The Idea of God in Early Religions Part 1

The Idea of G.o.d in Early Religions.

by F. B. Jevons.

PREFACE

In _The Varieties of Religious Experience_ the late Professor William James has said (p. 465): 'The religious phenomenon, studied as an inner fact, and apart from ecclesiastical or theological complications, has shown itself to consist everywhere, and at all its stages, in the consciousness which individuals have of an intercourse between themselves and higher powers with which they feel themselves to be related. This intercourse is realised at the time as being both active and mutual.' The book now before the reader deals with the religious phenomenon, studied as an inner fact, in the earlier stages of religion. By 'the Idea of G.o.d' may be meant either the consciousness which individuals have of higher powers, with which they feel themselves to be related, or the words in which they, or others, seek to express that consciousness. Those words may be an expression, that is to say an interpretation or a misinterpretation, of that consciousness. But the words are not the consciousness: the feeling, without which the consciousness does not exist, may be absent when the words are spoken or heard. It is however through the words that we have to approach the feeling and the consciousness of others, and to determine whether and how far the feeling and the consciousness so approached are similar in all individuals everywhere and at all stages.

F. B. JEVONS.

HATFIELD HALL, DURHAM.

_October, 1910_

I

INTRODUCTION

Every child that is born is born of a community and into a community, which existed before his birth and will continue to exist after his death. He learns to speak the language which the community spoke before he was born, and which the community will continue to speak after he has gone. In learning the language he acquires not only words but ideas; and the words and ideas he acquires, the thoughts he thinks and the words in which he utters them, are those of the community from which he learnt them, which taught them before he was born and will go on teaching them after he is dead. He not only learns to speak the words and think the ideas, to reproduce the mode of thought, as he does the form of speech, of the circ.u.mambient community: he is taught and learns to act as those around him do--as the community has done and will tend to do. The community--the narrower community of the family, first, and, afterwards, the wider community to which the family belongs--teaches him how he ought to speak, what he ought to think, and how he ought to act. The consciousness of the child reproduces the consciousness of the community to which he belongs--the common consciousness, which existed before him and will continue to exist after him.

The common consciousness is not only the source from which the individual gets his mode of speech, thought and action, but the court of appeal which decides what is fact. If a question is raised whether the result of a scientific experiment is what it is alleged by the original maker of the experiment to be, the appeal is to the common consciousness: any one who chooses to make the experiment in the way described will find the result to be of the kind alleged; if everyone else, on experiment, finds it to be so, it is established as a fact of common consciousness; if no one else finds it to be so, the alleged discovery is not a fact but an erroneous inference.

Now, it is not merely with regard to external facts or facts apprehended through the senses, that the common consciousness is accepted as the court of appeal. The allegation may be that an emotion, of a specified kind--alarm or fear, wonder or awe--is, in specified circ.u.mstances, experienced as a fact of the common consciousness. Or a body of men may have a common purpose, or a common idea, as well as an emotion of, say, common alarm. If the purpose, idea or emotion, be common to them and experienced by all of them, it is a fact of their common consciousness. In this case, as in the case of any alleged but disputed discovery in science, the common consciousness is the court of appeal which decides the facts, and determines whether what an individual thinks he has discovered in his consciousness is really a fact of the common consciousness. The idea of powers superior to man, the emotion of awe or reverence, which goes with the idea, and the purpose of communicating with the power in question are facts, not peculiar to this or that individual consciousness, but facts of the common consciousness of all mankind.

The child up to a certain age has no consciousness of self: the absence of self-consciousness is one of the charms of children. The child imitates its elders, who speak of him and to him by his name. He speaks of himself in the third person and not in the first person singular, and designates himself by his proper name and not by means of the personal p.r.o.noun 'I'; eventually the child acquires the use and to some extent learns the meaning of the first personal p.r.o.noun; that is, if the language of the community to which he belongs has developed so far as to have produced such a p.r.o.noun. For there was a period in the evolution of speech when, as yet, a first personal p.r.o.noun had not been evolved; and that, probably, for the simple reason that the idea which it denotes was as unknown to the community as it is to the child whose absence of self-consciousness is so pleasing. For a period, the length of which may have been millions of years, the common consciousness, the consciousness of the community, did not discover or discriminate, in language or in thought, the existence of the individual self.

The importance of this consideration lies in its bearing upon the question, in what form the idea of powers superior to man disclosed itself in the common consciousness at that period. It is held by many students of the science of religion that fetis.h.i.+sm preceded polytheism in the history of religion; and it is undoubted that polytheism flourished at the expense of fetis.h.i.+sm. But what is exactly the difference between fetis.h.i.+sm and polytheism? No one now any longer holds that a fetish is regarded, by believers in fetish, as a material object and nothing more: everyone recognises that the material object to which the term is applied is regarded as the habitation of a spiritual being. The material object in question is to the fetish what the idol of a G.o.d is to a G.o.d. If the material object, through which, or in which, the fetish-spirit manifests itself, bears no resemblance to human form, neither do the earliest stocks or blocks in which G.o.ds manifest themselves bear any resemblance to human form. Such unshaped stocks do not of themselves tell us whether they are fetishes or G.o.ds to their wors.h.i.+ppers. The test by which the student of the science of religion determines the question is a very simple one: it is, who wors.h.i.+ps the object in question? If the object is the private property of some individual, it is fetish; if it is wors.h.i.+pped by the community as a whole, it, or rather the spirit which manifests itself therein, is a G.o.d of the community. The functions of the two beings differ accordingly: the G.o.d receives the prayers of the community and has power to grant them; the fetish has power to grant the wishes of the individual who owns it. The consequence of this difference in function is that as the wishes of the individual may be inconsistent with the welfare of other members of the community; as the fetish may be, and actually is, used to procure injury and death to other members of the community; a fetish is anti-social and a danger to the community, whereas a G.o.d of the community is there expressly as a refuge and a help for the community. The fetish fulfils the desires of the individual, the self; the G.o.d listens to the prayers of the community.

Let us now return to that stage in the evolution of the community when, as yet, neither the language nor the thought of the community had discovered or discriminated the existence of the individual self.

If at that stage there was in the common consciousness any idea, however dim or confused, of powers superior to man; if that idea was accompanied or coloured by any emotion, whether of fear or awe or reverence; if that emotion prompted action of any kind; then, such powers were not conceived to be fetishes, for the function of a fetish is to fulfil the desires of an individual self; and until the existence of the individual self is realised, there is no function for a fetish to perform.

It may well be that the gradual development of self-consciousness, and the slow steps by which language helped to bring forth the idea of self, were from the first, and throughout, accompanied by the gradual development of the idea of fetis.h.i.+sm. But the very development of the idea of a power which could fulfil the desires of self, as distinguished from, and often opposed to, the interests of the community, would stimulate the growth of the idea of a power whose special and particular function was to tend the interests of the community as a whole. Thus the idea of a fetish and the idea of a G.o.d could only persist on condition of becoming more and more inconsistent with, and contradictory of, one another. If the lines followed by the two ideas started from the same point, it was only to diverge the more, the further they were pursued. And the tendency of fetis.h.i.+sm to disappear from the later and higher stages of religion is sufficient to show that it did not afford an adequate or satisfactory expression of the idea contained in the common consciousness of some power or being greater than man. That idea is constantly striving, throughout the history of religion, to find or give expression to itself; it is constantly discovering that such expressions as it has found for itself do it wrong; and it is constantly throwing, or in the process of throwing, such expressions aside. Fetis.h.i.+sm was thrown aside sooner than polytheism: for it was an expression not only inadequate but contradictory to the idea that gave it birth. The emotions of fear and suspicion, with which the community regarded fetishes, were emotions different from the awe or reverence with which the community approached its G.o.ds.

What practically provokes and stimulates the individual's dawning consciousness of himself, or the community's consciousness of the individual as in a way distinct from itself, is the dash between the desires, wishes, interests of the one, and the desires, wishes and interests of the other. But though the interests of the one are sometimes at variance with those of the other, still in some cases, also, the interests of the individual--even though they be purely individual interests--are not inconsistent with those of the community; and in most cases they are identical with them--the individual promotes his own interests by serving those of the community, and promotes those of the community by serving his own. In a word, the interests of the one are not so clearly and plainly cut off from those of the other, that the individual can always be condemned for seeking to gratify his self-interests or his own personal desires. That is presumably one reason why fetis.h.i.+sm is so wide-spread and so long-lived in Western Africa, for instance: though fetishes may be used for anti-social purposes, they may be and are also used for purposes which if selfish are not, or are not felt to be, anti-social. The individual owner of a fetish does not feel that his owners.h.i.+p does or ought to cut him off from members.h.i.+p of the community. And so long as such feeling is common, so long an indecisive struggle between G.o.ds and fetishes continues.

Now this same cause--the impossibility of condemning the individual for seeking to promote his own interests--will be found on examination to be operative elsewhere, viz. in magic. The relation of magic to religion is as much a matter of doubt and dispute as is that of fetis.h.i.+sm to religion. And I propose to treat magic in much the same way as I have treated fetis.h.i.+sm. The justification which I offer for so doing is to be found in the parallel or a.n.a.logy that may be drawn between them. The distinction which comes to be drawn within the common consciousness between the self and the community manifests itself obviously in the fact that the interests and desires of the individual are felt to be different, and yet not to be different, from those of the community; and so they are felt to be, yet not to be, condemnable from the point of view of the common consciousness. Now, this is precisely the judgment which is pa.s.sed upon magic, wherever it is cultivated. It is condemnable, it is viewed with suspicion, fear and condemnation; and yet it is also and at the same time viewed and practised with general approval. It may be used on behalf of the community and for the good of the community, and with public approval, as it is when it is used to make the rain which the community needs.

It may be viewed with toleration, as it is when it is believed to benefit an individual without entailing injury on the community. But it is visited with condemnation, and perhaps with punishment, when it is employed for purposes, such as murder, which the common consciousness condemns. Accordingly the person who has the power to work the marvels comprehended under the name of magic is viewed with condemnation, toleration or approval, according as he uses his power for purposes which the common consciousness condemns, tolerates or approves. The power which such a person exerts is power personal to him; and yet it is in a way a power greater and other than himself, for he has it not always under his control or command: whether he uses it for the benefit of the community or for the injury of some individual, he cannot count on its always coming off. And this fact is not without its influence and consequences. If he is endeavouring to use it for the injury of some person, he will explain his failure as due to some error he has committed in the _modus operandi_, or to the counter-operations of some rival. But if he is endeavouring to exercise it for the benefit of the community, failure makes others doubtful whether he has the power to act on behalf of the community; while, on the contrary, a successful issue makes it clear that he has the power, and places him, in the opinion both of the community and of himself, in an exceptional position: his power is indeed in a way personal to himself, but it is also greater and other than himself.

His sense of it, and the community's sense of it, is reinforced and augmented by the approval of the common consciousness, and by the feeling that a power, in harmony with the common consciousness and the community's desires, is working in him and through him. This power, thus exercised, of working marvels for the common good is obviously more closely a.n.a.logous to that of a prophet working miracles, than it is to that of the witch working injury or death. And, in the same way that I have already suggested that G.o.ds and fetishes may have been evolved from a prior indeterminate concept, which was neither but might become either; so I would now suggest that miracles are not magic, nor is magic miracles, but that the two have been differentiated from a common source. And if the polytheistic G.o.ds, which are to be found where fetis.h.i.+sm is believed in, present us with a very low stage in the development of the idea of a 'perfect personality,' so too the sort of miracles which are believed in, where the belief in magic flourishes, present us with a very low stage in the development of the idea of an almighty G.o.d. Axe-heads that float must have belonged originally to such a low stage; and rods that turn into serpents were the property of the 'magicians of Egypt' as well as of Aaron.

The common source, then, from which flows the power of working marvels for the community's good, or of working magic in the interest of one individual member and perhaps to the injury of another, is a personal power, which in itself--that is to say, apart from the intention with which it is used and apart from the consequences which ensue--is neither commendable nor condemnable from the community's point of view; and which consequently can neither be condemned nor commended by the common consciousness, until the difference between self and the community has become manifest, and the possibility of a divergence between the interests of self or _alter_ and those of the community has been realised. Further, this power, in whichever way it comes to be exercised, marks a strong individuality; and may be the first, as it is certainly a most striking, manifestation of the fact of individuality: it marks off, at once, the individual possessing such power from the rest of the community. And the common consciousness is puzzled by the apparition. Just as it tolerates fetishes though it disapproves of them and is afraid of them, so it tolerates the magician, though it is afraid of him and does not cordially approve of him, even when he benefits an individual client without injuring the community. But though the man of power may use, and apparently most often does use, his power, in the interest of some individual and to the detriment of the community; and though it is this condemnable use which is everywhere most conspicuous, and probably earliest developed; still there is no reason why he should not use, and as a matter of fact he sometimes does use, his power on behalf of the community to promote the food-supply of the community or to produce the rain which is desired. In this case, then, the individual, having a power which others have not, is not at variance with the community but in harmony with the common consciousness, and becomes an organ by which it acts.

When, then, the belief in G.o.ds, having the interests of the community at heart, presents itself or develops within the common consciousness, the individual who has the power on behalf of the community to make rain or increase the food supply is marked out by the belief of the community--or it may be by the communings of his own heart--as specially related to the G.o.ds. Hence we find, in the low stages of the evolution of religion, the proceedings, by which the man of power had made rain for the community or increased the food-supply, either incorporated into the ritual of the G.o.ds, or surviving traditionally as incidents in the life of a prophet, e.g. the rain-making of Elijah.

In the same way therefore as I have suggested that the resemblances between G.o.ds and fetishes are to be explained by the theory that the two go back to a common source, and that neither is developed from the other, so I suggest that the resemblances between the conception of prophet and that of magician point not to the priority of either to the other, but to the derivation or evolution of both from a prior and less determinate concept.

Just as a fetish is a material thing, and something more, so a magician is a man and something more. Just as a G.o.d is an idol and something more, so a prophet or priest is a man and something more.

The fetish is a material thing which manifests a power that other things do not exhibit; and the magician is a man possessing a power which other men have not. The difference between the magician and the prophet or priest is the same as the difference between the fetish and the G.o.d. It is the difference between that which subserves the wishes of the individual, which may be, and often are, anti-social, and that which furthers the interests of the community. Of this difference each child who is born into the community learns from his elders: it is part of the common consciousness of the community. And it could not become a fact of the common consciousness until the existence of self became recognised in thought and expressed in language. With that recognition of difference, or possible difference, between the individual and the community, between the desires of the one and the welfare of the other, came the recognition of a difference between fetish and G.o.d, between magician and priest. The power exercised by either was greater than that of man; but the power manifested in the one was exercised with a view to the good of the community; in the case of the other, not. Thus, from the beginning, G.o.ds were not merely beings exercising power greater than that of man, but beings exercising their power for the good of man. It is as such that, from the beginning to the end, they have figured both in the common consciousness of the community, and in the consciousness of every member born into the community. They have figured in both; and, because they have figured both in the individual consciousness and the common consciousness, they have, from the beginning, been something present to both, something at once within the individual and without.

But as the child recognises objects long before he becomes aware of the existence of himself, so man, in his infancy, sought this power or being in the external world long before he looked for it within himself.

It is because man looked for this being or power in the external world that he found, or thought he found, it there. He looked for it and found it, in the same way as to this day the African negro finds a fetish. A negro found a stone and took it for his fetish, as Professor Tylor relates, as follows:--'He was once going out on important business, but crossing the threshold he trod on this stone and hurt himself. Ha! ha! thought he, art thou there? So he took the stone, and it helped him through his undertaking for days.' So too when the community's attention is arrested by something in the external world, some natural phenomenon which is marvellous in their eyes, their att.i.tude of mind, the att.i.tude of the common consciousness, translated into words is: 'Ha! ha! art thou there?' This att.i.tude of mind is one of expectancy: man finds a being, possessed of greater power than man's, because he is ready to find it and expecting it.

So strong is this expectancy, so ready is man to find this being, superior to man, that he finds it wherever he goes, wherever he looks.

There is probably no natural phenomenon whatever that has not somewhere, at some time, provoked the question or the reflection 'Art thou there?' And it is because man has taken upon himself to answer the question, and to say: 'Thou art there, in the great and strong wind which rends the mountains; or, in the earthquake; or, in the fire' that polytheism has arisen. Perhaps, however, we should rather use the word 'polydaemonism' than 'polytheism.' By a G.o.d is usually meant a being who has come to possess a proper name; and, probably, a spirit is wors.h.i.+pped for some considerable time, before the appellative, by which he is addressed, loses its original meaning, and comes to be the proper name by which he, and he alone, is addressed.

Certainly, the stage in which spirits without proper names are wors.h.i.+pped seems to be more primitive than that in which the being wors.h.i.+pped is a G.o.d, having a proper name of his own. And the difference between the two stages of polydaemonism and polytheism is not merely limited to the fact that the beings wors.h.i.+pped have proper names in the later stage, and had none in the earlier. A development or a difference in language implies a development or difference in thought. If the being or spirit wors.h.i.+pped has come to be designated by a proper name, he has lost much of the vagueness that characterises a nameless spirit, and he has come to be much more definite and much more personal. Indeed, a change much more sinister, from the religious point of view, is wrought, when the transition from polydaemonism to polytheism is accomplished.

In the stage of human evolution known as animism, everything which acts--or is supposed to act--is supposed to be, like man himself, a person. But though, in the animistic stage, all powers are conceived by man as being persons, they are not all conceived as having human form: they may be animals, and have animal forms; or birds, and have bird-form; they may be trees, clouds, streams, the wind, the earthquake or the fire. In some, or rather in all, of these, man has at some time found the being or the power, greater than man, of whom he has at all times been in quest, with the enquiry, addressed to each in turn, 'Art thou there?' The form of the question, the use of the personal p.r.o.noun, shows that he is seeking for a person. And students of the science of religion are generally agreed that man, throughout the history of religion, has been seeking for a power or being superior to man and greater than he. It is therefore a personal power and a personal being that man has been in search of, throughout his religious history. He has pushed his search in many directions--often simultaneously in different directions; and, he has abandoned one line of enquiry after another, because he has found that it did not lead him whither he would be. Thus, as we have seen, he pushed forward, at the same time, in the direction of fetis.h.i.+sm and of polytheism, or rather of polydaemonism; but fetis.h.i.+sm failed to bring him satisfaction, or rather failed to satisfy the common consciousness, the consciousness of the community, because it proved on trial to subserve the wishes--the anti-social wishes--of the individual, and not the interests of the community. The beings or powers that man looked to find and which he supposed he found, whether as fetishes in this or that object, or as daemons in the sky, the fire or the wind, in beast or bird or tree, were taken to be personal beings and personal powers, bearing the same relation to that in which, or through which, they manifested themselves, as man bears to his body.

They do not seem to have been conceived as being men, or the souls of men which manifested themselves in animals or trees. At the time when polydaemonism has, as yet, not become polytheism, the personal beings, wors.h.i.+pped in this or that external form, have not as yet been anthropomorphised. Indeed, the process which const.i.tutes the change from polydaemonism to polytheism consists in the process, or rather is the process, by which the spirits, the personal beings, wors.h.i.+pped in tree, or sky, or cloud, or wind, or fire came gradually to be anthropomorphised--to be invested with human parts and pa.s.sions and to be addressed like human beings with proper names. But when anthropomorphic polytheism is thus pushed to its extreme logical conclusions, its tendency is to collapse in the same way, and for the same reasons, as fetis.h.i.+sm, before it, had collapsed. What man had been in search of, from the beginning, and was still in search of, was some personal being or power, higher than and superior to man. What anthropomorphic polytheism presented him with, in the upshot, was with beings, not superior, but, in some or many cases, undeniably inferior to man. As such they could not thenceforth be wors.h.i.+pped. In Europe their wors.h.i.+p was overthrown by Christianity. But, on reflection, it seems clear not only that, as such, they could not thenceforth be wors.h.i.+pped; but that, as such, they never had been wors.h.i.+pped. In the consciousness of the community, the object of wors.h.i.+p had always been, from the beginning, some personal being superior to man. The apostle of Christianity might justifiably speak to polytheists of the G.o.d 'whom ye ignorantly wors.h.i.+p.' It is true, and it is important to notice, that the sacrifices and the rites and ceremonies, which together made up the service of wors.h.i.+p, had been consciously and intentionally rendered to deities represented in human form; and, in this sense, anthropomorphic deities had been wors.h.i.+pped. But, if wors.h.i.+p is something other than sacrifice and rite and ceremony, then the object of wors.h.i.+p--the personal being, greater than man--presented to the common consciousness, is something other than the anthropomorphic being, inferior in much to man, of whom poets speak in mythology and whom artists represent in bodily shape.

Just as fetis.h.i.+sm developed and persisted, because it did contain, though it perverted, one element of religious truth--the accessibility of the power wors.h.i.+pped to the wors.h.i.+pper--so too anthropomorphism, notwithstanding the consequences to which, in mythology, it led, did contain, or rather, was based on, one element of truth, viz. that the divine is personal, as well as the human. Its error was to set up, as divine personalities, a number of reproductions or reflections of human personality. It leads to the conclusion, as a necessary consequence, that the divine personality is but a shadow of the human personality, enlarged and projected, so to speak, upon the clouds, but always betraying, in some way or other, the fact that it is but the shadow, magnified or distorted, of man. It excludes the possibility that the divine personality, present to the common consciousness as the object of wors.h.i.+p, may be no reproduction of the human personality, but a reality to which the human personality has the power of approximating. Be this as it may, we are justified in saying, indeed we are compelled to recognise, that in mythology, all the world over, we see a process of reflection at work, by which the beings, originally apprehended as superior to man, come first to be anthropomorphised, that is to be apprehended as having the parts and pa.s.sions of men, and then, consequently, to be seen to be no better than men. This discovery it is which in the long run proves fatal to anthropomorphism.

We have seen, above, the reason why fetis.h.i.+sm becomes eventually distasteful to the common consciousness: the beings, superior to man, which are wors.h.i.+pped by the community, are wors.h.i.+pped as having the interests of the community in their charge, and as having the good of the community at heart; whereas a fetish is sought and found by the individual, to advance his private interests, even to the cost and loss of other individuals and of the community at large. Thus, from the earliest period at which beings, superior to man, are differentiated into G.o.ds and fetishes, G.o.ds are accepted by the common consciousness as beings who maintain the good of the community and punish those who infringe it; while fetishes become beings who a.s.sist individual members to infringe the customary morality of the tribe.

Thus, from the first, the beings, of whom the community is conscious as superior to man, are beings, having in charge, first, the customary morality of the tribe; and, afterwards, the conscious morality of the community.

This conception, it was, of the G.o.ds, as guardians of morality and of the common good, that condemned fetis.h.i.+sm; and this conception it was, which was to prove eventually the condemnation of polytheism. A mult.i.tude of beings--even though they be divine beings--means a mult.i.tude, that is a diversity, of ideas. Diversity of ideas, difference of opinion, is what is implied by every mythology which tells of disputes and wars between the G.o.ds. Every G.o.d, who thus disputed and fought with other G.o.ds, must have felt that he had right on his side, or else have fought for the sake of fighting.

Consequently the G.o.ds of polytheism are either dest.i.tute of morality, or divided in opinion as to what is right. In neither case, therefore, are the G.o.ds, of whom mythology tells, the beings, superior to man, who, from the beginning, were present in the common consciousness to be wors.h.i.+pped. From the outset, the object of the community's wors.h.i.+p had been conceived as a moral power. If, then, the many G.o.ds of polytheism were either dest.i.tute or disregardful of morality, they could not be the moral power of which the common consciousness had been dimly aware: that moral power, that moral personality, must be other than they. As the moral consciousness of the community discriminated fetishes from G.o.ds and tended to rule out fetishes from the sphere of religion; so too, eventually, the moral consciousness of the community came to be offended by the incompatibility between the moral ideal and the conception of a mult.i.tude of G.o.ds at variance with each other. If the common consciousness was slow in coming to recognise the unity of the G.o.dhead--and it was slower in some people than in others--the unity was logically implied, from the beginning, in the conception of a personal power, greater and higher than man, and having the good of the community at heart. The history of religion is, in effect, from one point of view, the story of the process by which this conception, however dim, blurred or vague, at first, tends to become clarified and self-consistent.

That, however, is not the only point of view from which the history of religion can, or ought to be, regarded. So long as we look at it from that point of view, we shall be in danger of seeing nothing in the history of religion but an intellectual process, and nothing in religion itself but a mental conception. There is, however, another element in religion, as is generally recognised; and that an emotional element, as is usually admitted. What however is the nature of that emotion, is a question on which there has always been diversity of opinion. The beings, who figured in the common consciousness as G.o.ds, were apprehended by the common consciousness as powers superior to man; and certainly as powers capable of inflicting suffering on the community. As such, then, they must have been approached with an emotion of the nature of reverence, awe or fear. The important, the determining, fact, however, is that they were approached. The emotion, therefore, which prompted the community to approach them, is at any rate distinguishable from the mere fright which would have kept the community as far away from these powers as possible. The emotion which prompted approach could not have been fear, pure and simple. It must have been more in the nature of awe or reverence; both of which feelings are clearly distinguishable from fear. Thus, we may fear disease or disgrace; but the fear we feel carries with it neither awe nor reverence. Again, awe is an inhibitive feeling, it is a feeling which--as in the case of the awe-struck person--rather prevents than promotes action or movement. And the determining fact about the religious emotion is that it was the emotion with which the community approached its G.o.ds. That emotion is now, and probably always was, reverential in character. The occasion, on which a community approaches its G.o.ds, often is, and doubtless often was, a time when misfortune had befallen the community. The misfortune was viewed as a visitation of the G.o.d's wrath upon his community; and fear--that 'fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom'--doubtless played a large part in the complex emotion which stirred the community, not to run away but to approach the G.o.d for the purpose of appeasing his wrath. In the complexity of an emotion which led to action of this kind, we must recognise not merely fear but some trust and confidence--so much, at least, as prevented the person who experienced it from running away simply. The emotion is not too complex for man, in however primitive a stage of development: it is not more complex than that which brings a dog to his master, though it knows it is going to be thrashed.

That some trust and confidence is indispensable in the complex feeling with which a community approaches its G.o.ds, for the purpose of appeasing their wrath--still more, for beseeching favours from them--seems indisputable. But we must not exaggerate it. Wherever there are G.o.ds at all, they are regarded by the community as beings who can be approached: so much confidence, at least, is placed in them by the community that believes in them. Even if they are offended and wrathful, the community is confident that they can be appeased: the community places so much trust in them. Indeed its trust goes even further: it is sure that they do not take offence without reasonable grounds. If they display wrath against the community and send calamity upon it, it is, and in the opinion of the community, can only be, because some member of the community has done that which he should not have done. The G.o.ds may be, on occasion, wrathful; but they are just.

They are from the beginning moral beings--according to such standard of morality as the community possesses--and it is breaches of the tribe's customary morality that their wrath is directed against. They are, from the beginning, and for long afterwards in the history of religion, strict to mark what is amiss, and, in that sense, they are jealous G.o.ds. And this aspect of the G.o.dhead it is which fills the larger part of the field of religious consciousness, not only in the case of peoples who have failed to recognise the unity of the G.o.dhead, but even in the case of a people like the Jews, who did recognise it.

The other aspect of the G.o.dhead, as the G.o.d, not merely of mercy and forgiveness, but of love, was an aspect fully revealed in Christianity alone, of all the religions in the world.

But the love G.o.d displays to all his children, to the prodigal son as well as to others, is not a mere attribute a.s.signed to Him. It is not a mere quality with which one religion may invest Him, and of which another religion, with equal right, may divest Him. The idea of G.o.d does not consist merely of attributes and qualities, so that, if you strip off all the attributes and qualities, nothing is left, and the idea is shown to be without content, meaning or reality.

The G.o.dhead has been, in the common consciousness, from the beginning, a being, a personal being, greater than man; and it is as such that He has manifested Himself in the common consciousness, from the beginning until the present day. To this personality, as to others, attributes and qualities may be falsely ascribed, which are inconsistent with one another and are none of His. Some of the attributes thus falsely ascribed may be discovered, in the course of the history of religion, to have been falsely ascribed; and they will then be set aside. Thus, fetis.h.i.+sm ascribed, or sought to ascribe, to the G.o.dhead, the quality of willingness to promote even the anti-social desires of the owner of the fetish. And fetis.h.i.+sm exfoliated, or peeled off from the religious organism. Anthropomorphism, which ascribed to the divine personality the parts and pa.s.sions of man, along with a power greater than man's to violate morality, is gradually dropped, as its inconsistency with the idea of G.o.d comes gradually to be recognised and loathed. So too with polytheism: a pantheon which is divided against itself cannot stand.

Thus, fetis.h.i.+sm, anthropomorphism and polytheism ascribe qualities to the G.o.dhead, which are shown to be attributes a.s.signed to the G.o.dhead and imposed upon it from without, for eventually they are found by experience to be incompatible with the idea of G.o.d as it is revealed in the common consciousness.

On the other hand, the process of the history of religion, the process of the manifestation or revelation of the G.o.dhead, does not proceed solely by this negative method, or method of exclusion. If an attribute, such as that of human form, or of complicity in anti-social purposes, is ascribed, by anthropomorphism or fetis.h.i.+sm, to the divine personality, and is eventually felt by the common consciousness to be incompatible with the idea of G.o.d, the result is not merely that the attribute in question drops off, and leaves the idea of the divine personality exactly where it was, and what it was, before the attribute had been foisted on it. The incompatibility of the quality, falsely ascribed or a.s.signed, becomes--if, and when, it does become--manifest and intolerable, just in proportion as the idea of G.o.d, which has always been present, however vaguely and ill-defined, in the common consciousness, comes to manifest itself more definitely.

The attribution, to the divine personality, of qualities, which are eventually found incompatible with it, may prove the occasion of the more precise and definite manifestation; we may say that action implies reaction, and so false ideas provoke true ones, but the false ideas do not create the new ones. The false ideas may stimulate closer attention to the actual facts of the common consciousness and thus may stimulate the formation of truer ideas about them, by leading to a concentration of attention upon the actual facts. But it is from this closer attention, this concentration of attention, that the newer and truer knowledge comes, and not from the false ideas. What we speak of, from one point of view, as closer attention to the facts of the common consciousness, may, from another point of view, be spoken of as an increasing manifestation, or a clearer revelation, of the divine personality, revealed or manifested to the common consciousness. Those are two views, or two points of view, of one and the same process. But whichever view we take of it, the process does not proceed solely by the negative method of exclusion: it is a process which results in the unfolding and disclosure, not merely of what is in the common consciousness, at any given moment, but of what is implied in the divine personality revealed to the common consciousness. If we choose to speak of this unfolding or disclosure as evolution, the process, which the history of religion undertakes to set forth, will be the evolution of the idea of G.o.d. But, in that case, the process which we designate by the name of evolution, will be a process of disclosure and revelation. Disclosure implies that there is something to disclose; revelation, that there is something to be revealed to the common consciousness--the presence of the G.o.dhead, of divine personality.

II

THE IDEA OF G.o.d IN MYTHOLOGY

The idea of G.o.d is to be found, it will be generally admitted, not only in monotheistic religions, but in polytheistic religions also; and, as polytheisms have developed out of polydaemonism, that is to say, as the personal beings or powers of polydaemonism have, in course of time, come to possess proper names and a personal history, some idea of divine personality must be admitted to be present in polydaemonism as well as in polytheism; and, in the same way, some idea of a personality greater than human may be taken to lie at the back of both polydaemonism and fetis.h.i.+sm.

If we wish to understand what ideas are in a man's mind, we may infer them from the words that he speaks and from the way in which he acts.

The most natural and the most obvious course is to start from what he says. And that is the course which was followed by students of the history of religion, when they desired to ascertain what idea exactly man has had of his G.o.ds. They had recourse, for the information they wanted, to mythology. Later on, indeed, they proceeded to enquire into what man did, into the ritual which he observed in approaching his G.o.ds; and, in the next chapter, we will follow them in that enquiry.

But in this chapter we have to ask what light mythology throws upon the idea man has had of his G.o.ds.

Before doing so, however, we cannot but notice that mythology and polytheism go together. Fetis.h.i.+sm does not produce any mythology.

Doubtless, the owner of a fetish which acts knows and can tell of the wonderful things it has done. But those anecdotes do not get taken up into the common stock of knowledge; nor are they handed down by the common consciousness to all succeeding generations of the community.

Mythology, like language, is the work, and is a possession, of the common consciousness.