Читать книгу The Next Step in Religion - Roy Wood Sellars - Страница 7

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We must, perforce, admit that our ancestors awoke to consciousness of themselves and their surroundings at a time when they knew practically nothing, as we understand knowledge. Theirs was a world of sights and sounds, a world of woods and streams, of moving things, of growing things, of things to be eaten, of things good and evil. It was a driving, fearful, fascinating world. Unconsciously and inevitably, man interpreted his surroundings in terms of his own eager, childish life. Force and desire peeped from every corner.

The sky was not very high above him for it seemed to touch the mountain tops; and yet he could never hope to climb there. But he could see very well that it was inhabited. And was it not a wonderful place, since the heat and light of the sun and the warm, fructifying rain came from it? And what were the clouds that floated across it like huge birds or strange, gigantic creatures? Even the lush grass of the spring-time seemed full of a hidden life. Everywhere was force and will—the power for good and harm.

Perhaps only an imaginative child, or an adult with something of the poet's gift, can appreciate vividly the type of world in which these early men found themselves. The city-dweller of to-day lives in a subdued and mechanically controlled region whose every clank and rattle speaks of routine and order. The myth-making faculty of the street-urchin has little to feed upon—all is so obvious and open to inspection. The ordinary lad, again, is so soon filled with the conventionalized views of his elders that the hand of fancy soon ceases to write upon his soul or give a touch of wonder to familiar things. There can be no doubt, therefore, that a conscious effort is required before a man of to-day can give even a fleeting glimpse at the capricious, magical, animated, and intensely personal world of his distant ancestors. And yet the guesses and surmises of these earlier men were the source of more of his beliefs than he would care to admit. In these pages we shall see how much of mythology still lingers with us.

Mythology is a product of the social group, of clans and tribes and peoples, and is of slow growth. Story added itself to story, this feature to that. Hence it was often a work of art, though of unconscious art. It was an expression of the life of groups who had gods and totems. It was inextricably bound up with the whole savage outlook upon nature; and yet only recently has this setting been adequately appreciated. Until the middle of the nineteenth century, knowledge of mythology was practically limited to the poetized mythology of the Greeks and Romans. And so, because it was found in the poets, it was thought of as an artificial product, as a series of stories invented and embroidered by the fancy of bards and narrators.

But the wider knowledge due to exploration changed this narrow approach. The discoveries of travelers in the Americas, Africa, and Oceania gave pause to this too civilized and superficial theory of myth. Gradually, a more realistic view arose. The idea of evolution gave a genetic way of approach and made investigators aware of the slowness of human advance. The next steps followed quickly. Social psychology replaced the individualistic and overly rationalistic psychology of the early nineteenth century. All the phenomena of primitive society were seen to be the products of relatively non-reflective groups who felt and stumbled their way into rituals and beliefs. As the material accumulated, comparative methods were applied in the field. The result has been astounding. In place of the romantic conception of primitive life, which made the savage essentially a civilized child, a grimmer picture unfolded itself. Fetichism, shamanism, magic, human sacrifice, totemism, ritualism, all were found combined and interactive in a scheme of life alien to our own enlightened outlook. In such an atmosphere it was that mythology arose. It arose as an account of acts and beliefs, and, as these were purified and deepened, it, also, advanced in purity and depth. Yet, always, there remained the trace of the savagery from which it had sprung.

While primitive religion and mythology are not identical, they are closely bound up with one another. Both rest upon animism, totemism and magic as these are brought into relation with man's needs and fears. Religion is chiefly an affair of sentiment and cult, actively guided by belief in superhuman powers capable of helping and hurting man. Mythology, on the other hand, consists of the stories told about these dynamic powers as they are more and more personified and given a history and a name. And such stories are naturally built up around acts whose significance has been forgotten, or around dramatized interpretations of processes in nature. Myths are explanations of acts and events and names which aroused curiosity and therefore demanded some explanation. It was only after modern anthropology had unearthed the characteristic beliefs of primitive man that many myths became intelligible. A few examples will make this relationship clearer.

Totemism is a sort of cult rendered to animals and plants which are regarded as akin to the tribe. It must be remembered that primitive man was not nearly so convinced of his superiority as is modern man. Wolves and bears and foxes are strong and cunning, and seem to him to have a power and knowledge even superior to his own. Strange as it appears to us to-day, savages quite often assign their origin to some animal and regard that animal as the possessor of a force which is valuable to his kin. This cult of totemistic animals and plants is at the base of the tales of metamorphosis which we read in Classic literature or in our own fairy tales. "Beauty and the Beast" is an example of this transformation, which our ancestors looked upon as quite natural; while the savage tales of the werewolf go back to the same outlook. The serpent in the Garden of Eden is another instance of the same cycle of ideas. The application of our present knowledge of totemism to mythology has been very enlightening. Students of Greek literature used to wonder why all the gods had birds and animals as companions. As a matter of fact, these animals were once sacred totems. The eagle and the swan were gradually displaced by Zeus, the sky deity. But so gradual was this displacement that the animals became attributes of the younger deity, while he was thought to change himself at times back into the totem animal. The story of Leda and the swan can, in this way, be easily understood.

Many myths are explanations of rites which were no longer understood. Such myths are called ætiological. They are answers to questions which worshipers were bound, sooner or later, to ask. The myth of Prometheus, the Titan who stole the fire from heaven to succor men, was connected with the use of eagles on the front of temples to ward off lightning. Originally, the story concerns the punishment of the eagle, but is later attached to Prometheus. It is, according to Reinach, the development of the following naïve dialogue: "Why is this eagle crucified? It is its punishment for having stolen the fire from heaven." Other examples of ætiological myths are the Phaethon legend, the story of Hippolyte, and some of the stories told about Heracles.

Another source of myth is to be found in the sacrifice of animal-gods who are supposed to possess a secret strength. Such animal-gods are not anthropomorphized in early times. They are simply regarded as seats of vital power or mana. We must bear in mind the fact that savage man would not have been shocked by Darwinism as Bishop Wilberforce was. No distinction worth mentioning was made between men and animals in those ancient days. "English-lore," writes Andrew Lang, "has its woman who bore rabbits." The religions of Greece and of Asia Minor had rites and myths which introduced the sacred bull. In Mithraism, a religion which almost won against Christianity, the sacrifice of the bull and the consumption of its blood and flesh in a communion feast were prominent features. Again, in the rites of Dionysus Zagreus, a bull was torn to pieces and eaten. From this arose the myth of Dionysus Zagreus as a son of Zeus and Persephone changed into a bull and eaten by the Titans. He is born again under the name of Dionysus, yet carries horns on his forehead, evident signs of his animal origin. Thus different strata of religion and belief meet and blend and necessitate the growth of explanatory myths.

But we must not allow the newer recognition of the part played by misinterpretation in the development of myths to obscure the genuine role of naïve reflection upon the phenomena of nature. Yet the savage imagination was limited by the experience at its command. The Homeric hymn to Helios "looks on the sun as a half-god, almost a hero, who had once lived on earth." Still more naïve are legends which make it a beast which has once been trapped. Myths arise to account for eclipses, the waxing and waning of the moon, sunset, etc. The explanation of the rainbow as a sign of a covenant between Yahweh and Noah, is an excellent example of a nature-myth introduced as a part of a legend.

There are many other sources of myths. Around all striking events, such as the first punishment of homicide, legends arise. Bellerophon and Ixion are compelled to flee into exile. Again, the facts and ritual of death are a fruitful center for the working of the imagination. The sheol of the Hebrews is first the grave; and only later does it become even the shadowy underworld which is pictured in Isaiah.

But our purpose is not to present an exhaustive analysis of the types of myth which early man wove about the world in which he found himself. What it is important to grasp is the slow growth from an almost animal state of ignorance to a more enlightened, moral, and socially ordered life. This evolution took time, and such progress as was made was always in danger of being overthrown by the hardening of myth and cult into a strait-jacket of superstition and hysterical fear. This danger was always great just because reason could secure no firm foothold upon reality. Man's life was one of constant fear. He felt himself assailed by evil spirits and surrounded by taboos and laws, to violate which meant disaster. When we glance over history, we find only two things which have shown promise of power to raise man out of this slough of fear,—ethical monotheism and reason. How far is this a genuine antithesis? May it not be that the real strength and freeing power of ethical monotheism is due to the reason which created it and speaks through it?

Upon one set of myths of extreme importance for religion we have, however, scarcely touched. Yet the study of this group and its explanation has been a signal triumph for the science of comparative religion. It is a great pity that the general public knows, as yet, so little about the researches made by scholars into the wide-spread ritual of communion and purification, by means of which the participant becomes one with his deity and is even assured of salvation and immortality. The interesting fact is, that, here again, we find ideas which are essentially primitive and magical given a new setting. What was once social, and largely a ritual concerned with the re-birth of vegetation in the Spring, becomes personal, and a symbol of the resurrection of a believer in another world. In its first form and motivation, this set of ideas turns around the tribe's material needs. Only with the growth of self-consciousness is it applied to the individual.

Why did this type of ritual arise? And why was it celebrated with such fervor? These questions lead us into the very heart of early religion. Religion was the expression of man's very real need, in the light of his view of the world as the seat of spiritual agencies. "The extraordinary security of our modern life in times of peace makes it hard for us to realize, except by a definite effort of the imagination, the constant precariousness, the frightful proximity of death, that was usual in these weak ancient communities. They were in fear of wild beasts; they were helpless against floods, helpless against pestilences. Their food depended on the crops of one tiny plot of ground; and if the Savior was not reborn with the spring, they slowly and miserably died. And all the while they knew almost nothing of the real causes that made crops succeed or fail. They only felt sure it was somehow a matter of pollution, of unexpiated defilement. It is this state of things that explains the curious cruelty of early agricultural works, the human sacrifices, the scapegoats, the tearing in pieces of living animals, and perhaps of living men, the steeping of the fields in blood." To men at this stage, religion is the most natural of attitudes. It is the child of animism, of magic, of ignorance and of need. But to explain the origin of an attitude is not to explain it away. May it not be that these sentiments can be given another setting and other objects?

While all races have passed through this myth-making stage, certain races have been more gifted, or else more favored by the circumstances of their development. A vivid imagination, a relatively complex society with different traditions, a diversified landscape, an inviting climate, and a leisurely, yet vigorous life were necessary to the highest efflorescence of this poetic power to weave human motives into nature and into the conduct of supernatural powers conceived after the manner of men. These conditions were fulfilled to a remarkable degree among the Greeks, whose mythology constantly surprises us by its richness, variety and delicacy. As the years rolled by, every striking aspect of nature or of traditional ritual was interpreted in terms of the passion, plan or caprice of some being, different from, yet by no means alien to, man. The daring and beauty of the legends woven by this race and the immensity of their range have made them the admiration and wonder of other times more given to reflection than to phantasy. The childhood of the race was productive in a memorable fashion which has made art and literature forever its debtors.

In our admiration for Greek mythology, we must not forget that other races and nations wove stories to account for human life and to interpret those features of nature which aroused their fear, love or wonder. Our own Northern mythology had its beauties and wild reaches of imagination which made it, in certain regards, a fit rival of that of the Mediterranean. The story of Balder, the joyous and kindly god whom all things loved, is evidently the mythical form of the passing of summer sunshine and the coming of winter with its darkness and gloom. We must always remember that our remote ancestors interpreted their world concretely, and mainly in terms of human life, because they had no abstract ideas at their command. Psychical and physical concepts were interfused in their minds: prose and poetry, fact and figure combined together without that feeling of disharmony which is so distinctive of the modern mind. Nature welcomed personification, and to read the conflict of light and darkness, warmth and cold, in terms of human struggles and hates was the inevitable course for human thought to take. The simple grandeur of many of these tales of the gods comes from the poignancy of life itself. Those events in nature which affected man intensely received an intense meaning. We, who have conquered nature in large measure, or can so predict her convulsions as to escape the first shock of her rude forces; we, who think of her processes as ruled by impersonal laws, cannot appreciate the directness and unveiled immediacy of those ancient dramas which man saw around him. Darkness is for us the absence of light, not a mysterious and threatening presence which fills the sky while the kindly god of day sleeps. Light consists of vibrations in ether emitted from a tremendously hot, material substance instead of being a beneficent force under the control of a radiant being.

But other races than the Aryan were less inclined to embellish and humanize nature. The imagination worked less freely to add to the visible aspect of things. The consequence of this thinness of reaction was, that the mind rested in things as they appeared, although it could not desist from assigning to them capacities and powers which were superhuman. Nature was at least instinct with will, even while this vaguely stirring will did not clothe itself in definite forms. Man believed himself surrounded by forces which affected him for good and evil; he felt himself immersed in an ocean of life, yet he could not discern any forms back of that which he saw with his bodily eyes. Perhaps these other races had less of the dramatic in their composition, less of that genial delight in far-fetched analogies and the free play of ideas.

As time passed, the first stage of mythology with its simple naturalism and its relative lack of imaginative elements gave way to a more human stage. Myths of the next world came to the front, and man became more and more concerned with his salvation in an afterlife. Comparative religion has proven how widespread was the belief in some sort of immortality. The Orphic cults in Greece, the Osiris and Isis cult in Egypt, the worship of Attis and Adonis in Syria, the purification and communion ceremonies of Mithraism, all turned about the idea of a secret means of salvation. A common set of ideas developed in the Mediterranean basin and found expression in liturgies and phrases of a striking similarity. The god dies and is resurrected; the virgin goddess gives birth to a son; the members of a religious community eat of their god and gain strength from the sacred meal. The Church Fathers were aware of these similarities and sought to explain away their resemblances with the Christian ritual by means of the theory that the Devil had blasphemously imitated Christian rites and doctrines. Research has shown that this theory of parody is entirely unhistorical. The fact is, that Christianity borrowed its ritual from the cults among which it grew up. For instance, the belief in the death and resurrection of a savior-god was very prevalent in Tarsus, Paul's own city. The Attis mysteries were celebrated at a season which corresponded to the end of our Lenten period and the beginning of Easter. They were preceded by fasting and began with lamentations, "the votaries gathering in sorrow around the bier of the dead divinity; then followed the resurrection, and the risen god gave hope of salvation to the mystic brotherhood, and the whole service closed with the feast of rejoicing, the Hilaria." There can be little doubt that this whole cycle of ideas represents a development of the primitive ritual of eating the sacred animal or plant in spring in order to foster the re-birth of man's necessities. From this germ sprang reflective ideas of atonement and communion and immortality.

Along with the growth of the mysteries went the introduction of more ethical standards of conduct. Ritual purity suggested the idea of spiritual purity. This ethicizing of myth is very apparent in Greece. By the time of the dramatists, moral judgments had become more severe, and the gods were looked upon as guardians of the moral law; and yet this view was tragically thwarted by much of the old tradition. The savage inheritance and the later moral idealism found themselves in conflict. The consequence was the gradual weakening of the older myths and the welcoming of new cults.

Ethical growth is usually in large measure unconscious. Man reads ideas into the world around him before he becomes conscious that they are his own. His own development is thus reflected in the pantheon with which he has peopled nature. Zeus is at first the thunderer and the cloud-gatherer; finally he represents justice and those kingly qualities which social growth stresses. Poets and philosophers refine away the grosser myths which shock the taste of a more advanced social level. When we compare the conceptions of Euripides, of Plato, of Cleanthes, of Marcus Aurelius, with the conduct of the Homeric gods, we realize the distance traveled by the mind of man along ethical lines. Man is now a builder of ideals. Yet the cosmic setting for these ideals is virtually unchanged; the framework of man's universe has remained much the same. It is at heart a realm of personal agents with which man is in communication.

In all the nations which advanced in civilization, this transformation within mythology makes itself felt. Ormuzd, the Persian god, passes from a personification of the sunlight in its battle with darkness to a spiritual deity who is the guardian of all the virtues. Indra, the Vedic god, is likewise at first the sky through which the clouds move, and is later conceived as the creator and sustainer of the world. The same process reveals itself in Egyptian mythology for we pass from Ra, the sun deity, to Neph and Pthah who represent creative energies and to Osiris, the god of truth and goodness. Thus there is in mythology a universal movement, from the visible aspects of nature as personified, to supernal beings back of nature, protecting what is thought of as highest and noblest in human conduct. The setting remains constant while new wine is poured into the old bottles. The truth of the matter is that man grew faster ethically than he did intellectually. Philosophy and science were far harder to achieve than glimpses of justice and kindness. The very growth of society in numbers forced man to adapt his conduct to a social life and to have regard to his neighbors. The ideals advocated by Confucius, Buddha, Plato, Hosea and Jesus are as noble as our own. But advance in knowledge and its presuppositions is more revolutionary and extraordinary because more artificial and more alien to the psychological prejudices of the mass of the people. Ethics, like religion, remained for ages peacefully within the mythological setting which primitive man unconsciously constructed.

We have purposely omitted prior reference to the development of religion among the Hebrews because their religion has been so important for our own civilization. The mythological element in it was relatively small for various reasons; yet this is true only if we have regard to fable and æsthetic tale. Their world was one of personal agency just as it was for other races. But the Hebrews made a fresh start long after they had isolated themselves from the general Semitic stock. Their migration from their ancient home could not help but wither the more local myths, and this tendency was reënforced by the adoption of a new god, Yahweh, the God of the Kenites. Yahweh was a god of the lightning who thundered from Mount Sinai, and he was a god of battles, just as was Thor, the thunder-god of the Scandinavians. This war god naturally obtained their allegiance during the years of conflict with the Canaanites, and gained in prestige as time elapsed. The Canaanites had their local Baal cults and myths, and these were associated with agricultural festivals and with that worship of fertility which was so wide-spread among the ancients. The followers of Yahweh, on the other hand, were hillmen and shepherds and their rites were closely connected with sacrificial observances.

As time passed, the two races mingled and the tendency was toward an amalgamation of their respective cults. But a storm of protest set in, led by the prophets and the simpler, less concretely naturalistic religion prevailed. The very simplicity of the cult of Yahweh made it a fitting basis for that ethical development which we associate with the names of Amos, Hosea, Isaiah and Jeremiah. Only an ignorance of the ethical deepening of other religions can excuse the belief that this ethical development was absolutely unique. Probably it is the aspect of national monotheism, or henotheism, as it should more accurately be called, which impresses so many, whereas this feature was an historical accident. To claim that the Hebrew development was unique and therefore supernatural is to assume that the relatively unique must be supernatural. But such an assumption has no foundation in experience, for differences in the development of nations are the rule rather than the exception. Shall we say that English constitutional development is supernatural because no other nation achieved such a form of government by itself? Shall we assert that Greek art was supernatural because it was unique? Is it not evident that the wish has been father to the thought in this case? All early peoples have looked upon themselves as chosen and upon other peoples as gentiles and barbarians. We have accepted this prejudice of the Hebrews because we have adopted a modified form of their religion with its racial traditions.

But while conditions in Palestine were not favorable to the flowering of a rich and delicate mythology, it would be false to deny the presence of a mythological motive in the Hebrew outlook. The whole story of the intimate relations of Yahweh to his people and to their ancestors is through and through mythological. Milton's epic was made possible by the folklore incorporated in the Bible. There are many traces in the Bible of a common Semitic tradition in spite of the reactions which it underwent. Recent Semitic scholarship has made it evident that Babylonian beliefs had penetrated to this kindred people. There are sun-myths and tales of semi-divine heroes. After the exile, under the influence of Persia and Babylonia, there arose a belief in demons and angels as powers at work in the world for good and evil. These mythical creatures passed into the outlook of the Western mind by way of Christianity, and offered fruitful material for art and poetry, and for the gradual blossoming of new myths around the Christian epic of the universe. Milton and Dante unfold the inner meaning of life in terms which cannot be understood apart from beliefs which have their ultimate roots in primitive conceptions of the world.

Christian mythology, like Greek mythology, has its æsthetic value, but it is a mistake to assume that this value is removed when the old credence has departed. To appreciate the beauty of Botticelli's Venus, it is not necessary to believe that Venus arose from this sea-foam; in like manner, to enjoy Christian art it is not required that we accept the literal truth of its symbols. Indeed, it seems to me very doubtful whether many educated people to-day take the minor characters of the Christian pantheon very seriously. We would be more than surprised to hear angelic messengers chanting in the heavens above us. Only because they are bound up with a system of attitudes and values dear to men, are these mystic beings given that half-belief which prevents them from falling into that limbo to which dragons and griffins and nymphs have descended. That this will be their ultimate fate is certain. In Protestant countries, in which moral values control religion and sensuous elements exercise little attraction, these figures have already retreated far into the background. Yet the average religious mind likes to dally with the thought of them, much as the child, who no longer believes in fairies, still wishes to indulge in make-believe when the everyday world becomes too bare and well-ordered.

The age of myth, then, corresponds to a naïve extension of human characteristics to natural phenomena. The world becomes a drama to which man holds the key in his own life. He feels himself surrounded by mysterious forces and agencies, far surpassing his own puny strength, and inevitably conceives them in analogy with his own activities. They differ not so much in how they work as in what they do. In this way, the gods were born into the world—and once born man has been unable to free himself from them. As he has grown in mental and moral stature, he has unconsciously reflected into them this increased knowledge and these higher ideals. And the process, once begun, has continued to the present. Not until he has outgrown old fears and relinquished unwarranted hopes will these beliefs lose their power. Then and not till then, will reason be able to supplant mythology by knowledge.