certain, but they must have been of very archaic sanctity, and occur
+among the Arunta and the Pawnees.
+
+
+(1) Characters.
+
+(2) Ap. Hermann, Lehrbuch, p. 41; Aglaophamus, 965.
+
+
+Ritual is preserved because it preserves LUCK. Not only among the Romans
+and the Brahmans, with their endless minute ritual actions, but among
+such lower races as the Kanekas of New Caledonia, the efficacy of
+religious functions is destroyed by the slightest accidental infraction
+of established rules.(1) The same timid conservatism presides over
+myth, and in each locality the mystery-plays, with their accompanying
+narratives, preserved inviolate the early forms of legend. Myth and
+ritual do not admit of being argued about. "C'etait le rite etabli. Ce
+n'etait pas plus absurde qu'autre chose," says the conservative in M.
+Renan's piece, defending the mode of appointment of
+
+
+     The priest who slew the slayer,
+     And shall himself be slain.
+
+
+(1) Thus the watchers of the dead in New Caledonia are fed by the
+sorcerer with a mess at the end of a very long spoon, and should the
+food miss the mouth, all the ceremonies have to be repeated. This detail
+is from Mr. J. J. Atkinson.
+
+
+Now, if the rites and myths preserved by the timorousness of this same
+"cowardice towards the supernatural" were originally evolved in the
+stage of savagery, savage they would remain, as it is impious and
+dangerous to reform them till the religion which they serve perishes
+with them. These relics in Greek ritual and faith are very commonly
+explained as due to Oriental influences, as things borrowed from the
+dark and bloody superstitions of Asia. But this attempt to save the
+native Greek character for "blitheness" and humanity must not be pushed
+too far.(1) It must be remembered that the cruder and wilder sacrifices
+and legends of Greece were strictly LOCAL; that they were attached to
+these ancient temples, old altars, barbarous xoana, or wooden idols, and
+rough fetish stones, in which Pausanias found the most ancient relics of
+Hellenic theology. This is a proof of their antiquity and a presumption
+in favour of their freedom from foreign influence. Most of these things
+were survivals from that dimly remembered prehistoric age in which the
+Greeks, not yet gathered into city states, lived in villages or kraals,
+or pueblos, as we should translate (Greek text omitted), if we were
+speaking of African or American tribes. In that stage the early
+Greeks must have lacked both the civic and the national or Panhellenic
+sentiment; their political unit was the clan, which, again, answered
+in part to the totem kindred of America, or Africa, or Australia.(2) In
+this stagnant condition they could not have made acquaintance with the
+many creeds of Semitic and other alien peoples on the shores of the
+Levant.(3) It was later, when Greece had developed the city life of the
+heroic age, that her adventurous sons came into close contact with Egypt
+and Phoenicia.
+
+
+(1) Claus, De Antiq. Form. Dianae, 6,7,16.
+
+(2) As C. O. Muller judiciously remarks: "The scenes of nine-tenths of
+the Greek myths are laid in PARTICULAR DISTRICTS OF GREECE, and they
+speak of the primeval inhabitants, of the lineage and adventures of
+native heroes. They manifest an accurate acquaintance with individual
+localities, which, at a time when Greece was neither explored by
+antiquaries, nor did geographical handbooks exist, could be possessed
+only by the inhabitants of these localities." Muller gives, as examples,
+myths of bears more or less divine. Scientific Mythology, pp. 14, 15.
+
+(3) Compare Claus, De Dianae Antiquissima Natura, p. 3.
+
+
+In the colonising time, still later--perhaps from 900 B.C.
+downwards--the Greeks, settled on sites whence they had expelled
+Sidonians or Sicanians, very naturally continued, with modifications,
+the worship of such gods as they found already in possession. Like the
+Romans, the Greeks easily recognised their own deities in the analogous
+members of foreign polytheistic systems. Thus we can allow for alien
+elements in such gods and goddesses as Zeus Asterios, as Aphrodite of
+Cyprus or Eryx, or the many-breasted Ephesian Artemis, whose monstrous
+form had its exact analogue among the Aztecs in that many-breasted
+goddess of the maguey plant whence beer was made. To discern and
+disengage the borrowed factors in the Hellenic Olympus by analysis
+of divine names is a task to which comparative philology may lawfully
+devote herself; but we cannot so readily explain by presumed borrowing
+from without the rude xoana of the ancient local temples, the wild myths
+of the local legends, the sacra which were the exclusive property of
+old-world families, Butadae or Eumolpidae. These are clearly survivals
+from a stage of Greek culture earlier than the city state, earlier than
+the heroic age of the roving Greek Vikings, and far earlier than the
+Greek colonies. They belong to that conservative and immobile period
+when the tribe or clan, settled in its scattered kraals, lived a life of
+agriculture, hunting and cattle-breeding, engaged in no larger or more
+adventurous wars than border feuds about women or cattle. Such wars were
+on a humbler scale than even Nestor's old fights with the Epeians; such
+adventures did not bring the tribe into contact with alien religions. If
+Sidonian merchantmen chanced to establish a factory near a tribe in this
+condition, their religion was not likely to make many proselytes.
+
+These reasons for believing that most of the wilder element in Greek
+ritual and myth was native may be briefly recapitulated, as they are
+often overlooked. The more strange and savage features meet us in LOCAL
+tales and practices, often in remote upland temples and chapels.
+There they had survived from the society of the VILLAGE status, before
+villages were gathered into CITIES, before Greeks had taken to a roving
+life, or made much acquaintance with distant and maritime peoples.
+
+For these historical reasons, it may be assumed that the LOCAL religious
+antiquities of Greece, especially in upland districts like Arcadia
+and Elis, are as old, and as purely national, as free from foreign
+influences as any Greek institutions can be. In these rites and myths
+of true folk-lore and Volksleben, developed before Hellas won its way
+to the pure Hellenic stage, before Egypt and Phoenicia were familiar,
+should be found that common rude element which Greeks share with the
+other races of the world, and which was, to some extent, purged away by
+the genius of Homer and Pindar, pii vates et Phaebo digna locuti.
+
+In proof of this local conservatism, some passages collected by K. F.
+Hermann in his Lehrbuch der Griechischen Antiquitaten(1) may be cited.
+Thus Isocrates writes,(2) "This was all their care, neither to destroy
+any of the ancestral rites, nor to add aught beyond what was ordained".
+Clemens Alexandrinus reports that certain Thessalians worshipped storks,
+"IN ACCORDANCE WITH USE AND WONT".(3) Plato lays down the very "law
+of least change" which has been described. "Whether the legislator is
+establishing a new state or restoring an old and decayed one, in respect
+of gods and temples,... if he be a man of sense, he will MAKE NO
+CHANGE IN ANYTHING which the oracle of Delphi, or Dodona, or Ammon has
+sanctioned, in whatever manner." In this very passage Plato(4) speaks
+of rites "derived from Tyrrhenia or Cyprus" as falling within the later
+period of the Greek Wanderjahre. On the high religious value of things
+antique, Porphyry wrote in a late age, and when the new religion of
+Christ was victorious, "Comparing the new sacred images with the old, we
+see that the old are more simply fashioned, yet are held divine, but
+the new, admired for their elaborate execution, have less persuasion
+of divinity,"--a remark anticipated by Pausanias, "The statues Daedalus
+wrought are quainter to the outward view, yet there shows forth in them
+somewhat supernatural".(5) So Athenaeus(6) reports of a visitor to the
+shrine of Leto in Delos, that he expected the ancient statue of the
+mother of Apollo to be something remarkable, but, unlike the pious
+Porphyry, burst out laughing when he found it a shapeless wooden idol.
+These idols were dressed out, fed and adorned as if they had life.(7)
+It is natural that myths dating from an age when Greek gods resembled
+Polynesian idols should be as rude as Polynesian myths. The tenacity of
+LOCAL myth is demonstrated by Pausanias, who declares that even in the
+highly civilised Attica the Demes retained legends different from those
+of the central city--the legends, probably, which were current before
+the villages were "Synoecised" into Athens.(8)
+
+
+(1) Zweiter Theil, 1858.
+
+(2) Areop., 30.
+
+(3) Clem. Alex., Oxford, 1715, i. 34.
+
+(4) Laws, v. 738.
+
+(5) De. Abst., ii. 18; Paus., ii. 4, 5.
+
+(6) xiv. 2.
+
+(7) Hermann, op. cit., p. 94, note 10.
+
+(8) Pausanias, i. 14, 6.
+
+
+It appears, then, that Greek ritual necessarily preserves matter of the
+highest antiquity, and that the oldest rites and myths will probably be
+found, not in the Panhellenic temples, like that in Olympia, not in
+the NATIONAL poets, like Homer and Sophocles, but in the LOCAL fanes of
+early tribal gods, and in the LOCAL mysteries, and the myths which came
+late, if they came at all, into literary circulation. This opinion
+is strengthened and illustrated by that invaluable guide-book of the
+artistic and religious pilgrim written in the second century after
+our era by Pausanias. If we follow him, we shall find that many of the
+ceremonies, stories and idols which he regarded as oldest are analogous
+to the idols and myths of the contemporary backward races. Let us then,
+for the sake of illustrating the local and savage survivals in Greek
+religion, accompany Pausanias in his tour through Hellas.
+
+In Christian countries, especially in modern times, the contents of one
+church are very like the furniture of another church; the functions in
+one resemble those in all, though on the Continent some shrines still
+retain relics and customs of the period when local saints had their
+peculiar rites. But it was a very different thing in Greece. The pilgrim
+who arrived at a temple never could guess what oddity or horror in
+the way of statues, sacrifices, or stories might be prepared for his
+edification. In the first place, there were HUMAN SACRIFICES. These are
+not familiar to low savages, if known to them at all. Probably they were
+first offered to barbaric royal ghosts, and thence transferred to gods.
+In the town of Salamis, in Cyprus, about the date of Hadrian, the
+devout might have found the priest slaying a human victim to Zeus,--an
+interesting custom, instituted, according to Lactantius, by Teucer, and
+continued till the age of the Roman Empire.(1)
+
+
+(1) Euseb., Praep. Ev., iv. 17, mentions, among peoples practising human
+sacrifices, Rhodes, Salamis, Heliopolis, Chios, Tenedos, Lacedaemon,
+Arcadia and Athens; and, among gods thus honoured, Hera, Athene, Cronus,
+Ares, Dionysus, Zeus and Apollo. For Dionysus the Cannibal, Plutarch,
+Themist., 13; Porphyr., Abst., ii. 55. For the sacrifice to Zeus
+Laphystius, see Grote, i. c. vi., and his array of authorities,
+especially Herodotus, vii. 197. Clemens Alexandrinus (i. 36) mentions
+the Messenians, to Zeus; the Taurians, to Artemis, the folk of Pella,
+to Peleus and Chiron; the Cretans, to Zeus; the Lesbians, to Dionysus.
+Geusius de Victimis Humanis (1699) may be consulted.
+
+
+At Alos in Achaia Phthiotis, the stranger MIGHT have seen an
+extraordinary spectacle, though we admit that the odds would have been
+highly against his chance of witnessing the following events. As the
+stranger approaches the town-hall, he observes an elderly and most
+respectable citizen strolling in the same direction. The citizen is so
+lost in thought that apparently he does not notice where he is going.
+Behind him comes a crowd of excited but silent people, who watch him
+with intense interest. The citizen reaches the steps of the town-hall,
+while the excitement of his friends behind increases visibly. Without
+thinking, the elderly person enters the building. With a wild and
+un-Aryan howl, the other people of Alos are down on him, pinion him,
+wreathe him with flowery garlands, and, lead him to the temple of Zeus
+Laphystius, or "The Glutton," where he is solemnly sacrificed on
+the altar. This was the custom of the good Greeks of Alos whenever a
+descendant of the house of Athamas entered the Prytaneion. Of course the
+family were very careful, as a rule, to keep at a safe distance from
+the forbidden place. "What a sacrifice for Greeks!" as the author of the
+Minos(1) says in that dialogue which is incorrectly attributed to Plato.
+"He cannot get out except to be sacrificed," says Herodotus, speaking of
+the unlucky descendant of Athamas. The custom appears to have existed as
+late as the time of the scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius.(2)
+
+
+(1) 315, c.; Plato, Laws, vi. 782, c.
+
+(2) Argonautica, vii. 197.
+
+
+Even in the second century, when Pausanias visited Arcadia, he found
+what seem to have been human sacrifices to Zeus. The passage is so very
+strange and romantic that we quote a part of it.(1) "The Lycaean hill
+hath other marvels to show, and chiefly this: thereon there is a
+grove of Zeus Lycaeus, wherein may men in nowise enter; but if any
+transgresses the law and goes within, he must die within the space of
+one year. This tale, moreover, they tell, namely, that whatsoever man
+or beast cometh within the grove casts no shadow, and the hunter pursues
+not the deer into that wood, but, waiting till the beast comes forth
+again, sees that it has left its shadow behind. And on the highest crest
+of the whole mountain there is a mound of heaped-up earth, the altar of
+Zeus Lycaeus, and the more part of Peloponnesus can be seen from that
+place. And before the altar stand two pillars facing the rising sun, and
+thereon golden eagles of yet more ancient workmanship. And on this altar
+they sacrifice to Zeus in a manner that may not be spoken, and little
+liking had I to make much search into this matter. BUT LET IT BE AS IT
+IS, AND AS IT HATH BEEN FROM THE BEGINNING." The words "as it hath been
+from the beginning" are ominous and significant, for the traditional
+myths of Arcadia tell of the human sacrifices of Lycaon, and of men who,
+tasting the meat of a mixed sacrifice, put human flesh between their
+lips unawares.(2) This aspect of Greek religion, then, is almost on a
+level with the mysterious cannibal horrors of "Voodoo," as practised by
+the secret societies of <DW64>s in Hayti. But concerning these things,
+as Pausanias might say, it is little pleasure to inquire.
+
+
+(1) Pausanias, viii. 2.
+
+(2) Plato, Rep., viii. 565, d. This rite occurs in some African
+coronation ceremonies.
+
+
+Even where men were not sacrificed to the gods, the tourist among the
+temples would learn that these bloody rites had once been customary, and
+ceremonies existed by way of commutation. This is precisely what we find
+in Vedic religion, in which the empty form of sacrificing a man was gone
+through, and the origin of the world was traced to the fragments of a
+god sacrificed by gods.(1) In Sparta was an altar of Artemis Orthia,
+and a wooden image of great rudeness and antiquity--so rude indeed, that
+Pausanias, though accustomed to Greek fetish-stones, thought it must
+be of barbaric origin. The story was that certain people of different
+towns, when sacrificing at the altar, were seized with frenzy and slew
+each other. The oracle commanded that the altar should be sprinkled
+with human blood. Men were therefore chosen by lot to be sacrificed till
+Lycurgus commuted the offering, and sprinkled the altar with the blood
+of boys who were flogged before the goddess. The priestess holds the
+statue of the goddess during the flogging, and if any of the boys are
+but lightly scourged, the image becomes too heavy for her to bear.
+
+
+(1) The Purusha Sukhta, in Rig-Veda, x. 90.
+
+
+The Ionians near Anthea had a temple of Artemis Triclaria, and to her
+it had been customary to sacrifice yearly a youth and maiden of
+transcendent beauty. In Pausanias's time the human sacrifice was
+commuted. He himself beheld the strange spectacle of living beasts
+and birds being driven into the fire to Artemis Laphria, a Calydonian
+goddess, and he had seen bears rush back among the ministrants; but
+there was no record that any one had ever been hurt by these wild
+beasts.(1) The bear was a beast closely connected with Artemis, and
+there is some reason to suppose that the goddess had herself been
+a she-bear or succeeded to the cult of a she-bear in the morning of
+time.(2)
+
+
+(1) Paus., vii. 18, 19.
+
+(2) See "Artemis", postea.
+
+
+It may be believed that where symbolic human sacrifices are offered,
+that is, where some other victim is slain or a dummy of a man is
+destroyed, and where legend maintains that the sacrifice was once human,
+there men and women were originally the victims. Greek ritual and Greek
+myth were full of such tales and such commutations.(1) In Rome, as is
+well known, effigies of men called Argives were sacrificed.(2) As an
+example of a beast-victim given in commutation, Pausanias mentions(3)
+the case of the folk of Potniae, who were compelled once a year to offer
+to Dionysus a boy, in the bloom of youth. But the sacrifice was commuted
+for a goat.
+
+
+(1) See Hermann, Alterthumer., ii. 159-161, for abundant examples.
+
+(2) Plutarch, Quest. Rom. 32.
+
+(3) ix. 8, 1.
+
+
+These commutations are familiar all over the world. Even in Mexico,
+where human sacrifices and ritual cannibalism were daily events,
+Quetzalcoatl was credited with commuting human sacrifices for blood
+drawn from the bodies of the religious. In this one matter even the most
+conservative creeds and the faiths most opposed to change sometimes say
+with Tartuffe:--
+
+
+     Le ciel defend, de vrai, certains contentements,
+     Mais on trouve avec lui des accommodements.
+
+
+Though the fact has been denied (doubtless without reflection), the fact
+remains that the Greeks offered human sacrifices. Now what does this
+imply? Must it be taken as a survival from barbarism, as one of the
+proofs that the Greeks had passed through the barbaric status?
+
+The answer is less obvious than might be supposed. Sacrifice has two
+origins. First, there are HONORIFIC sacrifices, in which the ghost or
+god (or divine beast, if a divine beast be worshipped) is offered the
+food he is believed to prefer. This does not occur among the lowest
+savages. To carnivorous totems, Garcilasso says, the Indians of Peru
+offered themselves. The feeding of sacred mice in the temples of Apollo
+Smintheus is well known. Secondly, there are expiatory or PIACULAR
+sacrifices, in which the worshipper, as it were, fines himself in a
+child, an ox, or something else that he treasures. The latter kind of
+sacrifice (most common in cases of crime done or suspected within the
+circle of kindred) is not necessarily barbaric, except in its cruelty.
+An example is the Attic Thargelia, in which two human scape-goats
+annually bore "the sins of the congregation," and were flogged, driven
+to the sea with figs tied round their necks, and burned.(1)
+
+
+(1) Compare the Marseilles human sacrifice, Petron., 141; and for the
+Thargelia, Tsetzes, Chiliads, v. 736; Hellad. in Photius, p. 1590 f. and
+Harpoc. s. v.
+
+
+The institution of human sacrifice, then, whether the offering be
+regarded as food, or as a gift to the god of what is dearest to man (as
+in the case of Jephtha's daughter), or whether the victim be supposed to
+carry on his head the sins of the people, does not necessarily date from
+the period of savagery. Indeed, sacrifice flourishes most, not among
+savages, but among advancing barbarians. It would probably be impossible
+to find any examples of human sacrifices of an expiatory or piacular
+character, any sacrifices at all, among Australians, or Andamanese,
+or Fuegians. The notion of presenting food to the supernatural powers,
+whether ghosts or gods, is relatively rare among savages.(1) The
+terrible Aztec banquets of which the gods were partakers are the most
+noted examples of human sacrifices with a purely cannibal origin. Now
+there is good reason to guess that human sacrifices with no other
+origin than cannibalism survived even in ancient Greece. "It may be
+conjectured," writes Professor Robertson Smith,(2) "that the human
+sacrifices offered to the Wolf Zeus (Lycaeus) in Arcadia were originally
+cannibal feasts of a Wolf tribe. The first participants in the rite
+were, according to later legend, changed into wolves; and in later
+times(3) at least one fragment of the human flesh was placed among the
+sacrificial portions derived from other victims, and the man who ate it
+was believed to become a were-wolf."(4) It is the almost universal rule
+with cannibals not to eat members of their own stock, just as they do
+not eat their own totem. Thus, as Professor Robertson Smith says, when
+the human victim is a captive or other foreigner, the human sacrifice
+may be regarded as a survival of cannibalism. Where, on the other
+hand, the victim is a fellow tribesman, the sacrifice is expiatory or
+piacular.
+
+
+(1) Jevons, Introduction to the Science of Religion, pp. 161, 199.
+
+(2) Encyc. Brit., s. v. "Sacrifice".
+
+(3) Plato, Rep., viii. 565, D.
+
+(4) Paus., viii. 2.
+
+
+Among Greek cannibal gods we cannot fail to reckon the so-called
+"Cannibal Dionysus," and probably the Zeus of Orchomenos, Zeus
+Laphystius, who is explained by Suidas as "the Glutton Zeus". The
+cognate verb ((Greek text omitted)) means "to eat with mangling and
+rending," "to devour gluttonously". By Zeus Laphystius, then, men's
+flesh was gorged in this distressing fashion.
+
+The evidence of human sacrifice (especially when it seems not piacular,
+but a relic of cannibalism) raises a presumption that Greeks had once
+been barbarians. The presumption is confirmed by the evidence of early
+Greek religious art.
+
+When his curiosity about human sacrifices was satisfied, the pilgrim in
+Greece might turn his attention to the statues and other representations
+of the gods. He would find that the modern statues by famous artists
+were beautiful anthropomorphic works in marble or in gold and ivory.
+It is true that the faces of the ancient gilded Dionysi at Corinth
+were smudged all over with cinnabar, like fetish-stones in India or
+Africa.(1) As a rule, however, the statues of historic times were
+beautiful representations of kindly and gracious beings. The older works
+were stiff and rigid images, with the lips screwed into an unmeaning
+smile. Older yet were the bronze gods, made before the art of soldering
+was invented, and formed of beaten plates joined by small nails. Still
+more ancient were the wooden images, which probably bore but a slight
+resemblance to the human frame, and which were often mere "stocks".(2)
+Perhaps once a year were shown the very early gods, the Demeter with the
+horse's head, the Artemis with the fish's tails, the cuckoo Hera, whose
+image was of pear-wood, the Zeus with three eyes, the Hermes, made
+after the fashion of the pictures on the walls of sacred caves among
+the Bushmen. But the oldest gods of all, says Pausanias repeatedly, were
+rude stones in the temple or the temple precinct. In Achaean Pharae he
+found some thirty squared stones, named each after a god. "Among all
+the Greeks in the oldest times rude stones were worshipped in place of
+statues." The superstitious man in Theophrastus's Characters used to
+anoint the sacred stones with oil. The stone which Cronus swallowed
+in mistake for Zeus was honoured at Delphi, and kept warm with wool
+wrappings. There was another sacred stone among the Troezenians, and
+the Megarians worshipped as Apollo a stone cut roughly into a pyramidal
+form. The Argives had a big stone called Zeus Kappotas. The Thespians
+worshipped a stone which they called Eros; "their oldest idol is a rude
+stone".(3) It is well known that the original fetish-stone has been
+found in situ below the feet of the statue of Apollo in Delos. On this
+showing, then, the religion of very early Greeks in Greece was not
+unlike that of modern <DW64>s. The artistic evolution of the gods, a
+remarkably rapid one after a certain point, could be traced in every
+temple. It began with the rude stone, and rose to the wooden idol, in
+which, as we have seen, Pausanias and Porphyry found such sanctity.
+Next it reached the hammered bronze image, passed through the archaic
+marbles, and culminated in the finer marbles and the chryselephantine
+statues of Zeus and Athena. But none of the ancient sacred objects lost
+their sacredness. The oldest were always the holiest idols; the oldest
+of all were stumps and stones, like savage fetish-stones.
+
+
+(1) Pausanias, ii. 2.
+
+(2) Clemens Alex., Protrept. (Oxford, 1715). p. 41.
+
+(3) Gill, Myths of South Pacific, p. 60. Compare a god, which proved to
+be merely pumice-stone, and was regarded as the god of winds and waves,
+having been drifted to Puka-Puka. Offerings of food were made to it
+during hurricanes.
+
+
+Another argument in favour of the general thesis that savagery left
+deep marks on Greek life in general, and on myth in particular, may be
+derived from survivals of totemism in ritual and legend. The following
+instances need not necessarily be accepted, but it may be admitted that
+they are precisely the traces which totemism would leave had it once
+existed, and then waned away on the advance of civilisation.(1)
+
+
+(1) The argument to be derived from the character of the Greek (Greek
+text omitted) as a modified form of the totem-kindred is too long and
+complex to be put forward here. It is stated in Custom and Myth, "The
+history of the Family," in M'Lennan's Studies in Early history, and is
+assumed, if not proved, in Ancient Society by the late Mr. Lewis Morgan.
+
+
+That Greeks in certain districts regarded with religious reverence
+certain plants and animals is beyond dispute. That some stocks even
+traced their lineage to beasts will be shown in the chapter on Greek
+Divine Myths, and the presumption is that these creatures, though
+explained as incarnations and disguises of various gods, were once
+totems sans phrase, as will be inferred from various examples. Clemens
+Alexandrinus, again, after describing the animal-worship of the
+Egyptians, mentions cases of zoolatry in Greece.(1) The Thessalians
+revered storks, the Thebans weasels, and the myth ran that the weasel
+had in some way aided Alcmena when in labour with Heracles. In another
+form of the myth the weasel was the foster-mother of the hero.(2) Other
+Thessalians, the Myrmidons, claimed descent from the ant and revered
+ants. The religious respect paid to mice in the temple of Apollo
+Smintheus, in the Troad, Rhodes, Gela, <DW26>s and Crete is well known,
+and a local tribe were alluded to as Mice by an oracle. The god himself,
+like the Japanese harvest-god, was represented in art with a mouse at
+his foot, and mice, as has been said, were fed at his shrine.(3) The
+Syrians, says Clemens Alexandrinus, worship doves and fishes, as the
+Elians worship Zeus.(4) The people of Delphi adored the wolf,(5) and the
+Samians the sheep. The Athenians had a hero whom they worshipped in the
+shape of a wolf.(6) A remarkable testimony is that of the scholiast on
+Apollonius Rhodius, ii. 124. "The wolf," he says, "was a beast held in
+honour by the Athenians, and whosoever slays a wolf collects what
+is needful for its burial." The burial of sacred animals in Egypt
+is familiar. An Arab tribe mourns over and solemnly buries all dead
+gazelles.(7) Nay, flies were adored with the sacrifice of an ox near
+the temple of Apollo in Leucas.(8) Pausanias (iii. 22) mentions certain
+colonists who were guided by a hare to a site where the animal hid in a
+myrtle-bush. They therefore adore the myrtle, (Greek text omitted). In
+the same way a Carian stock, the Ioxidae, revered the asparagus.(9) A
+remarkable example of descent mythically claimed from one of the lower
+animals is noted by Otfried Muller.(10) Speaking of the swan of Apollo,
+he says, "That deity was worshipped, according to the testimony of the
+Iliad, in the Trojan island of Tenedos. There, too, was Tennes honoured
+as the (Greek text omitted) of the island. Now his father was called
+Cycnus (the swan) in an oft-told and romantic legend.(11)... The swan,
+therefore, as father to the chief hero on the Apolline island, stands
+in distinct relation to the god, who is made to come forward still more
+prominently from the fact that Apollo himself is also called father of
+Tennes. I think we can scarcely fail to recognise a mythus which was
+local at Tenedos.... The fact, too, of calling the swan, instead of
+Apollo, the father of a hero, demands altogether a simplicity and
+boldness of fancy which are far more ancient than the poems of Homer."
+
+
+(1) Op. cit., i. 34.
+
+(2) Scholiast on Iliad, xix. 119.
+
+(3) Aelian, H. A., xii. 5; Strabo, xiii. 604. Compare "Apollo and the
+Mouse, Custom and Myth, pp. 103-120.
+
+(4) Lucian, De Dea Syria.
+
+(5) Aelian, H. A., xii. 40.
+
+(6) Harpocration, (Greek text omitted). Compare an address to
+the wolf-hero, "who delights in the flight and tears of men," in
+Aristophanes, Vespae, 389.
+
+(7) Robertson Smith, Kinship in Early Arabia, pp. 195-204.
+
+(8) Aelian, xi. 8.
+
+(9) Plutarch, Theseus, 14.
+
+(10) Proleg., Engl. trans., p. 204.
+
+(11) (Canne on Conon, 28.)
+
+
+Had Muller known that this "simplicity and boldness of fancy" exist
+to-day, for example, among the Swan tribe of Australia, he would
+probably have recognised in Cycnus a survival from totemism. The fancy
+survives again in Virgil's Cupavo, "with swan's plumes rising from his
+crest, the mark of his father's form".(1) Descent was claimed, not only
+from a swan Apollo, but from a dog Apollo.
+
+
+(1) Aeneid, x. 187.
+
+
+In connection with the same set of ideas, it is pointed out that several
+(Greek text omitted), or stocks, had eponymous heroes, in whose names
+the names of the ancestral beast apparently survived. In Attica
+the Crioeis have their hero (Crio, "Ram"), the Butadae have Butas
+("Bullman"), the Aegidae have Aegeus ("Goat"), and the Cynadae, Cynus
+("Dog"). Lycus, according to Harpocration (s. v.) has his statue in the
+shape of a wolf in the Lyceum. "The general facts that certain animals
+might not be sacrificed to certain gods" (at Athens the Aegidae
+introduced Athena, to whom no goat might be offered on the Acropolis,
+while she herself wore the goat skin, aegis), "while, on the other
+hand, each deity demanded particular victims, explained by the ancients
+themselves in certain cases to be hostile animals, find their natural
+explanation" in totemism.(1) Mr. Evelyn Abbott points out, however, that
+the names Aegeus, Aegae, Aegina, and others, may be connected with the
+goat only by an old volks-etymologie, as on coins of Aegina in Achaea.
+The real meaning of the words may be different. Compare (Greek text
+omitted), the sea-shore. Mr. J. G. Frazer does not, at present, regard
+totemism as proved in the case of Greece.(2)
+
+
+(1) Some apparent survivals of totemism in ritual will be found in the
+chapter on Greek gods, especially Zeus, Dionysus, and Apollo.
+
+(2) See his Golden Bough, an alternative explanation of these animals in
+connection with "The Corn Spirit".
+
+
+As final examples of survivals from the age of barbarism in the religion
+of Greece, certain features in the Mysteries may be noted. Plutarch
+speaks of "the eating of raw flesh, and tearing to pieces of victims,
+as also fastings and beatings of the breast, and again in many places
+abusive language at the sacrifices, and other mad doings". The mysteries
+of Demeter, as will appear when her legend is criticised, contained one
+element all unlike these "mad doings"; and the evidence of Sophocles,
+Pindar, Plutarch and others demonstrate that religious consolations
+were somehow conveyed in the Eleusinia. But Greece had many other local
+mysteries, and in several of these it is undeniable the Greeks acted
+much as contemporary Australians, Zunis and <DW64>s act in their secret
+initiations which, however, also inculcate moral ideas of considerable
+excellence. Important as these analogies are, they appear to have
+escaped the notice of most mythologists. M. Alfred Maury, however, in
+Les Religions de la Grece, published in 1857, offers several instances
+of hidden rites, common to Hellas and to barbarism.
+
+There seem in the mysteries of savage races to be two chief purposes.
+There is the intention of giving to the initiated a certain sacred
+character, which puts them in close relation with gods or demons, and
+there is the introduction of the young to complete or advancing manhood,
+and to full participation in the savage Church with its ethical ideas.
+The latter ceremonies correspond, in short, to confirmation, and they
+are usually of a severe character, being meant to test by fasting (as
+Plutarch says) and by torture (as in the familiar Spartan rite) the
+courage and constancy of the young braves. The Greek mysteries best
+known to us are the Thesmophoria and the Eleusinia. In the former the
+rites (as will appear later) partook of the nature of savage "medicine"
+or magic, and were mainly intended to secure fertility in husbandry and
+in the family. In the Eleusinia the purpose was the purification of the
+initiated, secured by ablutions and by standing on the "ram's-skin of
+Zeus," and after purifications the mystae engaged in sacred dances,
+and were permitted to view a miracle play representing the sorrows and
+consolations of Demeter. There was a higher element, necessarily obscure
+in nature. The chief features in the whole were purifications, dancing,
+sacrifice and the representation of the miracle play. It would be
+tedious to offer an exhaustive account of savage rites analogous to
+these mysteries of Hellas. Let it suffice to display the points where
+Greek found itself in harmony with Australian, and American, and African
+practice. These points are: (1) mystic dances; (2) the use of a little
+instrument, called turndun in Australia, whereby a roaring noise is
+made, and the profane are warned off; (3) the habit of daubing persons
+about to be initiated with clay or anything else that is sordid, and of
+washing this off; apparently by way of showing that old guilt is removed
+and a new life entered upon; (4) the performances with serpents may be
+noticed, while the "mad doings" and "howlings" mentioned by Plutarch
+are familiar to every reader of travels in uncivilised countries; (5)
+ethical instruction is communicated.
+
+First, as to the mystic dances, Lucian observes:(1) "You cannot find a
+single ancient mystery in which there is not dancing.... This much all
+men know, that most people say of the revealers of the mysteries that
+they 'dance them out'" ((Greek text omitted)). Clemens of Alexandria
+uses the same term when speaking of his own "appalling revelations".(2)
+So closely connected are mysteries with dancing among savages, that when
+Mr. Orpen asked Qing, the Bushman hunter, about some doctrines in which
+Qing was not initiated, he said: "Only the initiated men of that dance
+know these things". To "dance" this or that means to be acquainted with
+this or that myth, which is represented in a dance or ballet d'action(3)
+((Greek text omitted)). So widely distributed is the practice, that
+Acosta, in an interesting passage, mentions it as familiar to the people
+of Peru before and after the Spanish conquest. The text is a valuable
+instance of survival in religion. When they were converted to
+Christianity the Peruvians detected the analogy between our sacrament
+and their mysteries, and they kept up as much as possible of the
+old rite in the new ritual. Just as the mystae of Eleusis practised
+chastity, abstaining from certain food, and above all from beans, before
+the great Pagan sacrament, so did the Indians. "To prepare themselves
+all the people fasted two days, during which they did neyther company
+with their wives, nor eate any meate with salt or garlicke, nor drink
+any chic.... And although the Indians now forbeare to sacrifice beasts
+or other things publikely, which cannot be hidden from the Spaniardes,
+yet doe they still use many ceremonies that have their beginnings
+from these feasts and auntient superstitions, for at this day do they
+covertly make their feast of Ytu at the daunces of the feast of the
+Sacrament. Another feast falleth almost at the same time, whereas the
+Christians observe the solempnitie of the holy Sacrament, which
+DOTH RESEMBLE IT IN SOME SORT, AS IN DAUNCING, SINGING AND
+REPRESENTATIONS."(4) The holy "daunces" at Seville are under Papal
+disapproval, but are to be kept up, it is said, till the peculiar
+dresses used in them are worn out. Acosta's Indians also had "garments
+which served only for this feast". It is superfluous to multiply
+examples of the dancing, which is an invariable feature of savage as of
+Greek mysteries.
+
+
+(1) (Greek text omitted), chap. xv. 277.
+
+(2) Ap. Euseb., Praep. Ev., ii, 3, 6.
+
+(3) Cape Monthly Magazine, July, 1874.
+
+(4) Acosta, Historie of the Indies, book v. chap. xxviii. London, 1604.
+
+
+2. The Greek and savage use of the turndun, or bribbun of Australia in
+the mysteries is familiar to students. This fish-shaped flat board of
+wood is tied to a string, and whirled round, so as to cause a
+peculiar muffled roar. Lobeck quotes from the old scholia on Clemens
+Alexandrinus, published by Bastius in annotations on St. Gregory, the
+following Greek description of the turndun, the "bull-roarer" of English
+country lads, the Gaelic srannam:(1) (Greek text omitted)". "The conus
+was a little slab of wood, tied to a string, and whirled round in the
+mysteries to make a whirring noise. As the mystic uses of the turndun
+in Australia, New Zealand, New Mexico and Zululand have elsewhere been
+described at some length (Custom and Myth, pp. 28-44), it may be enough
+to refer the reader to the passage. Mr. Taylor has since found the
+instrument used in religious mysteries in West Africa, so it has now
+been tracked almost round the world. That an instrument so rude should
+be employed by Greek and Australians on mystic occasions is in itself a
+remarkable coincidence. Unfortunately, Lobeck, who published the Greek
+description of the turndun (Aglaophamus, 700), was unacquainted with the
+modern ethnological evidence.
+
+
+(1) Pronounced strantham. For this information I am indebted to my
+friend Mr. M'Allister, schoolmaster at St. Mary's Loch.
+
+
+3. The custom of plastering the initiated over with clay or filth was
+common in Greek as in barbaric mysteries. Greek examples may be given
+first. Demosthenes accuses Aeschines of helping his mother in certain
+mystic rites, aiding her, especially, by bedaubing the initiate with
+clay and bran.(1) Harpocration explains the term used ((Greek text
+omitted)) thus: "Daubing the clay and bran on the initiate, to explain
+which they say that the Titans when they attacked Dionysus daubed
+themselves over with chalk, but afterwards, for ritual purposes, clay
+was used". It may be urged with some force that the mother of Aeschines
+introduced foreign, novel and possibly savage rites. But Sophocles, in
+a fragment of his lost play, the Captives, uses the term in the same
+ritual sense--
+
+
+    (Greek text omitted).
+
+
+(1) De Corona, 313.
+
+
+The idea clearly was that by cleansing away the filth plastered over
+the body was symbolised the pure and free condition of the initiate. He
+might now cry in the mystic chant--
+
+
+     (Greek text omitted).
+     Worse have I fled, better have I found.
+
+
+That this was the significance of the daubing with clay in Greek
+mysteries and the subsequent cleansing seems quite certain. We are led
+straight to this conclusion by similar rites, in which the purpose of
+mystically cleansing was openly put forward. Thus Plutarch, in his
+essay on superstition, represents the guilty man who would be purified
+actually rolling in clay, confessing his misdeeds, and then sitting at
+home purified by the cleansing process ((Greek text omitted)).(1) In
+another rite, the cleansing of blood-guiltiness, a similar process
+was practised. Orestes, after killing his mother, complains that the
+Eumenides do not cease to persecute him, though he has been "purified
+by blood of swine".(2) Apollonius says that the red hand of the murderer
+was dipped in the blood of swine and then washed.(3) Athenaeus describes
+a similar unpleasant ceremony.(4) The blood of whelps was apparently
+used also, men being first daubed with it and then washed clean.(5) The
+word (Greek text omitted) is again the appropriate ritual term. Such
+rites Plutarch calls (Greek text omitted), "filthy purifications".(6) If
+daubing with dirt is known to have been a feature of Greek mysteries,
+it meets us everywhere among savages. In O-Kee-Pa, that curiously minute
+account of the Mandan mysteries, Catlin writes that a portion of the
+frame of the initiate was "covered with clay, which the operator took
+from a wooden bowl, and with his hand plastered unsparingly over". The
+fifty young men waiting for initiation "were naked and entirely covered
+with clay of various colours".(7) The custom is mentioned by Captain
+John Smith in Virginia. Mr. Winwood Reade found it in Africa, where, as
+among the Mandans and Spartans, cruel torture and flogging accompanied
+the initiation of young men.(8) In Australia the evidence for daubing
+the initiate is very abundant.(9) In New Mexico, the Zunis stole Mr.
+Cushing's black paint, as considering it even better than clay for
+religious daubing.(10)
+
+
+(1) So Hermann, op. cit., 133.
+
+(2) Eumenides, 273.
+
+(3) Argonautica, iv. 693.
+
+(4) ix. 78. Hermann, from whom the latter passages are borrowed, also
+quotes the evidence of a vase published by Feuerbach, Lehrbuch, p. 131,
+with other authorities.
+
+(5) Plutarch, Quaest. Rom., 68.
+
+(6) De Superstitione, chap. xii.
+
+(7) O-Kee-Pa, London, 1867, p. 21.
+
+(8) Savage Africa, case of Mongilomba; Pausanias, iii. 15.
+
+(9) Brough Smyth, i. 60.
+
+(10) Custma and Myth, p. 40.
+
+
+4. Another savage rite, the use of serpents in Greek mysteries, is
+attested by Clemens Alexandrinus and by Demosthenes (loc. cit.). Clemens
+says the snakes were caressed in representations of the loves of Zeus in
+serpentine form. The great savage example is that of "the snake-dance
+of the Moquis," who handle rattle-snakes in the mysteries without
+being harmed.(1) The dance is partly totemistic, partly meant, like
+the Thesmophoria, to secure the fertility of the lands of the Moquis
+of Arizonas. The turndum or (Greek text omitted) is employed. Masks are
+worn, as in the rites of Demeter Cidiria in Arcadia.(2)
+
+
+(1) The Snake-Dance of the Moquis. By Captain John G. Bourke, London,
+1884.
+
+(2) Pausanias, viii. 16.
+
+
+5. This last point of contact between certain Greek and certain savage
+mysteries is highly important. The argument of Lobeck, in his celebrated
+work Aglaophamus, is that the Mysteries were of no great moment in
+religion. Had he known the evidence as to savage initiations, he would
+have been confirmed in his opinion, for many of the singular Greek
+rites are clearly survivals from savagery. But was there no more truly
+religious survival? Pindar is a very ancient witness that things of
+divine import were revealed. "Happy is he who having seen these things
+goes under the hollow earth. He knows the end of life, and the god-given
+beginning."(1) Sophocles "chimes in," as Lobeck says, declaring that
+the initiate alone LIVE in Hades, while other souls endure all evils.
+Crinagoras avers that even in life the initiate live secure, and in
+death are the happier. Isagoras declares that about the end of life and
+all eternity they have sweet hopes.
+
+
+(1) Fragm., cxvi., 128 H. p. 265.
+
+
+Splendida testimonia, cries Lobeck. He tries to minimise the evidence,
+remarking that Isocrates promises the very same rewards to all who live
+justly and righteously. But why not, if to live justly and righteously
+was part of the teaching of the mysteries of Eleusis? Cicero's evidence,
+almost a translation of the Greek passages already cited, Lobeck
+dismisses as purely rhetorical.(1) Lobeck's method is rather cavalier.
+Pindar and Sophocles meant something of great significance.
+
+
+(1) De Legibus ii. 14; Aglaophamus, pp. 69-74.
+
+
+Now we have acknowledged savage survivals of ugly rites in the Greek
+mysteries. But it is only fair to remember that, in certain of the few
+savage mysteries of which we know the secret, righteousness of life and
+a knowledge of good are inculcated. This is the case in Australia, and
+in Central Africa, where to be "uninitiated" is equivalent to being
+selfish.(1) Thus it seems not improbable that consolatory doctrines were
+expounded in the Eleusinia, and that this kind of sermon or exhortation
+was no less a survival from savagery than the daubing with clay, and the
+(Greek text omitted), and other wild rites.
+
+
+(1) Making of Religion, pp. 193-197, 235.
+
+
+We have now attempted to establish that in Greek law and ritual many
+savage customs and usages did undeniably survive. We have seen that both
+philosophical and popular opinion in Greece believed in a past age of
+savagery. In law, in religion, in religious art, in custom, in human
+sacrifice, in relics of totemism, and in the mysteries, we have seen
+that the Greeks retained plenty of the usages now found among the
+remotest and most backward races. We have urged against the suggestion
+of borrowing from Egypt or Asia that these survivals are constantly
+found in local and tribal religion and rituals, and that consequently
+they probably date from that remote prehistoric past when the Greeks
+lived in village settlements. It may still doubtless be urged that all
+these things are Pelasgic, and were the customs of a race settled in
+Hellas before the arrival of the Homeric Achaeans, and Dorians, and
+Argives, who, on this hypothesis, adopted and kept up the old savage
+Pelasgian ways and superstitions. It is impossible to prove or disprove
+this belief, nor does it affect our argument. We allege that all Greek
+life below the surface was rich in institutions now found among the most
+barbaric peoples. These institutions, whether borrowed or inherited,
+would still be part of the legacy left by savages to cultivated peoples.
+As this legacy is so large in custom and ritual, it is not unfair to
+argue that portions of it will also be found in myths. It is now time to
+discuss Greek myths of the origin of things, and decide whether they are
+or are not analogous in ideas to the myths which spring from the wild
+and ignorant fancy of Australians, Cahrocs, Nootkas and Bushmen.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X. GREEK COSMOGONIC MYTHS.
+
+Nature of the evidence--Traditions of origin of the world and
+man--Homeric, Hesiodic and Orphic myths--Later evidence of historians,
+dramatists, commentators--The Homeric story comparatively pure--The
+story in Hesiod, and its savage analogues--The explanations of the
+myth of Cronus, modern and ancient--The Orphic cosmogony--Phanes and
+Prajapati--Greek myths of the origin of man--Their savage analogues.
+
+
+The authorities for Greek cosmogonic myth are extremely various in date,
+character and value. The most ancient texts are the Iliad and the poems
+attributed to Hesiod. The Iliad, whatever its date, whatever the place
+of its composition, was intended to please a noble class of warriors.
+The Hesiodic poems, at least the Theogony, have clearly a didactic aim,
+and the intention of presenting a systematic and orderly account of the
+divine genealogies. To neither would we willingly attribute a date much
+later than the ninth century of our era, but the question of the dates
+of all the epic and Hesiodic poems, and even of their various parts, is
+greatly disputed among scholars. Yet it is nowhere denied that, however
+late the present form of some of the poems may be, they contain ideas of
+extreme antiquity. Although the Homeric poems are usually considered, on
+the whole, more ancient than those attributed to Hesiod,(1) it is a fact
+worth remembering that the notions of the origin of things in Hesiod are
+much more savage and (as we hold) much more archaic than the opinions of
+Homer.
+
+
+(1) Grote assigns his Theogony to circ. 750 A.D. The Thegony was taught
+to boys in Greece, much as the Church Catechism and Bible are taught in
+England; Aeschines in Ctesiph., 135, p. 73. Libanius, 400 years after
+Christ (i. 502-509, iv. 874).
+
+
+While Hesiod offers a complete theogony or genealogy of deities and
+heroes, Homer gives no more than hints and allusions to the stormy past
+of the gods. It is clear, however, that his conception of that past
+differed considerably from the traditions of Hesiod. However we explain
+it, the Homeric mythology (though itself repugnant to the philosophers
+from Xenophanes downwards) is much more mild, pure and humane than the
+mythology either of Hesiod or of our other Greek authorities. Some may
+imagine that Homer retains a clearer and less corrupted memory than
+Hesiod possessed of an original and authentic "divine tradition". Others
+may find in Homer's comparative purity a proof of the later date of his
+epics in their present form, or may even proclaim that Homer was a kind
+of Cervantes, who wished to laugh the gods away. There is no conceivable
+or inconceivable theory about Homer that has not its advocates. For
+ourselves, we hold that the divine genius of Homer, though working in
+an age distant rather than "early," selected instinctively the purer
+mythical materials, and burned away the coarser dross of antique legend,
+leaving little but the gold which is comparatively refined.
+
+We must remember that it does not follow that any mythical ideas are
+later than the age of Homer because we first meet them in poems of a
+later date. We have already seen that though the Brahmanas are much
+later in date of compilation than the Veda, yet a tradition which we
+first find in the Brahmanas may be older than the time at which the Veda
+was compiled. In the same way, as Mr. Max Muller observes, "we know that
+certain ideas which we find in later writers do not occur in Homer. But
+it does not follow at all that such ideas are all of later growth or
+possess a secondary character. One myth may have belonged to one tribe;
+one god may have had his chief worship in one locality; and our becoming
+acquainted with these through a later poet does not in the least prove
+their later origin."(1)
+
+
+(1) Hibbert Lectures, pp. 130, 131.
+
+
+After Homer and Hesiod, our most ancient authorities for Greek
+cosmogonic myths are probably the so-called Orphic fragments. Concerning
+the dates and the manner of growth of these poems volumes of erudition
+have been compiled. As Homer is silent about Orpheus (in spite of the
+position which the mythical Thracian bard acquired as the inventor of
+letters and magic and the father of the mysteries), it has been usual to
+regard the Orphic ideas as of late introduction. We may agree with Grote
+and Lobeck that these ideas and the ascetic "Orphic mode of life" first
+acquired importance in Greece about the time of Epimenides, or, roughly
+speaking, between 620 and 500 B.C.(1) That age certainly witnessed a
+curious growth of superstitious fears and of mystic ceremonies intended
+to mitigate spiritual terrors. Greece was becoming more intimately
+acquainted with Egypt and with Asia, and was comparing her own religion
+with the beliefs and rites of other peoples. The times and the minds of
+men were being prepared for the clear philosophies that soon "on Argive
+heights divinely sang". Just as, when the old world was about to accept
+Christianity, a deluge of Oriental and barbaric superstitions swept
+across men's minds, so immediately before the dawn of Greek philosophy
+there came an irruption of mysticism and of spiritual fears. We may
+suppose that the Orphic poems were collected, edited and probably
+interpolated, in this dark hour of Greece. "To me," says Lobeck, "it
+appears that the verses may be referred to the age of Onomacritus,
+an age curious in the writings of ancient poets, and attracted by the
+allurements of mystic religions." The style of the surviving fragments
+is sufficiently pure and epic; the strange unheard of myths are unlike
+those which the Alexandrian poets drew from fountains long lost.(2) But
+how much in the Orphic myths is imported from Asia or Egypt, how much is
+the invention of literary forgers like Onomacritus, how much should be
+regarded as the first guesses of the physical poet-philosophers, and
+how much is truly ancient popular legend recast in literary form, it is
+impossible with certainty to determine.
+
+
+(1) Lobeck, Aglaophamus, i. 317; Grote, iii. 86.
+
+(2) Aglaophamus, i. 611.
+
+
+We must not regard a myth as necessarily late or necessarily foreign
+because we first meet it in an "Orphic composition". If the myth be one
+of the sort which encounter us in every quarter, nay, in every obscure
+nook of the globe, we may plausibly regard it as ancient. If it bear
+the distinct marks of being a Neo-platonic pastiche, we may reject it
+without hesitation. On the whole, however, our Orphic authorities can
+never be quoted with much satisfaction. The later sources of evidence
+for Greek myths are not of great use to the student of cosmogonic
+legend, though invaluable when we come to treat of the established
+dynasty of gods, the heroes and the "culture-heroes". For these the
+authorities are the whole range of Greek literature, poets, dramatists,
+philosophers, critics, historians and travellers. We have also the
+notes and comments of the scholiasts or commentators on the poets and
+dramatists. Sometimes these annotators only darken counsel by their
+guesses. Sometimes perhaps, especially in the scholia on the Iliad and
+Odyssey, they furnish us with a precious myth or popular marchen not
+otherwise recorded. The regular professional mythographi, again, of whom
+Apollodorus (150 B.C.) is the type, compiled manuals explanatory of the
+myths which were alluded to by the poets. The scholiasts and mythographi
+often retain myths from lost poems and lost plays. Finally, from the
+travellers and historians we occasionally glean examples of the tales
+("holy chapters," as Mr. Grote calls them) which were narrated by
+priests and temple officials to the pilgrims who visited the sacred
+shrines.
+
+These "chapters" are almost invariably puerile, savage and obscene.
+They bear the stamp of extreme antiquity, because they never, as a rule,
+passed through the purifying medium of literature. There were many myths
+too crude and archaic for the purposes of poetry and of the drama.
+These were handed down from local priest to local priest, with the
+inviolability of sacred and immutable tradition. We have already given a
+reason for assigning a high antiquity to the local temple myths. Just as
+Greeks lived in villages before they gathered into towns, so their gods
+were gods of villages or tribes before they were national deities. The
+local myths are those of the archaic village state of "culture," more
+ancient, more savage, than literary narrative. Very frequently the local
+legends were subjected to the process of allegorical interpretation, as
+men became alive to the monstrosity of their unsophisticated meaning.
+Often they proved too savage for our authorities, who merely remark,
+"Concerning this a certain holy chapter is told," but decline to record
+the legend. In the same way missionaries, with mistaken delicacy, often
+refuse to repeat some savage legend with which they are acquainted.
+
+The latest sort of testimony as to Greek myths must be sought in
+the writings of the heathen apologists or learned Pagan defenders of
+Paganism in the first centuries during Christianity, and in the works of
+their opponents, the fathers of the Church. Though the fathers certainly
+do not understate the abominations of Paganism, and though the
+heathen apologists make free use of allegorical (and impossible)
+interpretations, the evidence of both is often useful and important. The
+testimony of ancient art, vases, statues, pictures and the descriptions
+of these where they no longer survive, are also of service and interest.
+
+After this brief examination of the sources of our knowledge of Greek
+myth, we may approach the Homeric legends of the origin of things and
+the world's beginning. In Homer these matters are only referred to
+incidentally. He more than once calls Oceanus (that is, the fabled
+stream which flows all round the world, here regarded as a PERSON)
+"the origin of the gods," "the origin of all things".(1) That Ocean is
+considered a person, and that he is not an allegory for water or the
+aqueous element, appears from the speech of Hera to Aphrodite: "I am
+going to visit the limits of the bountiful earth, and Oceanus, father of
+the gods, and mother Tethys, who reared me duly and nurtured me in their
+halls, when far-seeing Zeus imprisoned Cronus beneath the earth and the
+unvintaged sea".(2) Homer does not appear to know Uranus as the father
+of Cronus, and thus the myth of the mutilation of Uranus necessarily
+does not occur in Homer. Cronus, the head of the dynasty which preceded
+that of Zeus, is described(3) as the son of Rhea, but nothing is said
+of his father. The passage contains the account which Poseidon himself
+chose to give of the war in heaven: "Three brethren are we, and sons
+of Cronus whom Rhea bare--Zeus and myself, and Hades is the third, the
+ruler of the folk in the underworld. And in three lots were all things
+divided, and each drew a domain of his own." Here Zeus is the ELDEST
+son of Cronus. Though lots are drawn at hazard for the property of
+the father (which we know to have been customary in Homer's time), yet
+throughout the Iliad Zeus constantly claims the respect and obedience
+due to him by right of primogeniture.(4) We shall see that Hesiod adopts
+exactly the opposite view. Zeus is the YOUNGEST child of Cronus. His
+supremacy is an example of jungsten recht, the wide-spread custom which
+makes the youngest child the heir in chief.(5) But how did the sons of
+Cronus come to have his property in their hands to divide? By right of
+successful rebellion, when "Zeus imprisoned Cronus beneath the earth
+and the unvintaged sea". With Cronus in his imprisonment are the Titans.
+That is all that Homer cares to tell about the absolute beginning of
+things and the first dynasty of rulers of Olympus. His interest is all
+in the actual reigning family, that of the Cronidae, nor is he fond of
+reporting their youthful excesses.
+
+
+(1) Iliad, xiv. 201, 302, 246.
+
+(2) In reading what Homer and Hesiod report about these matters, we must
+remember that all the forces and phenomena are conceived of by them as
+PERSONS. In this regard the archaic and savage view of all things as
+personal and human is preserved. "I maintain," says Grote, "moreover,
+fully the character of these great divine agents as persons, which is
+the light in which they presented themselves to the Homeric or Hesiodic
+audience. Uranus, Nyx, Hypnos and Oneiros (heaven, night, sleep and
+dream) are persons just as much as Zeus or Apollo. To resolve them into
+mere allegories is unsafe and unprofitable. We then depart from the
+point of view of the original hearers without acquiring any consistent
+or philosophical point of view of our own." This holds good though
+portions of the Hesiodic genealogies are distinctly poetic allegories
+cast in the mould or the ancient personal theory of things.
+
+(3) Iliad, xv. 187.
+
+(4) The custom by which sons drew lots for equal shares of their dead
+father's property is described in Odyssey, xiv. 199-212. Here Odysseus,
+giving a false account of himself, says that he was a Cretan, a bastard,
+and that his half-brothers, born in wedlock, drew lots for their
+father's inheritance, and did not admit him to the drawing, but gave him
+a small portion apart.
+
+(5) See Elton, Origins of English History, pp. 185-207.
+
+
+We now turn from Homer's incidental allusions to the ample and
+systematic narrative of Hesiod. As Mr. Grote says, "Men habitually
+took their information respecting their theogonic antiquities from the
+Hesiodic poems." Hesiod was accepted as an authority both by the pious
+Pausanias in the second century of our era--who protested against any
+attempt to alter stories about the gods--and by moral reformers like
+Plato and Xenophanes, who were revolted by the ancient legends,(1)
+and, indeed, denied their truth. Yet, though Hesiod represents Greek
+orthodoxy, we have observed that Homer (whose epics are probably still
+more ancient) steadily ignores the more barbarous portions of Hesiod's
+narrative. Thus the question arises: Are the stories of
+Hesiod's invention, and later than Homer, or does Homer's genius
+half-unconsciously purify materials like those which Hesiod presents
+in the crudest form? Mr. Grote says: "How far these stories are the
+invention of Hesiod himself it is impossible to determine. They bring us
+down to a cast of fancy more coarse and indelicate than the Homeric, and
+more nearly resemble some of the holy chapters ((Greek text omitted))
+of the more recent mysteries, such, for example, as the tale of Dionysus
+Zagreus. There is evidence in the Theogony itself that the author was
+acquainted with local legends current both at Krete and at Delphi, for
+he mentions both the mountain-cave in Krete wherein the newly-born Zeus
+was hidden, and the stone near the Delphian temple--the identical stone
+which Kronos had swallowed--placed by Zeus himself as a sign and marvel
+to mortal men. Both these monuments, which the poet expressly refers to,
+and had probably seen, imply a whole train of accessory and explanatory
+local legends, current probably among the priests of Krete and Delphi."
+
+
+(1) Timaeeus, 41; Republic, 377.
+
+
+All these circumstances appear to be good evidence of the great
+antiquity of the legends recorded by Hesiod. In the first place, arguing
+merely a priori, it is extremely improbable that in the brief interval
+between the date of the comparatively pure and noble mythology of the
+Iliad and the much ruder Theogony of Hesiod men INVENTED stories like
+the mutilation of Uranus, and the swallowing of his offspring by Cronus.
+The former legend is almost exactly parallel, as has already been
+shown, to the myth of Papa and Rangi in New Zealand. The later has
+its parallels among the savage Bushmen and Australians. It is highly
+improbable that men in an age so civilised as that of Homer invented
+myths as hideous as those of the lowest savages. But if we take these
+myths to be, not new inventions, but the sacred stories of local
+priesthoods, their antiquity is probably incalculable. The sacred
+stories, as we know from Pausanias, Herodotus and from all the writers
+who touch on the subject of the mysteries, were myths communicated
+by the priests to the initiated. Plato speaks of such myths in the
+Republic, 378: "If there is an absolute necessity for their mention, a
+very few might hear them in a mystery, and then let them sacrifice, not
+a common pig, but some huge and unprocurable victim; this would have the
+effect of very greatly diminishing the number of the hearers". This is
+an amusing example of a plan for veiling the horrors of myth. The pig
+was the animal usually offered to Demeter, the goddess of the Eleusinian
+mysteries. Plato proposes to substitute some "unprocurable" beast,
+perhaps a giraffe or an elephant.
+
+To Hesiod, then, we must turn for what is the earliest complete
+literary form of the Greek cosmogonic myth. Hesiod begins, like the
+New Zealanders, with "the august race of gods, by earth and wide heaven
+begotten".(1) So the New Zealanders, as we have seen, say, "The
+heaven which is above us, and the earth which is beneath us, are the
+progenitors of men and the origin of all things". Hesiod(2) somewhat
+differs from this view by making Chaos absolutely first of all things,
+followed by "wide-bosomed Earth," Tartarus and Eros (love). Chaos
+unaided produced Erebus and Night; the children of Night and Erebus are
+Aether and Day. Earth produced Heaven, who then became her own lover,
+and to Heaven she bore Oceanus, and the Titans, Coeeus and Crius,
+Hyperion and Iapetus, Thea and Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, Tethys,
+"and youngest after these was born Cronus of crooked counsel, the most
+dreadful of her children, who ever detested his puissant sire," Heaven.
+There were other sons of Earth and Heaven peculiarly hateful to their
+father,(3) and these Uranus used to hide from the light in a hollow of
+Gaea. Both they and Gaea resented this treatment, and the Titans, like
+"the children of Heaven and Earth," in the New Zealand poem, "sought to
+discern the difference between light and darkness". Gaea (unlike Earth
+in the New Zealand myth, for there she is purely passive), conspired
+with her children, produced iron, and asked her sons to avenge their
+wrongs.(4) Fear fell upon all of them save Cronus, who (like Tane Mahuta
+in the Maori poem) determined to end the embraces of Earth and Heaven.
+But while the New Zealand, like the Indo-Aryan myth,(5) conceives of
+Earth and Heaven as two beings who have never previously been sundered
+at all, Hesiod makes Heaven amorously approach his spouse from a
+distance. This was the moment for Cronus,(6) who stretched out his
+hand armed with the sickle of iron, and mutilated Uranus. As in so many
+savage myths, the blood of the wounded god fallen on the ground produced
+strange creatures, nymphs of the ash-tree, giants and furies. As in
+the Maori myth, one of the children of Heaven stood apart and did not
+consent to the deed. This was Oceanus in Greece,(7) and in New Zealand
+it was Tawhiri Matea, the wind, "who arose and followed his father,
+Heaven, and remained with him in the open spaces of the sky". Uranus now
+predicted(8) that there would come a day of vengeance for the evil deed
+of Cronus, and so ends the dynasty of Uranus.
+
+
+(1) Theog., 45.
+
+(2) Ibid., 116.
+
+(3) Ibid., 155.
+
+(4) Ibid., 166.
+
+(5) Muir, v. 23, quoting Aitareya Brahmana, iv. 27: "These two worlds
+were once joined; subsequently they separated".
+
+(6) Theog., 175-185.
+
+(7) Apollod., i, 15.
+
+(8) Theog., 209.
+
+
+This story was one of the great stumbling-blocks of orthodox Greece. It
+was the tale that Plato said should be told, if at all, only to a few
+in a mystery, after the sacrifice of some rare and scarcely obtainable
+animal. Even among the Maoris, the conduct of the children who severed
+their father and mother is regarded as a singular instance of iniquity,
+and is told to children as a moral warning, an example to be condemned.
+In Greece, on the other hand, unless we are to take the Euthyphro
+as wholly ironical, some of the pious justified their conduct by the
+example of Zeus. Euthyphro quotes this example when he is about to
+prosecute his own father, for which act, he says, "Men are angry with
+ME; so inconsistently do they talk when I am concerned and when the gods
+are concerned".(1) But in Greek THE TALE HAS NO MEANING. It has been
+allegorised in various ways, and Lafitau fancied that it was a distorted
+form of the Biblical account of the origin of sin. In Maori the legend
+is perfectly intelligible. Heaven and earth were conceived of (like
+everything else), as beings with human parts and passions, linked in
+an endless embrace which crushed and darkened their children. It became
+necessary to separate them, and this feat was achieved not without
+pain. "Then wailed the Heaven, and exclaimed the Earth, 'Wherefore
+this murder? Why this great sin? Why separate us?' But what cared Tane?
+Upwards he sent one and downwards the other. He cruelly severed
+the sinews which united Heaven and Earth."(2) The Greek myth too,
+contemplated earth and heaven as beings corporeally united, and heaven
+as a malignant power that concealed his children in darkness.
+
+
+(1) Euthyphro, 6.
+
+(2) Taylor, New Zealand, 119.
+
+
+But while the conception of heaven and earth as parents of living things
+remains perfectly intelligible in one sense, the vivid personification
+which regarded them as creatures with human parts and passions had
+ceased to be intelligible in Greece before the times of the earliest
+philosophers. The old physical conception of the pair became a metaphor,
+and the account of their rending asunder by their children lost all
+significance, and seemed to be an abominable and unintelligible myth.
+When examined in the light of the New Zealand story, and of the fact
+that early peoples do regard all phenomena as human beings, with
+physical attributes like those of men, the legend of Cronus, and Uranus,
+and Gaea ceases to be a mystery. It is, at bottom, a savage explanation
+(as in the Samoan story) of the separation of earth and heaven, an
+explanation which could only have occurred to people in a state of mind
+which civilisation has forgotten.
+
+The next generation of Hesiodic gods (if gods we are to call the members
+of this race of non-natural men) was not more fortunate than the first
+in its family relations.
+
+Cronus wedded his sister, Rhea, and begat Demeter, Hera, Hades,
+Poseidon, and the youngest, Zeus. "And mighty Cronus swallowed down each
+of them, each that came to their mother's knees from her holy womb, with
+this intent that none other of the proud sons of heaven should hold his
+kingly sway among the immortals. Heaven and Earth had warned him that he
+too should fall through his children. Wherefore he kept no vain
+watch, but spied and swallowed down each of his offspring, while grief
+immitigable took possession of Rhea."(1) Rhea, being about to become the
+mother of Zeus, took counsel with Uranus and Gaea. By their advice she
+went to Crete, where Zeus was born, and, in place of the child, she
+presented to Cronus a huge stone swathed in swaddling bands. This he
+swallowed, and was easy in his mind. Zeus grew up, and by some means,
+suggested by Gaea, compelled Zeus to disgorge all his offspring. "And
+he vomited out the stone first, as he had swallowed it last."(2) The
+swallowed children emerged alive, and Zeus fixed the stone at Pytho
+(Delphi), where Pausanias(3) had the privilege of seeing it, and where,
+as it did not tempt the cupidity of barbarous invaders, it probably
+still exists. It was not a large stone, Pausanias says, and the
+Delphians used to pour oil over it, as Jacob did(4) to the stone at
+Bethel, and on feast-days they covered it with wraps of wool. The custom
+of smearing fetish-stones (which Theophrastus mentions as one of the
+practices of the superstitious man) is clearly a survival from
+the savage stage of religion. As a rule, however, among savages,
+fetish-stones are daubed with red paint (like the face of the wooden
+ancient Dionysi in Greece, and of Tsui Goab among the Hottentots), not
+smeared with oil.(5)
+
+
+(1) Theog., 460, 465.
+
+(2) Theog., 498.
+
+(3) x. 245.
+
+(4) Gen. xxviii. 18.
+
+(5) Pausanias, ii. 2, 5. "Churinga" in Australia are greased with
+the natural moisture of the palm of the hand, and rubbed with red
+ochre.--Spencer and Gillen. They are "sacred things," but not exactly
+fetishes.
+
+
+The myth of the swallowing and disgorging of his own children by Cronus
+was another of the stumbling-blocks of Greek orthodoxy. The common
+explanation, that Time ((Greek text omitted)) does swallow his children,
+the days, is not quite satisfactory. Time brings never the past back
+again, as Cronus did. Besides, the myth of the swallowing is not
+confined to Cronus. Modern philology has given, as usual, different
+analyses of the meaning of the name of the god. Hermann, with Preller,
+derives it from (Greek text omitted), to fulfil. The harvest-month, says
+Preller, was named Cronion in Greece, and Cronia was the title of the
+harvest-festival. The sickle of Cronus is thus brought into connection
+with the sickle of the harvester.(1)
+
+
+(1) Preller, Gr. Myth., i. 44; Hartung, ii. 48; Porphyry, Abst., ii. 54.
+Welcker will not hear of this etymology, Gr. gott., i. 145, note 9.
+
+
+The second myth, in which Cronus swallows his children, has numerous
+parallels in savage legend. Bushmen tell of Kwai Hemm, the devourer, who
+swallows that great god, the mantis insect, and disgorges him alive with
+all the other persons and animals whom he has engulphed in the course of
+a long and voracious career.(1) The moon in Australia, while he lived
+on earth, was very greedy, and swallowed the eagle-god, whom he had to
+disgorge. Mr. Im Thurn found similar tales among the Indians of Guiana.
+The swallowing and disgorging of Heracles by the monster that was to
+slay Hesione is well known. Scotch peasants tell of the same feats, but
+localise the myth on the banks of the Ken in Galloway. Basutos, Eskimos,
+Zulus and European fairy tales all possess this incident, the swallowing
+of many persons by a being from whose maw they return alive and in good
+case.
+
+
+(1) Bleek, Bushman Folk-lore, pp. 6, 8.
+
+
+A mythical conception which prevails from Greenland to South Africa,
+from Delphi to the Solomon Islands, from Brittany to the shores of Lake
+Superior, must have some foundation in the common elements of human
+nature.(1) Now it seems highly probable that this curious idea may have
+been originally invented in an attempt to explain natural phenomena by
+a nature-myth. It has already been shown (chapter v.) that eclipses are
+interpreted, even by the peasantry of advanced races, as the swallowing
+of the moon by a beast or a monster. The Piutes account for the
+disappearance of the stars in the daytime by the hypothesis that the
+"sun swallows his children". In the Melanesian myth, dawn is cut out of
+the body of night by Qat, armed with a knife of red obsidian. Here are
+examples(2) of transparent nature-myths in which this idea occurs for
+obvious explanatory purposes, and in accordance with the laws of the
+savage imagination. Thus the conception of the swallowing and disgorging
+being may very well have arisen out of a nature-myth. But why is the
+notion attached to the legend of Cronus?
+
+
+(1) The myth of Cronus and the swallowed children and the stone is
+transferred to Gargantua. See Sebillot, Gargantua dans les Traditions
+Populaires. But it is impossible to be certain that this is not an
+example of direct borrowing by Madame De Cerny in her Saint Suliac, p.
+69.
+
+(2) Compare Tylor, Prim. Cult., i. 338.
+
+
+That is precisely the question about which mythologists differ, as has
+been shown, and perhaps it is better to offer no explanation. However
+stories arise--and this story probably arose from a nature-myth--it is
+certain that they wander about the world, that they change masters, and
+thus a legend which is told of a princess with an impossible name in
+Zululand is told of the mother of Charlemagne in France. The tale of
+the swallowing may have been attributed to Cronus, as a great truculent
+deity, though it has no particular elemental signification in connection
+with his legend.
+
+This peculiarly savage trick of swallowing each other became an
+inherited habit in the family of Cronus. When Zeus reached years of
+discretion, he married Metis, and this lady, according to the scholiast
+on Hesiod, had the power of transforming herself into any shape she
+pleased. When she was about to be a mother, Zeus induced her to assume
+the shape of a fly and instantly swallowed her.(1) In behaving thus,
+Zeus acted on the advice of Uranus and Gaea. It was feared that Metis
+would produce a child more powerful than his father. Zeus avoided this
+peril by swallowing his wife, and himself gave birth to Athene. The
+notion of swallowing a hostile person, who has been changed by magic
+into a conveniently small bulk, is very common. It occurs in the story
+of Taliesin.(2) Caridwen, in the shape of a hen, swallows Gwion Bach,
+in the form of a grain of wheat. In the same manner the princess in the
+Arabian Nights swallowed the Geni. Here then we have in the Hesiodic
+myth an old marchen pressed into the service of the higher mythology.
+The apprehension which Zeus (like Herod and King Arthur) always felt
+lest an unborn child should overthrow him, was also familiar to Indra;
+but, instead of swallowing the mother and concealing her in his own
+body, like Zeus, Indra entered the mother's body, and himself was born
+instead of the dreaded child.(3) A cow on this occasion was born along
+with Indra. This adventure of the (Greek text omitted) or swallowing
+of Metis was explained by the late Platonists as a Platonic allegory.
+Probably the people who originated the tale were not Platonists, any
+more than Pandarus was all Aristotelian.
+
+
+(1) Hesiod, Theogonia, 886. See Scholiast and note in Aglaophamus, i.
+613. Compare Puss in Boots and the Ogre.
+
+(2) Mabinogion, p. 473.
+
+(3) Black Yajur Veda, quoted by Sayana.
+
+
+After Homer and Hesiod, the oldest literary authorities for Greek
+cosmogonic myths are the poems attributed to Orpheus. About their
+probable date, as has been said, little is known. They have reached us
+only in fragments, but seem to contain the first guesses of a philosophy
+not yet disengaged from mythical conditions. The poet preserves, indeed,
+some extremely rude touches of early imagination, while at the same time
+one of the noblest and boldest expressions of pantheistic thought is
+attributed to him. From the same source are drawn ideas as pure as those
+of the philosophical Vedic hymn,(1) and as wild as those of the Vedic
+Purusha Sukta, or legend of the fashioning of the world out of the
+mangled limbs of Purusha. The authors of the Orphic cosmogony appear to
+have begun with some remarks on Time ((Greek text omitted)). "Time
+was when as yet this world was not."(2) Time, regarded in the mythical
+fashion as a person, generated Chaos and Aether. The Orphic poet styles
+Chaos (Greek text omitted), "the monstrous gulph," or "gap". This term
+curiously reminds one of Ginnunga-gap in the Scandinavian cosmogonic
+legends. "Ginnunga-gap was light as windless air," and therein the blast
+of heat met the cold rime, whence Ymir was generated, the Purusha
+of Northern fable.(3) These ideas correspond well with the Orphic
+conception of primitive space.(4)
+
+
+(1) Rig-Veda, x. 90.
+
+(2) Lobeck, Aglaophamus, i. 470. See also the quotations from Proclus.
+
+(3) Gylfi's Mocking.
+
+(4) Aglaophamus, p. 473.
+
+
+In process of time Chaos produced an egg, shining and silver white. It
+is absurd to inquire, according to Lobeck, whether the poet borrowed
+this widely spread notion of a cosmic egg from Phoenicia, Babylon, Egypt
+(where the goose-god Seb laid the egg), or whether the Orphic singer
+originated so obvious an idea. Quaerere ludicrum est. The conception may
+have been borrowed, but manifestly it is one of the earliest hypotheses
+that occur to the rude imagination. We have now three primitive
+generations, time, chaos, the egg, and in the fourth generation the egg
+gave birth to Phanes, the great hero of the Orphic cosmogony.(1) The
+earliest and rudest thinkers were puzzled, as many savage cosmogonic
+myths have demonstrated, to account for the origin of life. The myths
+frequently hit on the theory of a hermaphroditic being, both male and
+female, who produces another being out of himself. Prajapati in the
+Indian stories, and Hrimthursar in Scandinavian legend--"one of his feet
+got a son on the other"--with Lox in the Algonquin tale are examples of
+these double-sexed personages. In the Orphic poem, Phanes is both male
+and female. This Phanes held within him "the seed of all the gods,"(2)
+and his name is confused with the names of Metis and Ericapaeus in
+a kind of trinity. All this part of the Orphic doctrine is greatly
+obscured by the allegorical and theosophistic interpretations of the
+late Platonists long after our era, who, as usual, insisted on finding
+their own trinitarian ideas, commenta frigidissima, concealed under the
+mythical narrative.(3)
+
+
+(1) Clemens Alexan., p. 672.
+
+(2) Damascius, ap. Lobeck, i. 481.
+
+(3) Aglaoph., i. 483.
+
+
+Another description by Hieronymus of the first being, the Orphic Phanes,
+"as a serpent with bull's and lion's heads, with a human face in the
+middle and wings on the shoulders," is sufficiently rude and senseless.
+But these physical attributes could easily be explained away as types of
+anything the Platonist pleased.(1) The Orphic Phanes, too, was almost as
+many-headed as a giant in a fairy tale, or as Purusha in the Rig-Veda.
+He had a ram's head, a bull's head, a snake's head and a lion's head,
+and glanced around with four eyes, presumably human.(2) This remarkable
+being was also provided with golden wings. The nature of the physical
+arrangements by which Phanes became capable of originating life in the
+world is described in a style so savage and crude that the reader must
+be referred to Suidas for the original text.(3) The tale is worthy of
+the Swift-like fancy of the Australian Narrinyeri.
+
+
+(1) Damascius, 381, ap. Lobeck, i. 484.
+
+(2) Hermias in Phaedr. ap. Lobeck, i. 493.
+
+(3) Suidas s. v. Phanes.
+
+
+Nothing can be easier or more delusive than to explain all this wild
+part of the Orphic cosmogony as an allegorical veil of any modern ideas
+we choose to select. But why the "allegory" should closely imitate the
+rough guesses of uncivilised peoples, Ahts, Diggers, Zunis, Cahrocs,
+it is less easy to explain. We can readily imagine African or American
+tribes who were accustomed to revere bulls, rams, snakes, and so forth,
+ascribing the heads of all their various animal patrons to the deity of
+their confederation. We can easily see how such races as practise the
+savage rites of puberty should attribute to the first being the special
+organs of Phanes. But on the Neo-Platonic hypothesis that Orpheus was a
+seer of Neo-Platonic opinions, we do not see why he should have
+veiled his ideas under so savage an allegory. This part of the Orphic
+speculation is left in judicious silence by some modern commentators,
+such as M. Darmesteter in Les Cosmogonies Aryennes.(1) Indeed, if we
+choose to regard Apollonius Rhodius, an Alexandrine poet writing in a
+highly civilised age, as the representative of Orphicism, it is easy
+to mask and pass by the more stern and characteristic fortresses of
+the Orphic divine. The theriomorphic Phanes is a much less "Aryan" and
+agreeable object than the glorious golden-winged Eros, the love-god of
+Apollonius Rhodius and Aristophanes.(2)
+
+
+(1) Essais Orientaux, p. 166.
+
+(2) Argonautica, 1-12; Aves, 693.
+
+
+On the whole, the Orphic fragments appear to contain survivals of savage
+myths of the origin of things blended with purer speculations. The
+savage ideas are finally explained by late philosophers as allegorical
+veils and vestments of philosophy; but the interpretation is arbitrary,
+and varies with the taste and fancy of each interpreter. Meanwhile the
+coincidence of the wilder elements with the speculations native to races
+in the lowest grades of civilisation is undeniable. This opinion is
+confirmed by the Greek myths of the origin of Man. These, too, coincide
+with the various absurd conjectures of savages.
+
+In studying the various Greek local legends of the origin of Man, we
+encounter the difficulty of separating them from the myths of heroes,
+which it will be more convenient to treat separately. This difficulty we
+have already met in our treatment of savage traditions of the beginnings
+of the race. Thus we saw that among the Melanesians, Qat, and among
+the Ahts, Quawteaht, were heroic persons, who made men and most other
+things. But it was desirable to keep their performances of this sort
+separate from their other feats, their introduction of fire, for
+example, and of various arts. In the same way it will be well, in
+reviewing Greek legends, to keep Prometheus' share in the making of men
+apart from the other stories of his exploits as a benefactor of the men
+whom he made. In Hesiod, Prometheus is the son of the Titan Iapetus, and
+perhaps his chief exploit is to play upon Zeus a trick of which we find
+the parallel in various savage myths. It seems, however, from Ovid(1)
+and other texts, that Hesiod somewhere spoke of Prometheus as having
+made men out of clay, like Pund-jel in the Australian, Qat in the
+Melanesian and Tiki in the Maori myths. The same story is preserved in
+Servius's commentary on Virgil.(2) A different legend is preserved in
+the Etymologicum Magnum (voc. Ikonion). According to this story, after
+the deluge of Deucalion, "Zeus bade Prometheus and Athene make images
+of men out of clay, and the winds blew into them the breath of life".
+In confirmation of this legend, Pausanias was shown in Phocis certain
+stones of the colour of clay, and "smelling very like human flesh"; and
+these, according to the Phocians, were "the remains of the clay from
+which the whole human race was fashioned by Prometheus".(3)
+
+
+(1) Ovid. Metam. i. 82.
+
+(2) Eclogue, vi. 42.
+
+(3) Pausanias, x. 4, 3.
+
+
+Aristophanes, too, in the Birds (686) talks of men as (Greek text
+omitted), figures kneaded of clay. Thus there are sufficient traces in
+Greek tradition of the savage myth that man was made of clay by some
+superior being, like Pund-jel in the quaint Australian story.
+
+We saw that among various rude races other theories of the origin of man
+were current. Men were thought to have come out of a hole in the
+ground or a bed of reeds, and sometimes the very scene of their first
+appearance was still known and pointed out to the curious. This myth
+was current among races who regarded themselves as the only people whose
+origin needed explanation. Other stories represented man as the fruit of
+a tree, or the child of a rock or stone, or as the descendant of one of
+the lower animals. Examples of these opinions in Greek legend are now to
+be given. In the first place, we have a fragment of Pindar, in which the
+poet enumerates several of the centres from which different Greek
+tribes believed men to have sprung. "Hard it is to find out whether
+Alalkomeneus, first of men, arose on the marsh of Cephissus, or whether
+the Curetes of Ida first, a stock divine, arose, or if it was the
+Phrygian Corybantes that the sun earliest saw--men like trees
+walking;" and Pindar mentions Egyptian and Libyan legends of the same
+description.(1) The Thebans and the Arcadians held themselves to be
+"earth-born". "The black earth bore Pelasgus on the high wooded hills,"
+says an ancient line of Asius. The Dryopians were an example of a race
+of men born from ash-trees. The myth of gens virum truncis et duro
+robore nata, "born of tree-trunk and the heart of oak," had passed into
+a proverb even in Homer's time.(2) Lucian mentions(3) the Athenian myth
+"that men grew like cabbages out of the earth". As to Greek myths of
+the descent of families from animals, these will be examined in the
+discussion of the legend of Zeus.
+
+
+(1) Preller, Aus. Auf., p. 158.
+
+(2) Virgil Aen., viii. 315; Odyssey, xix. 163; Iliad, ii. xxii. 120;
+Juvenal, vi. 11. Cf. also Bouche Leclerq, De Origine Generis Humani.
+
+(3) Philops. iii.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI. SAVAGE DIVINE MYTHS.
+
+The origin of a belief in GOD beyond the ken of history and of
+speculation--Sketch of conjectural theories--Two elements in all
+beliefs, whether of backward or civilised races--The Mythical and
+the Religious--These may be coeval, or either may be older than the
+other--Difficulty of study--The current anthropological theory--Stated
+objections to the theory--Gods and spirits--Suggestion that savage
+religion is borrowed from Europeans--Reply to Mr. Tylor's arguments on
+this head--The morality of savages.
+
+
+"The question of the origin of a belief in Deity does not come within
+the scope of a strictly historical inquiry. No man can watch the idea
+of GOD in the making or in the beginning. We are acquainted with no race
+whose beginning does not lie far back in the unpenetrated past. Even
+on the hypothesis that the natives of Australia, for example, were
+discovered in a state of culture more backward than that of other known
+races, yet the institutions and ideas of the Australians must have
+required for their development an incalculable series of centuries.
+The notions of man about the Deity, man's religious sentiments and his
+mythical narratives, must be taken as we find them. There have been, and
+are, many theories as to the origin of the conception of a supernatural
+being or beings, concerned with the fortunes of mankind, and once active
+in the making of the earth and its inhabitants. There is the hypothesis
+of an original divine tradition, darkened by the smoke of foolish mortal
+fancies. There is the hypothesis of an innate and intuitive sensus
+numinis. There is the opinion that the notion of Deity was introduced
+to man by the very nature of his knowledge and perceptions, which compel
+him in all things to recognise a finite and an infinite. There is the
+hypothesis that gods were originally ghosts, the magnified shapes of
+ancestral spectres. There is the doctrine that man, seeking in his early
+speculations for the causes of things, and conscious of his own powers
+as an active cause, projected his own shadow on the mists of the
+unknown, and peopled the void with figures of magnified non-natural men,
+his own parents and protectors, and the makers of many of the things in
+the world.
+
+"Since the actual truth cannot be determined by observation and
+experiment, the question as to the first germs of the divine conception
+must here be left unanswered. But it is possible to disengage and
+examine apart the two chief elements in the earliest as in the latest
+ideas of Godhead. Among the lowest and most backward, as among the most
+advanced races, there coexist the MYTHICAL and the RELIGIOUS elements
+in belief. The rational factor (or what approves itself to us as the
+rational factor) is visible in religion; the irrational is prominent
+in myth. The Australian, the Bushman, the Solomon Islander, in hours
+of danger and necessity 'yearns after the gods,' and has present in his
+heart the idea of a father and friend. This is the religious element.
+The same man, when he comes to indulge his fancy for fiction, will
+degrade this spiritual friend and father to the level of the beasts,
+and will make him the hero of comic or repulsive adventures. This is the
+mythical or irrational element. Religion, in its moral aspect, always
+traces back to the belief in a power that is benign and works for
+righteousness. Myth, even in Homer or the Rig-Veda, perpetually falls
+back on the old stock of absurd and immoral divine adventures.(1)
+
+
+(1) M. Knappert here, in a note to the Dutch translation, denies the
+lowest mythical element to the Hebrews, as their documents have reached
+us.
+
+
+"It would be rash, in the present state of knowledge, to pronounce that
+the germ of the serious Homeric sense of the justice and power of the
+Divinity is earlier or later than the germ of the Homeric stories of
+gods disguised as animals, or imprisoned by mortals, or kicked out of
+Olympus. The rational and irrational aspects of mythology and religion
+may be of coeval antiquity for all that is certainly known, or either of
+them, in the dark backward of mortal experience, may have preceded the
+other. There is probably no religion nor mythology which does not
+offer both aspects to the student. But it is the part of advancing
+civilisation to adorn and purify the rational element, and to
+subordinate and supersede the irrational element, as far as religious
+conservatism, ritual and priestly dogma will permit."
+
+Such were the general remarks with which this chapter opened in the
+original edition of the present work. But reading, reflection and
+certain additions to the author's knowledge of facts, have made it seem
+advisable to state, more fully and forcibly than before, that, in his
+opinion, not only the puzzling element of myth, but the purer element of
+a religious belief sanctioning morality is derived by civilised people
+from a remote past of savagery. It is also necessary to draw attention
+to a singular religious phenomena, a break, or "fault," as geologists
+call it, in the religious strata. While the most backward savages, in
+certain cases, present the conception of a Being who sanctions ethics,
+and while that conception recurs at a given stage of civilisation, it
+appears to fade, or even to disappear in some conditions of barbarism.
+Among some barbaric peoples, such as the Zulus, and the Red Indians of
+French Canada when first observed, as among some Polynesians and some
+tribes of Western and Central Africa little trace of a supreme being
+is found, except a name, and that name is even occasionally a matter
+of ridicule. The highest religious conception has been reached, and
+is generally known, yet the Being conceived of as creative is utterly
+neglected, while ghosts, or minor gods, are served and adored. To this
+religious phenomenon (if correctly observed) we must attempt to assign
+a cause. For this purpose it is necessary to state again what may be
+called the current or popular anthropological theory of the evolution of
+Gods.
+
+That theory takes varying shapes. In the philosophy of Mr. Herbert
+Spencer we find a pure Euhemerism. Gods are but ghosts of dead men,
+raised to a higher and finally to the highest power. In the somewhat
+analogous but not identical system of Mr. Tylor, man first attains to
+the idea of spirit by reflection on various physical, psychological
+and psychical experiences, such as sleep, dreams, trances, shadows,
+hallucinations, breath and death, and he gradually extends the
+conception of soul or ghost till all nature is peopled with spirits. Of
+these spirits one is finally promoted to supremacy, where the conception
+of a supreme being occurs. In the lowest faiths there is said, on this
+theory, to be no connection, or very little connection, between religion
+and morality. To supply a religious sanction of morals is the work of
+advancing thought.(1)
+
+
+(1) Prim. Cult., ii. 381. Huxley's Science and Hebrew Tradition, pp.
+346,372.
+
+
+This current hypothesis is, confessedly, "animistic," in Mr. Tylor's
+phrase, or, in Mr. Spencer's terminology, it is "the ghost theory". The
+human soul, says Mr. Tylor, has been the model on which all man's ideas
+of spiritual beings, from "the tiniest elf" to "the heavenly Creator and
+ruler of the world, the Great Spirit," have been framed.(1) Thus it has
+been necessary for Mr. Tylor and for Mr. Spencer to discover first
+an origin of man's idea of his own soul, and that supposed origin in
+psychological, physical and psychical experiences is no doubt adequate.
+By reflection on these facts, probably, the idea of spirit was reached,
+though the psychical experiences enumerated by Mr. Tylor may contain
+points as yet unexplained by Materialism. From these sources are derived
+all really "animistic" gods, all that from the first partake of the
+nature of hungry ghosts, placated by sacrifices of food, though in
+certain cases that hunger may have been transferred, we surmise, by
+worshippers to gods not ORIGINALLY animistic.
+
+
+(1) Prim. Cult., ii. 109
+
+
+In answer to this theory of an animistic or ghostly origin of all gods,
+it must first be observed that all gods are not necessarily, it would
+seem, of animistic origin. Among certain of the lowest savages, although
+they believe in ghosts, the animistic conception, the spiritual idea,
+is not attached to the relatively supreme being of their faith. He is
+merely a powerful BEING, unborn, and not subject to death. The purely
+metaphysical question "was he a ghost?" does not seem always to have
+been asked. Consequently there is no logical reason why man's idea of
+a Maker should not be prior to man's idea that there are such things
+as souls, ghosts and spirits. Therefore the animistic theory is not
+necessary as material for the "god-idea". We cannot, of course, prove
+that the "god-idea" was historically prior to the "ghost-idea," for we
+know no savages who have a god and yet are ignorant of ghosts. But we
+can show that the idea of God may exist, in germ, without explicitly
+involving the idea of spirit. Thus gods MAY be prior in evolution to
+ghosts, and therefore the animistic theory of the origin of gods in
+ghosts need not necessarily be accepted.
+
+In the first place, the original evolution of a god out of a ghost
+need not be conceded, because in perhaps all known savage theological
+philosophy the God, the Maker and Master, is regarded as a being
+who existed before death entered the world. Everywhere, practically
+speaking, death is looked on as a comparatively late intruder. He came
+not only after God was active, but after men and beasts had populated
+the world. Scores of myths accounting for this invasion of death have
+been collected all over the world.(1) Thus the relatively supreme being,
+or beings, of religion are looked on as prior to Death, therefore, not
+as ghosts. They are sometimes expressly distinguished as "original
+gods" from other gods who are secondary, being souls of chiefs. Thus all
+Tongan gods are Atua, but all Atua are not "original gods".(2) The word
+Atua, according to Mr. White, is "A-tu-a". "A" was the name given to the
+author of the universe, and signifies: "Am the unlimited in power," "The
+Conception," "the Leader," "the Beyond All". "Tua" means "Beyond that
+which is most distant," "Behind all matter," and "Behind every action".
+Clearly these conceptions are not more mythical (indeed A does not seem
+to occur in the myths), nor are they more involved in ghosts, than the
+unknown absolute of Mr. Herbert Spencer. Yet the word Atua denotes gods
+who are recognised as ghosts of chiefs, no less than it denotes the
+supreme existence.(3) These ideas are the metaphysical theology of a
+race considerably above the lowest level. They lend no assistance to a
+theory that A was, or was evolved out of, a human ghost, and he is not
+found in Maori MYTHOLOGY as far as our knowledge goes. But, among the
+lowest known savages, the Australians, we read that "the Creator was
+a gigantic black, once on earth, now among the stars". This is in
+Gippsland; the deities of the Fuegians and the Blackfoot Indians are
+also Beings, anthropomorphic, unborn and undying, like Mangarrah, the
+creative being of the Larrakeah tribe in Australia. "A very good man
+called Mangarrah lives in the sky.... He made everything" (blacks
+excepted). He never dies.(4) The Melanesian Vui "never were men," were
+"something different," and "were NOT ghosts". It is as a Being, not as a
+Spirit, that the Kurnai deity Munganngaur (Our Father) is described.(5)
+In short, though Europeans often speak of these divine beings of low
+savages as "spirits," it does not appear that the natives themselves
+advance here the metaphysical idea of spirit. These gods are just
+BEINGS, anthropomorphic, or (in myth and fable), very often bestial,
+"theriomorphic".(6) It is manifest that a divine being envisaged thus
+need not have been evolved out of the theory of spirits or ghosts, and
+may even have been prior to the rise of the belief in ghosts.
+
+
+(1) See Modern Mythology, "Myths of Origin of Death".
+
+(2) Mariner, ii. 127.
+
+(3) White, Ancient History of the Maoris, vol. i. p. 4; other views in
+Gill's Myths of the Pacific. I am not committed to Mr. White's opinion.
+
+(4) Journal Anthrop. Inst., Nov., 1894, p. 191.
+
+(5) Ibid., 1886, p. 313.
+
+(6) See Making of Religion, pp. 201-210, for a more copious statement.
+
+
+Again, these powerful, or omnipotent divine beings are looked on as
+guardians of morality, punishers of sin, rewarders of righteousness,
+both in this world and in a future life, in places where ghosts, though
+believed in, ARE NOT WORSHIPPED, NOR IN RECEIPT OF SACRIFICE, and where,
+great grandfathers being forgotten, ancestral ghosts can scarcely swell
+into gods. This occurs among Andamanese, Fuegians and Australians,
+therefore, among non-ghost-worshipping races, ghosts cannot have
+developed into deities who are not even necessarily spirits. These gods,
+again, do not receive sacrifice, and thus lack the note of descent from
+hungry food-craving ghosts. In Australia, indeed, while ghosts are not
+known to receive any offerings, "the recent custom of providing food
+for it"--the dead body of a friend--"is derided by the intelligent old
+aborigines as 'white fellow's gammon'".(1)
+
+
+(1) Dawson, Australian Aborigines, p. 51, 1881.
+
+
+The Australians possess no chiefs like "Vich Ian Vohr or Chingachgook"
+whose ghosts might be said to swell into supreme moral deities.
+"Headmen" they have, leaders of various degrees of authority, but no
+Vich Ian Vohr, no semi-sacred representative of the tribe.(1) Nor are
+the ghosts of the Headmen known to receive any particular posthumous
+attention or worship. Thus it really seems impossible to show proof that
+Australian gods grew out of Australian ghosts, a subject to which we
+shall return.
+
+
+(1) Howitt, Organisation of Australian Tribes, pp. 101-113.
+"Transactions of Royal Society of Victoria," 1889.
+
+
+Some supporters of the current theory therefore fall back on the
+hypothesis that the Australians are sadly degenerate.(1) Chiefs, it is
+argued, or kings, they once had, and the gods are surviving ghosts of
+these wholly forgotten potentates. To this we reply that we know not the
+very faintest trace of Australian degeneration. Sir John Lubbock and
+Mr. Tylor have correctly argued that the soil of Australia has not yet
+yielded so much as a fragment of native pottery, nor any trace of native
+metal work, not a vestige of stone buildings occurs, nor of any work
+beyond the present native level of culture, unless we reckon weirs for
+fish-catching. "The Australian boomerang," writes Mr. Tylor, "has been
+claimed as derived from some hypothetical high culture, whereas the
+transition-stages through which it is connected with the club are to
+be observed in its own country, while no civilised race possesses the
+weapon."(2)
+
+
+(1) See Prof. Menzie's History of Religion, pp. 16, 17, where a singular
+inconsistency has escaped the author.
+
+(2) Prim. Cult., i. 57, 67.
+
+
+Therefore the Australian, with his boomerang, represents no degeneration
+but advance on his ancestors, who had not yet developed the boomerang
+out of the club. If the excessively complex nature of Australian rules
+of prohibited degrees be appealed to as proof of degeneration from the
+stage in which they were evolved, we reply that civilisation everywhere
+tends not to complicate but to simplify such rules, as it also
+notoriously simplifies the forms of language.
+
+The Australian people, when discovered, were only emerging from
+palaeolithic culture, while the neighbouring Tasmanians were frankly
+palaeolithic.(1) Far from degenerating, the Australians show advance
+when they supersede their beast or other totem by an eponymous human
+hero.(2) The eponymous hero, however, changed with each generation, so
+that no one name was fixed as that of tribal father, later perhaps to
+become a tribal god. We find several tribes in which the children now
+follow the FATHER'S class, and thus paternal kin takes the place of the
+usual early savage method of reckoning kinship by the mother's side,
+elsewhere prevalent in Australia. In one of these tribes, dwelling
+between the Glenelg and Mount Napier, headmanship is hereditary, but
+nothing is said of any worship of the ghosts of chiefs. All this social
+improvement denotes advance on the usual Australian standard.(3) Of
+degeneration (except when produced recently by European vices and
+diseases) I know no trace in Australia. Their highest religious
+conceptions, therefore, are not to be disposed of as survivals of a
+religion of the ghosts of such chiefs as the Australians are not shown
+ever to have recognised. The "God idea" in Australia, or among the
+Andamanese, must have some other source than the Ghost-Theory. This is
+all the more obvious because not only are ghosts not worshipped by the
+Australians, but also the divine beings who are alleged to form
+links between the ghost and the moral god are absent. There are no
+departmental gods, as of war, peace, the chase, love, and so forth. Sun,
+sky and earth are equally unworshipped. There is nothing in religion
+between a Being, on one hand (with a son or sons), and vague mischievous
+spirits, boilyas or mrarts, and ghosts (who are not worshipped), on the
+other hand. The friends of the idea that the God is an ancient evolution
+from the ghost of such a chief as is not proved to have existed, must
+apparently believe that the intermediate stages in religious evolution,
+departmental gods, nature gods and gods of polytheism in general once
+existed in Australia, and have all been swept away in a deluge of
+degeneration. That deluge left in religion a moral, potently active
+Father and Judge. Now that conception is considerably above the
+obsolescent belief in an otiose god which is usually found among
+barbaric races of the type from which the Australians are said to have
+degenerated. There is no proof of degeneracy, and, if degeneration has
+occurred, why has it left just the kind of deity who, in the higher
+barbaric culture, is not commonly found? Clearly this attempt to
+explain the highest aspect of Australian religion by an undemonstrated
+degeneration is an effort of despair.
+
+
+(1) Tylor, preface to Ling Roth's Aborigines of Tasmania, pp. v.-viii.
+
+(2) Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 231.
+
+(3) Kamilaroi and Kurnai, pp. 277, 278.
+
+
+While the current theory thus appears to break down over the deities
+of certain Australian tribes and of other low savages to be more
+particularly described later, it is not more successful in dealing with
+what we have called the "fault" or break in the religious strata of
+higher races. The nature of that "fault" may thus be described: While
+the deities of several low savage peoples are religiously regarded as
+guardians and judges of conduct both in this life and in the next, among
+higher barbarians they are often little, or not at all, interested in
+conduct. Again, while among Australians, and Andamanese, and Fuegians,
+there is hardly a verifiable trace, if any trace there be, of sacrifice
+to any divine being, among barbarians the gods beneath the very highest
+are in receipt even of human sacrifice. Even among barbarians the
+highest deity is very rarely worshipped with sacrifice. Through various
+degrees he is found to lose all claim on worship, and even to become a
+mere name, and finally a jest and a mockery. Meanwhile ancestral ghosts,
+and gods framed on the same lines as ghosts, receive sacrifice of food
+and of human victims. Once more, the high gods of low savages are not
+localised, not confined to any temple or region. But the gods of higher
+barbarians (the gods beneath the highest), are localised in this way, as
+occasionally even the highest god also is.
+
+All this shows that, among advancing barbarians, the gods, if they
+started from the estate of gods among savages on the lowest level,
+become demoralised, limited, conditioned, relegated to an otiose
+condition, and finally deposed, till progressive civilisation, as in
+Greece, reinstates or invents purer and more philosophic conceptions,
+without being able to abolish popular and priestly myth and ritual.
+
+Here, then, is a flaw or break in the strata of religion. What was
+the cause of this flaw? We answer, the evolution, through ghosts,
+of "animistic" gods who retained the hunger and selfishness of these
+ancestral spirits whom the lowest savages are not known to worship.
+
+The moral divine beings of these lowest races, beings (when religiously
+regarded) unconditioned, in need of no gift that man can give, are not
+to be won by offerings of food and blood. Of such offerings ghosts,
+and gods modelled on ghosts, are notoriously in need. Strengthened
+and propitiated by blood and sacrifice (not offered to the gods of low
+savages), the animistic deities will become partisans of their adorers,
+and will either pay no regard to the morals of their worshippers, or
+will be easily bribed to forgive sins. Here then is, ethically speaking,
+a flaw in the strata of religion, a flaw found in the creeds of
+ghost-worshipping barbarians, but not of non-ghost-worshipping savages.
+A crowd of venal, easy-going, serviceable deities has now been evolved
+out of ghosts, and Animism is on its way to supplant or overlay a rude
+early form of theism. Granting the facts, we fail to see how they are
+explained by the current theory which makes the highest god the latest
+in evolution from a ghost. That theory wrecks itself again on the
+circumstance that, whereas the tribal or national highest divine being,
+as latest in evolution, ought to be the most potent, he is, in fact,
+among barbaric races, usually the most disregarded. A new idea, of
+course, is not necessarily a powerful or fashionable idea. It may be
+regarded as a "fad," or a heresy, or a low form of dissent. But, when
+universally known to and accepted by a tribe or people, then it must be
+deemed likely to possess great influence. But that is not the case; and
+among barbaric tribes the most advanced conception of deity is the least
+regarded, the most obsolete.
+
+An excellent instance of the difference between the theory here
+advocated, and that generally held by anthropologists, may be found
+in Mr. Abercromby's valuable work, Pre-and Proto-Historic Finns, i.
+150-154. The gods, and other early ideas, says Mr. Abercromby, "could in
+no sense be considered as supernatural". We shall give examples of gods
+among the races "nearest the beginning," whose attributes of power
+and knowledge can not, by us at least, be considered other than
+"supernatural". "The gods" (in this hypothesis) "were so human that
+they could be forced to act in accordance with the wishes of their
+worshippers, and could likewise be punished." These ideas, to an
+Australian black, or an Andamanese, would seem dangerously blasphemous.
+These older gods "resided chiefly in trees, wells, rivers and animals".
+But many gods of our lowest known savages live "beyond the sky". Mr.
+Abercromby supposes the sky god to be of later evolution, and to be
+worshipped after man had exhausted "the helpers that seemed nearest at
+hand... in the trees and waters at his very door". Now the Australian
+black has not a door, nor has he gods of any service to him in the
+"trees and waters," though sprites may lurk in such places for mischief.
+But in Mr. Abercromby's view, some men turned at last to the sky-god,
+"who in time would gain a large circle of worshippers". He would come
+to be thought omnipotent, omniscient, the Creator. This notion, says Mr.
+Abercromby, "must, if this view is correct, be of late origin". But the
+view is not correct. The far-seeing powerful Maker beyond the sky is
+found among the very backward races who have not developed helpers
+nearer man, dwelling round what would be his door, if door he was
+civilised enough to possess. Such near neighbouring gods, of human
+needs, capable of being bullied, or propitiated by sacrifice, are found
+in races higher than the lowest, who, for their easily procurable aid,
+have allowed the Maker to sink into an otiose god, or a mere name. Mr.
+Abercromby unconsciously proves our case by quoting the example of a
+Samoyede. This man knew a Sky-god, Num; that conception was familiar
+to him. He also knew a familiar spirit. On Mr. Abercromby's theory he
+should have resorted for help to the Sky-god, not to the sprite. But he
+did the reverse: he said, "I cannot approach Num, he is too far away; if
+I could reach him I should not beseech thee (the familiar spirit), but
+should go myself; but I cannot". For this precise reason, people who
+have developed the belief in accessible affable spirits go to them, with
+a spell to constrain, or a gift to bribe, and neglect, in some cases
+almost forget, their Maker. But He is worshipped by low savages, who do
+not propitiate ghosts and who have no gods in wells and trees, close at
+hand. It seems an obvious inference that the greater God is the earlier
+evolved.
+
+These are among the difficulties of the current anthropological theory.
+There is, however, a solution by which the weakness of the divine
+conception, its neglected, disused aspect among barbaric races, might
+be explained by anthropologists, without regarding it as an obsolescent
+form of a very early idea. This solution is therefore in common use.
+It is applied to the deity revealed in the ancient mysteries of the
+Australians, and it is employed in American and African instances.
+
+The custom is to say that the highest divine being of American or
+African native peoples has been borrowed from Europeans, and is,
+especially, a savage refraction from the God of missionaries. If this
+can be proved, the shadowy, practically powerless "Master of Life"
+of certain barbaric peoples, will have degenerated from the Christian
+conception, because of that conception he will be only a faint
+unsuccessful refraction. He has been introduced by Europeans, it is
+argued, but is not in harmony with his new environment, and so is
+"half-remembered and half forgot".
+
+The hypothesis of borrowing admits of only one answer, but that answer
+should be conclusive. If we can discover, say in North America, a single
+instance in which the supreme being occurs, while yet he cannot possibly
+be accounted for by any traceable or verifiable foreign influence, then
+the burden of proof, in other cases, falls on the opponent. When he
+urges that other North American supreme beings were borrowed, we can
+reply that our crucial example shows that this need not be the fact. To
+prove that it is the fact, in his instances, is then his business. It is
+obvious that for information on this subject we must go to the reports
+of the earliest travellers who knew the Red Indians well. We must try to
+get at gods behind any known missionary efforts. Mr. Tylor offers us the
+testimony of Heriot, about 1586, that the natives of Virginia believed
+in many gods, also in one chief god, "who first made other principal
+gods, and then the sun, moon and stars as petty gods".(1) Whence could
+the natives of Virginia have borrowed this notion of a Creator before
+1586? If it is replied, in the usual way, that they developed him
+upwards out of sun, moon and star gods, other principal gods, and
+finally reached the idea of the Creator, we answer that the idea of the
+Maker is found where these alleged intermediate stages are NOT found, as
+in Australia. In Virginia then, as in Victoria, a Creator may have been
+evolved in some other way than that of gradual ascent from ghosts,
+and may have been, as in Australia and elsewhere, prior to verifiable
+ghost-worship. Again, in Virginia at our first settlement, the native
+priests strenuously resisted the introduction of Christianity. They
+were content with their deity, Ahone, "the great God who governs all
+the world, and makes the sun to shine, creating the moon and stars his
+companions.... The good and peaceable God... needs not to be sacrificed
+unto, for he intendeth all good unto them." This good Creator, without
+sacrifice, among a settled agricultural barbaric race sacrificing to
+other gods and ghosts, manifestly cannot be borrowed from the newly
+arrived religion of Christianity, which his priests, according to
+the observer, vigorously resisted. Ahone had a subordinate deity,
+magisterial in functions, "looking into all men's actions" and punishing
+the same, when evil. To THIS god sacrifices WERE made, and if his name,
+Okeus, is derived from Oki = "spirit," he was, of course, an animistic
+ghost-evolved deity. Anthropological writers, by an oversight, have
+dwelt on Oki, but have not mentioned Ahone.(2) Manifestly it is not
+possible to insist that these Virginian high deities were borrowed,
+without saying whence and when they were borrowed by a barbaric race
+which was, at the same time, rejecting Christian teaching.
+
+
+(1) Prim. Cult., ii. 341.
+
+(2) History of Travaile into Virginia, by William Strachey, 1612.
+
+
+Mr. Tylor writes, with his habitual perspicacity: "It is the widespread
+belief in the Great Spirit, whatever his precise nature and origin, that
+has long and deservedly drawn the attention of European thinkers to the
+native religions of the North American tribes". Now while, in recent
+times, Christian ideas may undeniably have crystallised round "the Great
+Spirit," it has come to be thought "that THE WHOLE DOCTRINE of the Great
+Spirit was borrowed by the savages from missionaries and colonists. But
+this view will not bear examination," says Mr. Tylor.(1)
+
+
+(1) Prim. Cult, ii. pp. 339, 340 (1873). For some reason, Mr. Tylor
+modifies this passage in 1891.
+
+
+Mr. Tylor proceeds to prove this by examples from Greenland, and the
+Algonkins. He instances the Massachusett God, Kiehtan, who created the
+other gods, and receives the just into heaven. This was recorded in
+1622, but the belief, says Winslow, our authority, goes back into the
+unknown past. "They never saw Kiehtan, but THEY HOLD IT A GREAT CHARGE
+AND DUTY THAT ONE AGE TEACH ANOTHER." How could a deity thus rooted in a
+traditional past be borrowed from recent English settlers?
+
+In these cases the hypothesis of borrowing breaks down, and still more
+does it break down over the Algonkin deity Atahocan.
+
+Father Le Jeune, S.J., went first among the Algonkins, a missionary
+pioneer, in 1633, and suffered unspeakable things in his courageous
+endeavour to win souls in a most recalcitrant flock. He writes (1633):
+"As this savage has given me occasion to speak of their god, I will
+remark that it is a great error to think that the savages have no
+knowledge of any deity. I was surprised to hear this in France. I do not
+know their secrets, but, from the little which I am about to tell, it
+will be seen that they have such knowledge.
+
+"They say that one exists whom they call Atahocan, who made the whole.
+Speaking of God in a wigwam one day, they asked me 'what is God?' I told
+them that it was He who made all things, Heaven and Earth. They then
+began to cry out to each other, 'Atahocan! Atahocan! it is Atahocan!'"
+
+There could be no better evidence that Atahocan was NOT (as is often
+said) "borrowed from the Jesuits". The Jesuits had only just arrived.
+
+Later (1634) Le Jeune interrogated an old man and a partly Europeanised
+sorcerer. They replied that nothing was certain; that Atahocan was only
+spoken of as "of a thing so remote," that assurance was impossible. "In
+fact, their word Nitatohokan means, 'I fable, I tell an old story'."
+
+Thus Atahocan, though at once recognised as identical with the Creator
+of the missionary, was so far from being the latest thing in religious
+evolution that he had passed into a proverb for the ancient and the
+fabulous. This, of course, is inconsistent with RECENT borrowing. He was
+neglected for Khichikouai, spirits which inspire seers, and are of
+some practical use, receiving rewards in offerings of grease, says Le
+Jeune.(1)
+
+
+(1) Relations, 1633, 1634.
+
+
+The obsolescent Atahocan seems to have had no moral activity. But, in
+America, this indolence of God is not universal. Mr. Parkman indeed
+writes: "In the primitive Indian's conception of a God, the idea of
+moral good has no part".(1) But this is definitely contradicted by
+Heriot, Strachey, Winslow, already cited, and by Pere Le Jeune. The good
+attributes of Kiehtan and Ahone were not borrowed from Christianity,
+were matter of Indian belief before the English arrived. Mr. Parkman
+writes: "The moment the Indians began to contemplate the object of his
+faith, and sought to clothe it with attributes, it became finite, and
+commonly ridiculous". It did so, as usual, in MYTHOLOGY, but not in
+RELIGION. There is nothing ridiculous in what is known of Ahone and
+Kiehtan. If they had a mythology, and if we knew the myths, doubtless
+they would be ridiculous enough. The savage mind, turned from belief and
+awe into the spinning of yarns, instantly yields to humorous fancy. As
+we know, mediaeval popular Christianity, in imagery, marchen or tales,
+and art, copiously illustrates the same mental phenomenon. Saints,
+God, our Lord, and the Virgin, all play ludicrous and immoral parts in
+Christian folk-tales. This is Mythology, and here is, beyond all cavil,
+a late corruption of Religion. Here, where we know the history of a
+creed, Religion is early, and these myths are late. Other examples of
+American divine ideas might be given, such as the extraordinary hymns
+in which the Zunis address the Eternal, Ahonawilona. But as the Zuni
+religion has only been studied in recent years, the hymns would be
+dismissed as "borrowed," though there is nothing Catholic or Christian
+about them. We have preferred to select examples where borrowing from
+Christianity is out of the question. The current anthropological theory
+is thus confronted with American examples of ideas of the divine which
+cannot have been borrowed, while, if the gods are said to have been
+evolved out of ghosts, we reply that, in some cases, they receive no
+sacrifice, sacrifice being usually a note of ghostly descent. Again,
+similar gods, as we show, exist where ghosts of chiefs are not
+worshipped, and as far as evidence goes never were worshipped, because
+there is no evidence of the existence at any time of such chiefs. The
+American highest gods may then be equally free from the taint of ghostly
+descent.
+
+
+(1) Parkman, The Jesuits in North America. p. lxxviii.
+
+
+There is another more or less moral North American deity whose evolution
+is rather questionable. Pere Brebeuf (1636), speaking of the
+Hurons, says that "they have recourse to Heaven in almost all their
+necessities,... and I may say that it is, in fact, God whom they blindly
+adore, for they imagine that there is an Oki, that is, a demon, in
+heaven, who regulates the seasons, bridles the winds and the waves of
+the sea, and helps them in every need. They dread his wrath, and appeal
+to him as witness to the inviolability of their faith, when they make
+a promise or treaty of peace with enemies. 'Heaven hear us to-day' is
+their form of adjuration."(1)
+
+
+(1) Relations, 1636, pp. 106, 107.
+
+
+A spiritual being, whose home is heaven, who rides on the winds, whose
+wrath is dreaded, who sanctions the oath, is only called "a demon" by
+the prejudice of the worthy father who, at the same time, admits that
+the savages have a conception of God--and that God, so conceived, is
+this demon!
+
+The debatable question is, was the "demon," or the actual expanse of
+sky, first in evolution? That cannot precisely be settled, but in the
+analogous Chinese case of China we find heaven (Tien) and "Shang-ti, the
+personal ruling Deity," corresponding to the Huron "demon". Shang-ti,
+the personal deity, occurs most in the oldest, pre-Confucian sacred
+documents, and, so far, appears to be the earlier conception. The
+"demon" in Huron faith may also be earlier than the religious regard
+paid to his home, the sky.(1) The unborrowed antiquity of a belief in
+a divine being, creative and sometimes moral, in North America, is thus
+demonstrated. So far I had written when I accidentally fell in with
+Mr. Tylor's essay on "The Limits of Savage Religion".(2) In that essay,
+rather to my surprise, Mr. Tylor argues for the borrowing of "The Great
+Spirit," "The Great Manitou," from the Jesuits. Now, as to the phrase,
+"Great Spirit," the Jesuits doubtless caused its promulgation, and,
+where their teaching penetrated, shreds of their doctrine may have
+adhered to the Indian conception of that divine being. But Mr. Tylor
+in his essay does not allude to the early evidence, his own, for Oki,
+Atahocan, Kiehtan, and Torngursak, all undeniably prior to Jesuit
+influence, and found where Jesuits, later, did not go. As Mr. Tylor
+offers no reason for disregarding evidence in 1892 which he had
+republished in a new edition of Primitive Culture in 1891, it is
+impossible to argue against him in this place. He went on, in the essay
+cited (1892) to contend that the Australian god of the Kamilaroi
+of Victoria, Baiame, is, in name and attributes, of missionary
+introduction. Happily this hypothesis can be refuted, as we show in the
+following chapter on Australian gods.
+
+
+(1) See Tylor, Prim. Cult., ii. 362, and Making of Religion, p. 318;
+also Menzies, History of Religion, pp. 108,109, and Dr. Legge's Chinese
+Classics, in Sacred Books of the East, vols. iii., xxvii., xxviii.
+
+(2) Journ. of Anthrop. Inst., vol. xxi., 1892.
+
+
+It would be easy enough to meet the hypothesis of borrowing in the case
+of the many African tribes who possess something approaching to a rude
+monotheistic conception. Among these are the Dinkas of the Upper Nile,
+with their neighbours, whose creed Russegger compares to that of
+modern Deists in Europe. The Dinka god, Dendid, is omnipotent, but
+so benevolent that he is not addressed in prayer, nor propitiated by
+sacrifice. Compare the supreme being of the Caribs, beneficent, otiose,
+unadored.(1) A similar deity, veiled in the instruction of the as yet
+unpenetrated Mysteries, exists among the Yao of Central Africa.(2) Of
+the <DW64> race, Waitz says, "even if we do not call them monotheists,
+we may still think of them as standing on the boundary of monotheism
+despite their innumerable rude superstitions".(3) The Tshi speaking
+people of the Gold Coast have their unworshipped Nyankupon, a now
+otiose unadored being, with a magisterial deputy, worshipped with many
+sacrifices. The case is almost an exact parallel to that of Ahone and
+Oki in America. THESE were not borrowed, and the author has argued at
+length against Major Ellis's theory of the borrowing from Christians of
+Nyankupon.(4)
+
+
+(1) Rochefort, Les Isles Antilles, p. 415. Tylor, ii. 337.
+
+(2) Macdonald, Africana, 1, 71, 72, 130, 279-301. Scott, Dictionary of
+the Manganja Language, Making of Religion, pp. 230-238. A contradictory
+view in Spencer, Ecclesiastical Institutions, p. 681.
+
+(3) Anthropologie, ii. 167.
+
+(4) Making of Religion, pp. 243-250.
+
+
+To conclude this chapter, the study of savage and barbaric religions
+seems to yield the following facts:--
+
+1. Low savages. No regular chiefs. Great beings, not in receipt of
+sacrifice, sanctioning morality. Ghosts are not worshipped, though
+believed in. Polytheism, departmental gods and gods of heaven, earth,
+sky and so forth, have not been developed or are not found.
+
+2. Barbaric races. Aristocratic or monarchic. Ghosts are worshipped
+and receive sacrifice. Polytheistic gods are in renown and receive
+sacrifice. There is usually a supreme Maker who is, in some cases,
+moral, in others otiose. In only one or two known cases (as in that of
+the Polynesian Taaroa) is he in receipt of sacrifice.
+
+3. Barbaric races. (Zulus, monarchic with Unkulunkulu; some Algonquins
+(feebly aristocratic) with Atahocan). Religion is mainly ancestor
+worship or vague spirit worship; ghosts are propitiated with food.
+There are traces of an original divine being whose name is becoming
+obsolescent and a matter of jest.
+
+4. Early civilisations. Monarchic or aristocratic. (Greece, Egypt,
+India, Peru, Mexico.) Polytheism. One god tends to be supreme.
+Religiously regarded, gods are moral; in myth are the reverse. Gods are
+in receipt of sacrifice. Heavenly society is modelled on that of men,
+monarchic or aristocratic. Philosophic thought tends towards belief in
+one pure god, who may be named Zeus, in Greece.
+
+5. The religion of Israel. Probably a revival and purification of the
+old conception of a moral, beneficent creator, whose creed had been
+involved in sacrifice and anthropomorphic myth.
+
+In all the stages thus roughly sketched, myths of the lowest sort
+prevail, except in the records of the last stage, where the documents
+have been edited by earnest monotheists.
+
+If this theory be approximately correct, man's earliest religious ideas
+may very well have consisted, in a sense, of dependence on a supreme
+moral being who, when attempts were made by savages to describe the
+modus of his working, became involved in the fancies of mythology. How
+this belief in such a being arose we have no evidence to prove. We make
+no hint at a sensus numinis, or direct revelation.
+
+While offering no hypothesis of the origin of belief in a moral creator
+we may present a suggestion. Mr. Darwin says about early man: "The same
+high mental faculties which first led man to believe in unseen spiritual
+agencies, then in fetichism, polytheism and ultimately monotheism, would
+infallibly lead him, so long as his reasoning powers remained poorly
+developed, to various strange superstitions and customs".(1) Now,
+accepting Mr. Darwin's theory that early man had "high mental
+faculties," the conception of a Maker of things does not seem beyond his
+grasp. Man himself made plenty of things, and could probably conceive of
+a being who made the world and the objects in it. "Certainly there must
+be some Being who made all these things. He must be very good too," said
+an Eskimo to a missionary.(2) The goodness is inferred by the Eskimo
+from his own contentment with "the things which are made".(3)
+
+
+(1) Darwin, Descent of Man, i. p. 66.
+
+(2) Cranz, i. 199.
+
+(3) Romans, i. 19.
+
+
+Another example of barbaric man "seeking after God" may be adduced.
+
+What the Greenlander said is corroborated by what a Kaffir said.
+Kaffir religion is mainly animistic, ancestral spirits receive food and
+sacrifice--there is but an evanescent tradition of a "Lord in Heaven".
+Thus a very respectable Kaffir said to M. Arbrousset, "your tidings
+(Christianity) are what I want; and I was seeking before I knew you....
+I asked myself sorrowful questions. 'Who has touched the stars with his
+hands?... Who makes the waters flow?... Who can have given earth the
+wisdom and power to produce corn?' Then I buried my face in my hands."
+
+"This," says Sir John Lubbock, "was, however, an exceptional case. As
+a general rule savages do not set themselves to think out such
+questions."(1)
+
+
+(1) Origin of Civilisation, p. 201.
+
+
+As a common fact, if savages never ask the question, at all events,
+somehow, they have the answer ready made. "Mangarrah, or Baiame, Puluga,
+or Dendid, or Ahone, or Ahonawilona, or Atahocan, or Taaroa, or Tui
+Laga, was the maker." Therefore savages who know that leave the question
+alone, or add mythical accretions. But their ancestors must have asked
+the question, like the "very respectable Kaffir" before they answered
+it.
+
+Having reached the idea of a Creator, it was not difficult to add that
+he was "good," or beneficent, and was deathless.
+
+A notion of a good powerful Maker, not subject to death because
+necessarily prior to Death (who only invaded the world late), seems
+easier of attainment than the notion of Spirit which, ex hypothesi,
+demands much delicate psychological study and hard thought. The idea of
+a Good Maker, once reached, becomes, perhaps, the germ of future theism,
+but, as Mr. Darwin says, the human mind was "infallibly led to various
+strange superstitions". As St. Paul says, in perfect agreement with Mr.
+Darwin on this point, "they became vain in their imaginations, and their
+foolish heart was darkened".
+
+Among other imaginations (right or wrong) was the belief in spirits,
+with all that followed in the way of instituting sacrifices, even of
+human beings, and of dropping morality, about which the ghost of a
+deceased medicine-man was not likely to be much interested. The supposed
+nearness to man, and the venal and partial character of worshipped gods
+and ghost-gods, would inevitably win for them more service and attention
+than would be paid to a Maker remote, unbought and impartial. Hence the
+conception of such a Being would tend to obsolescence, as we see that it
+does, and would be most obscured where ghosts were most propitiated, as
+among the Zulus. Later philosophy would attach the spiritual conception
+to the revived or newly discovered idea of the supreme God.
+
+In all this speculation there is nothing mystical; no supernatural or
+supernormal interference is postulated. Supernormal experiences may have
+helped to originate or support the belief in spirits, that, however, is
+another question. But this hypothesis of the origin of belief in a good
+unceasing Maker of things is, of course, confessedly a conjecture, for
+which historical evidence cannot be given, in the nature of the
+case. All our attempts to discover origins far behind history must be
+conjectural. Their value must be estimated by the extent to which
+this or that hypothesis colligates the facts. Now our hypothesis does
+colligate the facts. It shows how belief in a moral supreme being might
+arise before ghosts were worshipped, and it accounts for the flaw in the
+religious strata, for the mythical accretions, for the otiose Creator in
+the background of many barbaric religions, and for the almost universal
+absence of sacrifice to the God relatively supreme. He was, from his
+earliest conception, in no need of gifts from men.
+
+On this matter of otiose supreme gods, Professor Menzies writes, "It is
+very common to find in savage beliefs a vague far-off god, who is at the
+back of all the others, takes little part in the management of things,
+and receives little worship. But it is impossible to judge what that
+being was at an earlier time; he may have been a nature god, or a spirit
+who has by degrees grown faint, and come to occupy this position."
+
+Now the position which he occupies is usually, if not universally, that
+of the Creator. He could not arrive at this rank by "becoming faint,"
+nor could "a nature-god" be the Maker of Nature. The only way by which
+we can discover "what that being was at an earlier time" is to see what
+he IS at an earlier time, that is to say, what the conception of him is,
+among men in an earlier state of culture. Among them, as we show, he is
+very much more near, potent and moral, than among races more advanced in
+social evolution and material culture. We can form no opinion as to the
+nature of such "vague, far-off gods, at the back of all the others,"
+till we collect and compare examples, and endeavour to ascertain what
+points they have in common, and in what points they differ from each
+other. It then becomes plain that they are least far away, and most
+potent, where there is least ghostly and polytheistic competition, that
+is, among the most backward races. The more animism the less theism, is
+the general rule. Manifestly the current hypothesis--that all religion
+is animistic in origin--does not account for these facts, and is
+obliged to fly to an undemonstrated theory of degradation, or to an
+undemonstrated theory of borrowing. That our theory is inconsistent with
+the general doctrine of evolution we cannot admit, if we are allowed to
+agree with Mr. Darwin's statement about the high mental faculties
+which first led man to sympathetic, and then to wild beliefs. We do
+not pretend to be more Darwinian than Mr. Darwin, who compares "these
+miserable and indirect results of our higher faculties" to "the
+occasional mistakes of the instincts of the lower animals".
+
+The opinion here maintained, namely, that a germ of pure belief may be
+detected amidst the confusion of low savage faith, and that in a still
+earlier stage it may have been less overlaid with fable, is in direct
+contradiction to current theories. It is also in contradiction with the
+opinions entertained by myself before I made an independent examination
+of the evidence. Like others, I was inclined to regard reports of a
+moral Creator, who observes conduct, and judges it even in the next
+life, as rumours due either to Christian influence, or to mistake. I
+well know, however, and could, and did, discount the sources of error.
+I was on my guard against the twin fallacies of describing all savage
+religion as "devil worship," and of expecting to find a primitive
+"divine tradition". I was also on my guard against the modern bias
+derived from the "ghost-theory," and Mr. Spencer's works, and I kept an
+eye on opportunities of "borrowing".(1) I had, in fact, classified all
+known idola in the first edition of this work, such as the fallacy of
+leading questions and the chance of deliberate deception. I sought the
+earliest evidence, prior to any missionary teaching, and the evidence
+of what the first missionaries found, in the way of belief, on their
+arrival. I preferred the testimony of the best educated observers, and
+of those most familiar with native languages. I sought for evidence in
+native hymns (Maori, Zuni, Dinka, Red Indian) and in native ceremonial
+and mystery, as these sources were least likely to be contaminated.
+
+
+(1) Making of Religion, p. 187.
+
+
+On the other side, I found a vast body of testimony that savages had no
+religion at all. But that testimony, en masse, was refuted by Roskoff,
+and also, in places, by Tylor. When three witnesses were brought to
+swear that they saw the Irishman commit a crime, he offered to bring
+a dozen witnesses who did NOT see him. Negative evidence of squatters,
+sailors and colonists, who did NOT see any religion among this or
+that race, is not worth much against evidence of trained observers and
+linguists who DID find what the others missed, and who found more the
+more they knew the tribe in question. Again, like others, I thought
+savages incapable of such relatively pure ideas as I now believe some of
+them to possess. But I could not resist the evidence, and I abandoned
+my a priori notions. The evidence forcibly attests gradations in the
+central belief. It is found in various shades, from relative potency
+down to a vanishing trace, and it is found in significant proportion
+to the prevalence of animistic ideas, being weakest where they are most
+developed, strongest where they are least developed. There must be a
+reason for these phenomena, and that reason, as it seems to me, is the
+overlaying and supersession of a rudely Theistic by an animistic creed.
+That one cause would explain, and does colligate, all the facts.
+
+There remains a point on which misconception proves to be possible. It
+will be shown, contrary to the current hypothesis, that the religion
+of the lowest races, in its highest form, sanctions morality. That
+morality, again, in certain instances, demands unselfishness. Of course
+we are not claiming for that doctrine any supernatural origin. Religion,
+if it sanctions ethics at all, will sanction those which the conscience
+accepts, and those ethics, in one way or other, must have been evolved.
+That the "cosmical" law is "the weakest must go to the wall" is
+generally conceded. Man, however, is found trying to reverse the law, by
+equal and friendly dealing (at least within what is vaguely called "the
+tribe"). His religion, as in Australia, will be shown to insist on this
+unselfishness. How did he evolve his ethics?
+
+"Be it little or be it much they get," says Dampier about the
+Australians in 1688, "every one has his part, as well the young and
+tender as the old and feeble, who are not able to get abroad as the
+strong and lusty." This conduct reverses the cosmical process, and
+notoriously civilised society, Christian society, does not act on these
+principles. Neither do the savages, who knock the old and feeble on the
+head, or deliberately leave them to starve, act on these principles,
+sanctioned by Australian religion, but (according to Mr. Dawson) NOT
+carried out in Australian practice. "When old people become infirm... it
+is lawful and customary to kill them."(1)
+
+
+(1) Australian Aborigines, p. 62.
+
+
+As to the point of unselfishness, evolutionists are apt to account for
+it by common interest. A tribe in which the strongest monopolise what is
+best will not survive so well as an unselfish tribe in the struggle for
+existence. But precisely the opposite is true, aristocracy marks the
+more successful barbaric races, and an aristocratic slave-holding
+tribe could have swept Australia as the Zulus swept South Africa. That
+aristocracy and acquisition of separate property are steps in advance
+on communistic savagery all history declares. Therefore a tribe which
+in Australia developed private property, and reduced its neighbours to
+slavery, would have been better fitted to survive than such a tribe as
+Dampier describes.
+
+This is so evident that probably, or possibly, the Dampier state of
+society was not developed in obedience to a recognised tribal interest,
+but in obedience to an affectionate instinct. "Ils s'entr' aiment les
+une les autres," says Brebeuf of the Hurons.(1) "I never heard the
+women complain of being left out of feasts, or that the men ate the
+best portions... every one does his business sweetly, peaceably, without
+dispute. You never see disputes, quarrels, hatred, or reproach among
+them." Brebeuf then tells how a young Indian stranger, in a time of
+want, stole the best part of a moose. "They did not rage or curse,
+they only bantered him, and yet to take our meat was almost to take our
+lives." Brebeuf wanted to lecture the lad; his Indian host bade him hold
+his peace, and the stranger was given hospitality, with his wife and
+children. "They are very generous, and make it a point not to attach
+themselves to the goods of this world." "Their greatest reproach is
+'that man wants everything, he is greedy'. They support, with never
+a murmur, widows, orphans and old men, yet they kill hopeless or
+troublesome invalids, and their whole conduct to Europeans was the
+reverse of their domestic behaviour."
+
+
+(1) Relations, 1634, p. 29.
+
+
+Another example of savage unselfish ethics may be found in Mr. Mann's
+account of the Andaman Islanders, a nomad race, very low in culture. "It
+is a noteworthy trait, and one which deserves high commendation, that
+every care and consideration are paid by all classes to the very young,
+the weak, the aged, and the helpless, and these being made special
+objects of interest and attention, invariably fare better in regard to
+the comforts and necessaries of daily life than any of the otherwise
+more fortunate members of the community."(1)
+
+
+(1) J. A. I., xii. p. 93.
+
+
+Mr. Huxley, in his celebrated Romanes Lecture on "Evolution and
+Morality," laid stress on man's contravention of the cosmic law, "the
+weakest must go to the wall". He did not explain the evolution of man's
+opposition to this law. The ordinary evolutionist hypothesis, that
+the tribe would prosper most whose members were least self-seeking, is
+contradicted by all history. The overbearing, "grabbing," aristocratic,
+individualistic, unscrupulous races beat the others out of the field.
+Mr. Huxley, indeed, alleged that the "influence of the cosmic process
+in the evolution of society is the greater the more rudimentary its
+civilisation. Social progress means a checking of the cosmic process at
+every step and the substitution for it of another, which may be called
+the ethical process.... As civilisation has advanced, so has the extent
+of this interference increased...."(1) But where, in Europe, is the
+interference so marked as among the Andamanese? We have still to face
+the problem of the generosity of low savages.
+
+
+(1) Ethics of Evolution, pp. 81-84.
+
+
+It is conceivable that the higher ethics of low savages rather reflect
+their emotional instincts than arise from tribal legislation which is
+supposed to enable a "tribe" to prosper in the struggle for existence.
+As Brebeuf and Dampier, among others, prove, savages often set a good
+example to Christians, and their ethics are, in certain cases, as among
+the Andamanese and Fuegians, and, probably among the Yao, sanctioned by
+their religion. But, as Mr. Tylor says, "the better savage social life
+seems but in unstable equilibrium, liable to be easily upset by a touch
+of distress, temptation, or violence".(1) Still, religion does its
+best, in certain cases, to lend equilibrium; though all the world over,
+religion often fails in practice.
+
+
+(1) Prim. Cult., i. 51.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1, by Andrew Lang
+
+*** 
\ No newline at end of file