CHAPTER X
SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGION
1014. Religion is social because man is a social animal. This does not exclude individual religion—in fact religion must have begun with individuals, as is the case with all social movements. Morality, indeed, understood as a system of conduct among human beings, could not exist except in a society which included at least two persons; but if we could imagine a quite isolated rational being, he might be religious if, as is perfectly possible, he conceived himself as standing in relation with some supernatural being or beings. This question, however, is not a practical one—there is no evidence of such isolation, and no probability that there ever has been a time when man was not social.
1015. It is generally agreed that men lived at first in small detached groups, gradually forming tribes and nations, and finally effecting a social fusion of nations. Religious worship has followed these changes. Religion is simply one line of social growth existing along with others, science, philosophy, art; all these, as is remarked above,1830 go on together, each influencing and influenced by the others. Human life has always been unitary—no one part can be severed from the others; it is a serious error, impairing the accuracy of the conception of religion, to regard it as something apart from the rest of human life.
1016. The external history of religion, then, is the history of social growth in the line of religious organization; that is, it has been determined by religious outward needs in accordance with the growth of ideas. In the consideration of this history we have to note a growth in ritual, in devotional practices, and in the organization of religious usages, first in tribal or national communities and then in religious communities transcending national and racial boundaries.
External Worship
1017. We assume a human society recognizing some supernatural or extrahuman object or force that is regarded as powerful and as standing in some sort of effective relation with human life. It is possible that societies exist that do not recognize any such object or force or, recognizing them, do not employ any means of entering into relation with them. Such cases, if they exist (and their existence has not been fully established), we may pass by with the remark that the absence of worship need be taken to show only that ritual has been a slow growth.
Our information regarding the least-developed communities indicates that with them religion, when it exists, is an affair of custom, of tradition and usage, handed down during a period the history of which we have no means of knowing. Worship as it first appears consists of ceremonies, generally, perhaps always, regarded as having objective effectiveness.1831 The ritual act itself, in the earliest systems, is powerful, in a sort magical, but tends to lose this character and take on the forms of ordinary human intercourse.
1018. The precise ways in which extrahuman Powers were first approached by men it is not possible now to determine—these procedures lie far back in a dim prehistoric time. Coming down to our first knowledge of religious man it may be assumed that the superhuman Powers recognized by him were of varying sorts: a quasi-impersonal energy which, however, must probably be ascribed ultimately to a personal being; animals; ghosts; spirits resident in objects; anthropomorphic beings. With all these it was necessary to establish relations, and while the methods employed varied slightly according to the nature of the object of worship, the fundamental cultic principle appears to have been the same for all. Several different methods of approaching the Powers appear in the material known to us, and these may be mentioned without attempting exact chronological arrangement.
1019. One of the earliest methods of establishing a relation with the Powers is by certain processes—acts or words. The most definite example of a mere process is that found among the Central Australians, the nature of which, however, is not yet well understood. They perform ceremonies intended to procure a supply of food. It is not quite clear whether these ceremonies are merely imitations of animals and other things involved, or whether they contain some recognition of a superhuman Power. In the former case they are magical, not religious in the full sense of the term. But if they involve a belief in some force or power with which man may enter into relation, however dim and undefined this conception may be, then they must be regarded as belonging definitely in the sphere of religion. A certain direct effect is in many cases supposed to issue from ritualistic acts, a belief that is doubtless a survival of the old conception of mana.1832
1020. In many cases efficacy is attached by savages to singing—the word "sing" is used as equivalent to "exert power in a superhuman way." It is not the musical part of this procedure that is effective—the singing is simply the natural tendency of early man—the power lies in the words which may be regarded as charms. A charm is primarily a form of words which has power to produce certain results with or without the intervention of the gods.1833 In the form of an invocation of a deity the charm belongs to a comparatively late stage of religion; but where its power lies wholly in its words, it involves merely some dim sense of relation, not necessarily religious. Obviously the idea of law underlies all such procedures, but the law may be a sort of natural law and the charm will then not be religious. Religious charms are to be sharply distinguished from prayers; a prayer is a simple request, a charm is an instrument of force.1834 The history of the growth of savage charms it is impossible for us to recover; it can only be supposed that they have grown up through a vast period of time and have been constructed out of various signs and experiences of all sorts that appeared to connect certain words with certain results. There is no evidence that they came originally or usually from prayers that had lost their petitionary character, petrified prayers, so to speak, of which there remained only the supposition that they could gain their ends, though bits of prayers, taken merely as words, are sometimes supposed to have such potency. Charms and prayers are found side by side in early stages of religion; the former tend to decrease, the latter to increase. Charms are allied to amulets, exorcism, and to magic in general.1835
1021. Certain processes and words are supposed to have power to summon the dead and to gain from them a knowledge of the future. This is a case of coercion by magical means. Nonmagical coercion belongs to a relatively late period in religious history and may be passed over at this point. It is not in itself incompatible with religion; a god is subject to caprice and ill humor, and may have to be controlled, and we know that coercion of the gods has been practiced by many peoples, with the full sanction of the religious authorities.1836 But coercive procedures do not accord with the general line of social development. The natural tendency is to make friends with the gods, and coercive methods have died out with the growth of society.
1022. The methods of establishing friendly relations with the supernatural Powers are the same as those which are employed to approach human rulers, namely, by gifts and by messengers or intermediaries.
Gifts. The custom of offering gifts to the dead is universal.1837 Among low tribes and in highly civilized peoples (the Egyptians and others) things are placed by the grave which it is supposed the spirits of the dead will need. Food and drink are supplied, and animals and human beings are slain and left to serve as ministers to the ghosts in the other world. Possibly these provisions for the dead are sometimes suggested by sentiments of affection, but more commonly the object in making the provision appears to be to secure the favor of the deceased: ghosts were powerful for good or for evil—they were numerous, always hovering round the living, and the main point was to gain their good will. For a similar reason such gifts were made to spirits and to gods. It was a common custom to leave useful articles by sacred trees and stones, or to cast them into rivers or into the sea. The food and drink provided was always that in ordinary use among the worshipers: grain, salt, oil, wine, to which were often added cooking and other utensils. It was common also to offer the flesh of animals, as, for example, among the Eskimo, the American Indians (the Pawnees and others), the Bantu, the Limbus, and the Todas of Southern India.1838 It was supposed that the god, when he was in need of food, sometimes used means to stimulate his worshipers on earth to make him an offering.
1023. Since it was obvious that the food set forth for the spirit or deity remained untouched, it was held that the gods consumed only the soul of the food. This conception, which is found in very early times, was natural to those who held that every object, even pots and pans, had its soul. The ascending smoke carried with it the essence of the food to spirits and deities—they smelled the fragrance and were satisfied.1839 The visible material part of the offering, thus left untouched by the god, was often divided among his worshipers, and generally it furnished a welcome meal. These communal feasts are found in various parts of the world, among the Ainu of the Japan Archipelago, the American Indians, and others.1840 They were social and economical functions. It was desirable that the good food not consumed by the deity should be utilized for the benefit of his worshipers. There was also the natural desire and custom of eating with friends. To this was added the belief that the bodies of such animals possessed powers which the worshiper might acquire by eating. The powers and qualities of the animal were both natural and sacred, or divine. The devotion of the dog, the courage and physical power of the bear, the cleverness of the fox—all such natural powers might be assimilated by the worshiper; and since the animal was itself sacred, its body, taken into the human body, communicated a certain special capacity. Thus the virtue of the communal feast was twofold: it placated the supernatural Power, and it procured for the worshiper a satisfactory meal and probably also an infusion of superhuman power. The favor of the deity was gained simply by the presents offered him; in these early times there is no indication of the belief that there was a recognized sacramental sharing of sacred food by the gods and their worshipers.
1024. Messengers. The supernatural Power was sometimes approached by a messenger who was instructed to ask a favor. The messenger was an animal regarded as sacred, akin to men and to gods, and therefore fitted to be an intermediary. Examples of such a method of approaching a deity are found among the Ainu, in Borneo, and among the North American Indians. The Ainu, before slaying the bear who is to serve as messenger, deliver to him an elaborate address in which he is implored to represent to his divine kinsfolk above how well he has been treated on earth and thus gain their favor; he is also invited to return to earth that he may be again captured and slain. His flesh is eaten by the worshipers, and his head is set up as an object of worship. Thus, he is after death a divine Power and a portion of his own flesh is offered to his head, but this is simply to gain his good will, and there is no suggestion of a joint feast of gods and men.1841 Somewhat like this is the procedure in Borneo, where on special occasions when some particular favor is desired, a pig is dispatched with a special message to the gods.1842 In America the sacred turtle, regarded as a brother to the tribe and affectionately reverenced by his human brethren, is dispatched with tears to the other world to join his kinsmen there and be an ambassador and friend.1843 A similar conception is to be found perhaps in the great Vedic animal sacrifice in which the victim was likewise made ready by ceremonies to go to the heavenly court and there stand as the friend of the worshipers.1844
1025. In all these cases there was a certain identification of the victim with men on the one side and gods on the other. This is simply a part of the general belief in the kinship existing between all forms of being. Early men in choosing animal gifts for the gods, or an animal as messenger to them, could not go astray, for all animals were sacred. The effective means of procuring the favor of the supernatural Powers is always a friendly gift or a friendly messenger. When animals lost their religious prestige, their ambassadorial function gave way to the mediatorial function of gods and men.
Incense, tobacco, and other such things that were burned before the deity are also to be regarded as food, though in the course of time, when the recollection of this primitive character was lost, a conventional significance was attached to the act of burning. A more refined period demanded more refined food for the gods, such as ambrosia and nectar, but these also were finally given up.
1026. Food was conveyed to the gods either by simply laying it down at some sacred place (where it was devoured by beasts, but more generally taken by official ministers of the god), or by burning it.1845 In the body of the victim the blood came to play the most important part as an expiatory force. Early observation, as is pointed out above,1846 showed that the life was in the blood, and so a principle of economy naturally suggested that it would be sufficient to offer the blood to the deity, though this was generally supplemented by some choice portion of the flesh. Thus, the opinion arose that blood had a special expiatory power, and this conception remained to a late period.1847 But the expiatory power rested finally on the fact that the blood was a gift of food to the gods. The gift was most effective, apparently, when the whole of the animal was burned, since thus the greatest honor was shown the deity and the most ample satisfaction of his bodily needs was furnished. The holocaust proper appears in religious history at a comparatively late stage, but the essence of it is found in all early procedures in which the whole of any object is given to the deity.
1027. Human sacrifice. That taste for human flesh on the part of men is not unnatural is shown by the prevalence of cannibal customs in many parts of the world. When such customs existed, it was natural that the flesh of human beings should be offered to the supernatural Powers.
The slaying of human beings at the graves of deceased clansmen or friends has prevailed extensively, though apparently not among the lowest tribes; it represents a certain degree of reflection or intensity; it is found in the midway period when religious customs were fairly well organized and when manners were not yet refined. Not every slaughter at a grave, however, is an act of religious offering to the dead. It is sometimes prompted by the spirit of revenge, to ease the mind of the slayer, or perhaps by desire to do honor to the deceased—doubtless there was a sentiment of piety toward the dead.
1028. The slaughter of slaves and wives to be the attendants of the deceased in the other world is of the nature of an offering—it is intended to procure the good will of the ghost. The self-immolation of widows and other dependents was in some cases a selfish act. It was supposed that the persons thus offering themselves up would procure certain advantages in the other world, while at the same time they would there minister to the manes of their husbands or lords.
As there was no practical difference between ghosts and spirits or gods in respect of power and influence in human life, the offering of human beings to these last came as a matter of course. Their bodily appetites were the same as those of men—they were fond of human flesh. Wherever it was necessary to invoke their special aid this sort of offering was presented: for the success of crops; to insure the stability of houses and bridges1848; to avert or remove calamities, such as pestilence and defeat in battle.
1029. While in the simpler societies human sacrifice was simply an offering of food to the Powers, in later times it came to be conceived of as the devotion of an object to the deity, and thus as a sign of obedience and dependence. The offering of first-born children was a recognition of the fact that the god was the giver of children as of crops. The sacrifice of the dearest object, it was supposed, would soften the heart of the deity. In some cases the person who was supposed to be the occasion or source of misfortune was offered up. In general, human sacrifice followed the lines of all other sacrifices and disappeared when it became repugnant to humane and refined feelings.
1030. The testimonies to its existence are so numerous that we may suppose it to have been universal among men.1849 There is a trace of its early existence in Egypt.1850 In the Semitic region it is known to have been practiced by the Phœnicians, Carthaginians, Moabites, Hebrews, Arameans, and some Arabs.1851 There is no evidence of the practice in Babylonia; an indication of its existence in Assyria is possibly found in an Old Testament passage.1852 Its existence in early times in India is held to be implied in the Rig-Veda.1853 It appears in the Brahmanic period also: a man (who had to be a Brahman or a Warrior) was bought, allowed liberty and the satisfaction of all his desires (except that sexual intercourse was forbidden) for one year, and then ceremonially slain.1854 It is only recently that the sacrifice of children in the New Year festival at the mouth of the Ganges has been abolished; and it is doubtful whether, in spite of the efforts of the British Government, it has been completely put down among the wild tribes, as the Gonds and the Khonds.1855 The records of China, from the eighth century B.C. onward are said to prove the existence of human sacrifice.1856 Among the ancient Scandinavians and Germans it was frequent.1857 In more recent times the practice is known either to exist or to have existed in Polynesia (Fiji, Samoa), Melanesia (Florida Islands), Borneo (formerly),1858 and North America (the Iroquois, the Natchez, the Florida peninsula, and the Southwest coast).1859 Nowhere does it appear on so large a scale as in Mexico; and it existed also in Peru.1860 In Africa it was practiced to a frightful extent in Ashantiland and Dahomiland and more guardedly in Yoruba.1861
1031. Its gradual disappearance (a result of increasing refinement of feeling) was marked by the substitution of other things for human victims or of aliens for tribesmen. In early times indeed it seems to have been slaves and captives taken in war that were commonly sacrificed. In more civilized times the blood of a tribesman, as more precious than other blood, was regarded as being more acceptable to the deity, and it was then a sign of advance when aliens were substituted for tribesmen. Lower animals were sacrificed in place of men: in India, where the recently sown fields had been fertilized with human blood, it became the practice to kill a chicken instead of a human being; and so in the story of Abraham (Gen. xxii) a ram is substituted for the human being.1862 Elsewhere paste images are offered to the deity as representing men; an interesting development is found in Yoruba, where the proposed victim, instead of being sacrificed, becomes the protector of the sacrificer; that is, he is regarded as substantially divine, as he would have been had he been sacrificed.1863
1032. Along with gifts, which formed perhaps the earliest method of conciliating divine beings, we find in very early times a number of procedures in honor of the deity, and intended in a general way to procure divine favor. Among these procedures dances and processions are prominent. The dance, as is observed above,1864 is simply the transference to religious rites of a common social act. It is, however, often supposed to have been communicated supernaturally, and in some cases it attains a high religious significance by its association with stories of divine persons. This organized symbolic dance has been developed to the greatest extent among certain North American Indian tribes.1865 Here every actor and every act represents a personage or procedure in a myth, and thus the dance embodies religious conceptions. This sort of symbolism has been adopted also in some sections of the Christian church, where it is no doubt effective in many cases as an element of external worship.
1033. While human sacrifice continued to a comparatively late period, it was the ordinary sort of sacrifice that constituted the main part of the ancient religious bond of society.1866 In the course of time the apparatus of sacrifice was elaborated—altars, temples, priests came into existence, and an immense organization was built up. Sacrifices played a part in all the affairs of life, took on various special shapes, and received different names. They were all placatory—in every case the object was to bring men into friendly relations with the god. They were expiatory when they were designed to secure forgiveness for offenses, whether by bloody or by unbloody offerings, or by anything that it was supposed would secure the favor of the deity. They were performed when it was desired to procure some special benefit, for on such occasions it was necessary that the deity should be well disposed toward the supplicant; such supplicatory or impetratory sacrifices have been among the most common—they touch the ordinary interests of life, the main function of religious exercises in ancient times being to procure blessings for the worshiper. These blessings secured, it was necessary to give thanks for them—eucharistic sacrifices formed a part of the regular worship among all civilized peoples. When the crops came in, it was felt to be proper to offer a portion, the first fruits, to the deity, as among the Hebrews and many others, and, this custom once established, the feeling naturally arose that to partake of the fruits of the earth before the deity had received his part would be an impious proceeding likely to call down on the clan or tribe the wrath of the god. When a gift was made to a temple, since it was desirable that the deity should accept it in a friendly spirit, a sacrifice was proper. In the numerous cases in which some person or some object was to be consecrated to the deity a sacrifice was necessary in order to secure his good will; the ordination of temple-ministers, or the initiation of the young into the tribe, demanded some consecrative sacrifice. And, on the other hand, there was equal necessity for a sacrifice, a deconsecrative or liberative ceremony, when the relation of consecration was to be terminated (as in the case of the Hebrew Nazirite) or when a person was to be relieved from a taboo—in this latter case the ceremony of cleansing and of sacrificing was intended to secure the approval of the deity in whose name and in whose interest the taboo had been imposed.
1034. Sacrifices might be individual or communal, occasional or periodical. The early organization of society into clans made the communal sacrifice the more prominent1867—the clan was the social unit, the interests of the individual were identical with those of the clan, and there was rarely occasion for a man to make a special demand on the deity for his individual benefit. Such occasions did, however, arise, and there was no difficulty in an individual's making a request of the tribal god provided it was not contrary to the interests of the tribe. If the petitioner went to some god or supernatural Power other than the tribal god, this was an offense against tribal life.
1035. The great communal sacrifices were periodical. They were determined by great turning-points in the seasons or by agricultural interests. Sowing time; when the crops became ripe; harvest time; midsummer and midwinter—such events were naturally occasions for the common approach of the members of the tribe to the tribal deity. The same thing is true of military expeditions, which were held to be of high importance for the life of the tribe. War was, as W. R. Smith calls it, a "holy function,"1868 and its success was supposed (and is now often supposed) to depend on the supernatural aid of the deity. The particular method of conducting the ceremonies in such cases varied with the place and time, but the purpose of the worshiper and the general methods of proceeding are the same among all peoples and at all times. Occasions connected with the individual, such as birth, initiation, marriage, death, and burial, are also affairs of the family or clan, and the same rule applies to sacrifices on such occasions as to the great communal periodical offerings.
1036. It was inevitable that the ritual, that is, the specific mode of procedure, should receive a great development in the course of history. As colleges of priests were established, ceremonial elaborateness would become natural, and precise methods of proceeding would be handed down from generation to generation. Thus in many cases the worshiper had to be prepared by purificatory and other ceremonies, and the priest had to submit to certain rules before he could undertake the sacrifice. The victim was selected according to certain prescriptions: it had to be of a certain age or sex, of a certain color, generally free from impurities and defects, and sometimes it was necessary that it should show itself willing to be sacrificed.1869 These details do not at all affect the essence of the sacrifice. They are all the result of the ordinary human tendency to organization, to precise determination of particulars, and while certain general features are easily understood (those, for example, relating to the perfectness of the victim) others are the result of considerations which are unknown to us. It would be a mistake to seek for the origin of sacrifice in such ritualistic details.
Theories of the Origin of Sacrifice
1037. Up to a very recent time the institution of sacrifice was generally accepted either as a natural human custom, due to reverence for the gods, or as of divine prescription. In very early documents, as, for example, in the Iliad and in certain parts of the Old Testament, it is assumed that the material of sacrifice is the food of the gods—a fact of interest in the discussion of the origin of sacrifice, never, however, in ancient times formulated as a theory. In the Græco-Roman and later Jewish periods sacrifices seem to have been conceived of in a general way as a mark of respect to the deity and fell more and more into disuse as the ethical feeling became distincter. In the New Testament there is a trace of the view that the victim is a substitute for the offerer: in the Epistle to the Hebrews it is said that the blood of bulls and goats could never effect the remission of sin—a nobler victim was necessary.1870 A similar conception is found in the later Greek and Roman literature, but there is still no distinct theory. In the third century of our era Porphyry, who was greatly interested in religious matters and, doubtless, represents a considerable body of thoughtful current opinion, says simply that sacrifices are offered to do honor to a deity or to give thanks or to procure favors.1871 The early Christian writers make no attempt to explain the origin of the custom, nor do we find any such attempt in the European philosophy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It was not until the spirit of historical inquiry had entered the sphere of religious investigation that the question as to the historical beginning and the significance of sacrifice was fairly put.
1038. In discussions of this question a distinction is sometimes made between bloody and unbloody offerings—they are supposed to differ in placatory or expiatory virtue, and one or the other of them is held to precede in order of time. The facts seem, however, not to warrant this distinction. Everywhere the two sorts of offering have equal power to please and placate the deity; the special prominence that may be given to the one or the other is due to peculiar social conditions that do not affect the essential nature of the rite.1872 As to precedence of one or the other in time the available data offer nothing definite beyond the fact that choice between them is determined by the circumstances of a community—the material of an offering is whatever (food or other thing) seems natural and appropriate in a particular place and at a particular time, and this may vary, of course, in the same community at different stages of culture.
1039. Current theories of the origin and significance of sacrifice divide themselves into two general groups, the one laying stress on the idea of gift, the other on the idea of union with the deity. Both go back ultimately to the same conception, the conviction, namely, that man's best good can be secured only by the help of the supernatural Powers; but they approach the subject from different points of view and differ in their treatment of the rationale of the ritual.
1040. The conception of an offering as a gift to a deity is found in very early times and is common in low tribes. In Greece the word for "gift," as offering, occurs from Homer on, and in Latin is frequent, and such a term is employed in Sanscrit. The common Hebrew term for sacrifice (minḫa) has the same sense; it is used for both bloody and unbloody offerings, though from the time of Ezekiel (sixth century B.C.) onward it became a technical term for cereal offerings.1873 The details of savage custom are given by Tylor,1874 who proposes as the scheme of chronological development "gift, homage, abnegation." This order, which is doubtless real, embodies and depends on growth in social organization and in the consequent growth in depth and refinement of religious feeling. The object of a gift is to procure favor and protection; homage involves the recognition of the deity as overlord, and, in the higher stages of thought, as worthy of reverence—always, however, with the sense of dependence and the desire for benefits; abnegation is the devotion of one's possessions and, ultimately, of one's self; this idea sometimes assumes a low form, as if the deity were pleased with human loss and suffering, or as if human enjoyment were antireligious,1875 sometimes approaches the conception of the unity of the worshiper with the object of worship.1876
1041. A special form of the gift-theory, with a peculiar coloring, is that which holds that some object is substituted for the worshiper who has fallen under the displeasure of the deity and is in danger of punishment. This conception, however, is found only in the most advanced religions. The cases in which an animal is substituted for a human victim1877 are of a different character—they are humane reinterpretations of old customs. In early popular religion the only examples of a deity's deliberately inflicting on innocent persons the punishment of another's wrongdoing are connected with the old conception of tribal and national solidarity—Œdipus, Achan, David, and others, by their crimes, bring misfortune on their peoples; when the guilty have received their punishment the innocent are relieved. A real vicarious suffering is not found in these cases or in any ancient sacrificial ritual—the victim is not supposed to bear the sin of the sacrificant.1878 It is only in comparatively late theological constructions that vicarious atonement occurs. Some Jewish thinkers were driven to such a theory by the problem of national misfortune. The pious and faithful part of the nation, the "Servant of Yahweh," had shared in its grievous sufferings, and, as the faithful did not deserve this punishment, the conclusion was drawn that they suffered for the iniquities of the body of the people;1879 their suffering, however, was to end in victory and prosperity. In this conception the theory of solidarity is obvious, but it differs from the old tribal theory in that the suffering of the innocent brings salvation to the whole mass. In the prophetic picture there is no explanation of how this result was to be brought about—there is no mention of a moral influence of the few on the many—only there is the implication that the nation, taught by suffering, would in future be faithful to the worship of the national deity. It does not appear wherein the ethical and religious significance of the unmerited suffering of the pious consisted; apparently the object of the writer is merely to account for this suffering and to encourage his countrymen. In another passage,1880 suffering is represented as having in itself expiatory power; the view in this case is that a just deity must punish sin, forgives, however, when the punishment has been borne.
1042. The view that the efficacy of sacrifice is due to the fact that it brings about a union between the deity and the worshiper has been construed in several different ways according as the stress is laid on one or another of the elements of the rite. One theory represents atonement, the reconciliation of god and man, as effected by the physical act of sharing the flesh of a sacred animal; another finds it in the death of an animal made sacred and converted into an intermediary by a series of ceremonies; a third holds that union with the divine is secured by whatever is pleasing to the deity.
1043. Reconciliation through a communal meal. Meals in which the worshipers partook of the flesh of a sacred animal (in which sometimes the dead animal itself shared) have probably been celebrated from an immemorial antiquity. Examples of such customs among savages are given above.1881 A familiar instance of a communal meal in civilized society is the Roman festival in which the shades of the ancestors of the clan were honored (the sacra gentilicia)—a solemn declaration of the unity of the clan-life.1882 A more definite act of social communion with a deity seems to be recognizable in the repasts spread in connection with the Eleusinian mysteries, which appear, however, to have been merely a social attachment to the mysteries proper.1883 In the feasts of the Mithraic initiates, in which mythological symbolism is prominent, a more spiritual element becomes visible: the participant absorbs something of the nature of the god—power to overcome evil, with hope of immortality.1884
1044. In the ancient records of these ceremonies there is no theory of the means by which man comes into friendly relations with the deity. The meal is an act of friendly intercourse—it doubtless involves the ancient belief that those who eat together thus absorb a common life and are bound together by a strong tie. In the earliest and simplest instances the feeling apparently is that the communion is between the human participants—the divine animal is honored as a brother; but, even when, as among the Ainu,1885 he receives a part of the food, the tie that binds him to them rests on the fact of original kinship rather than on the communal eating. Later the view that the god was pleased and placated by the nourishment offered him assumed more definite form;1886 but it is doubtful whether on such occasions man was regarded as the guest of the deity.1887
1045. However this may be, it is the effect of the food on the god that has been made by W. Robertson Smith the basis of an elaborate theory of sacrifice;1888 his view is that the assimilation of the flesh and blood of the kindred divine animal strengthens the deity's sense of kinship with his worshipers, and thus, promoting a kindly feeling in him, leads him to pardon men's offenses and grant them his protection. Smith's argument is mainly devoted to illustrating the ancient conception of blood-kinship between gods, men, and beasts. He assumes that sacrifice is the offering of food to the deity (the blood of the animal, as the seat of life, coming naturally to be the most important part of the offering), the sacredness of the victim, and the idea of communion, and further that the victim is a totem—the existence of totemism in the Semitic area, he holds, though not susceptible of rigid proof, is made practically certain by the wide diffusion of the totemic conception elsewhere.1889 As evidence that the effective thing in sacrifice is the sharing of sacred flesh and blood, he adduces a great number of offerings (such as the shedding one's own blood and the offering of one's hair) in which there is no death of a victim, and no idea of penal satisfaction of the deity. In the Israelite ritual he lays special stress on the common clan-sacrifice (the zebaḥ) in which a part of the victim is given to the god and a part is consumed by the worshiper; this he contrasts with offerings that are given wholly to the god, and, leaving aside piacula and holocausts, this distinction he makes correspond to that between animal and vegetable offerings, the latter, he holds, being originally not conciliatory. Thus, he concludes, the expiatory power lies in the sharing of animal flesh. Here the theory is confronted by the holocaust and the piaculum, expiatory sacrifices in which there is no communal eating. Smith meets this difficulty by suggesting that these two sorts of sacrifice belong to a relatively late period, when, in the progress of society, the original conception had become dim. As time went on, he says, the belief in kinship with animals grew fainter. Sacrificial meals became merely occasions of feasting, and at the same time the establishment of kingly government familiarized men with the idea of tribute—so sacrifice came to be regarded as a gift and the victim was wholly burnt (holocaust); the same result was reached when the feeling arose that the victim was too sacred to be eaten—it must be otherwise disposed of (piaculum). The piacula he refers to times of special distress, when recourse was had to the sacrifice of ancient sacred animals, old totems (Hebrew: "unclean" animals), supposed to have special potency.1890 It is true that in the course of time certain old conceptions grew dim, but this does not set aside the fact that expiatory power was supposed to attach to animal sacrifices in which there was no communal eating; though some of these were late, they doubtless retained the old idea of the nature of the efficacy of sacrifice.
1046. In Smith's theory there is confusion between the two ideas of communion and expiation or placation. All the facts adduced by him go to show only that the earliest form of animal sacrifice took the form of communal eating; and in such repasts, as in the savage feasts on the bodies of warriors and others, the prominent consideration seems to have been the assimilation of the qualities of the thing consumed—in this case a divine animal. There is not a word of proof of the view that the placation of the deity was due to his assimilation of kindred flesh and blood. Such a view is not expressed in any ancient document or tradition, and, on the other hand, placation by gifts of food (animal or vegetable) and other things appears in all accounts of early ritual. Even in the sacramental meals of later times, Eleusinian, Christian, and Mithraic, there is no trace of the theory under consideration. In the "Teaching of the Twelve Apostles" (ix f.) the conception of the eucharistic meal is simply symbolical. The origin of the Australian custom1891 (in which the food brought in by a clan is not eaten till the old men have first tasted it) is obscure; but there is no hint that the food was supposed to be shared by a supernatural being.1892 Piacula arose under the influence of a deep sense of individual relation to the deity, and sometimes in connection with voluntary associations in which a special sanctity was held to accrue to the initiates through the medium of a cult in which special sacrifices were prominent It was natural that peculiarly solemn or dreadful offerings should be made to the deity in times of great distress; the placating efficacy in such cases seems to have been due to the pleasure taken by the deity in the proof of devotion given by the worshipers. In general, the communal meal lost its early significance as time went on, and came at last to be celebrated merely as a traditional mark of respect to the deity, or as a social function; the belief in its efficacy, however (and sometimes belief in its magical power), survived into a relatively late period.
1047. In one point, the death of the god, J. G. Frazer, while accepting Smith's theory in general, diverges from his view. Smith regards the death of the god as having been originally the sacrificial death of the divine totem animal, with which later the god was identified. Frazer1893 (here following Mannhardt1894) finds its origin in the death of the vegetation-spirit (the decay of vegetation), which was and is celebrated in many places in Europe, and furnishes an explanation of the myths of Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Dionysus, Demeter and Proserpine, and Lityerses. This explanation is adopted and expanded by Hubert and Mauss.1895 So far as the mere fact of the sacrifice of a divine being is concerned it might be accounted for by either of these theories; but the numerous points of connection between the deities in question and the ancient ideas concerning the death of vegetation make the view of Mannhardt and Frazer the more probable. The kernel of the original custom is not expiation but celebration or worship; the myths are dramatic developments of the simple old idea. Frazer suggests that the spirit or god, supposed to be enfeebled by age, was slain by the worshipers in order that a more vigorous successor might infuse new life into the world—an explanation that is possible but cannot be considered as established or as probable.1896 However this may be, it was at a relatively late period that the conception of communion was introduced into ceremonies connected with the death of a deity. Originally the grain, identified with the god, was eaten in order to acquire his strength;1897 such seems to be the purpose in the Mexican ceremonies in which paste images of the deity were eaten by all the people. With the growth of moral and spiritual conceptions of worship such communal eating came naturally to be connected with a sense of union of soul with the deity, as we find in the higher religions, but still without the feeling that reconciliation and unity were effected through the absorption, by god and man, of the same sacred food.
1048. In some forms of Christianity the sacramental eating is brought into connection with the atoning death of a divine person, but this latter conception came independently by a different line of thought. Its basis is the idea of redemption, which is an element in all sacrifice proper. And, as the death of the divine victim is held to rescue the worshiper from punishment for ill doing, the conclusion is natural that the former stands in the place of the latter. In the higher forms of thought such substitution could only be voluntary on the part of the victim. Traces of the self-sacrifice of a god have been sought in such myths as the stories of the self-immolation of Dido and Odin; but the form and origin of these myths are obscure1898—all that can be said of them in this connection is that they seem not to contain expiatory conceptions.1899 The higher conception of a divine self-sacrifice is a late historical development under the influence of convictions of the moral majesty of God and the sinfulness of sin.
1049. Union with the divine through a sanctified victim. The conception of sacrifice as bringing about a union of the divine and the human is reached in a different way from that of Smith by MM. Hubert and Mauss, and receives in their hands a peculiar coloring.1900 They hold that the numerous forms of sacrifice cannot be reduced to "the unity of a single arbitrarily chosen principle"; and in view of the paucity of accurate accounts of early ritual (in which they include the Greek and the Roman) they reject the "genealogical" (that is, the evolutionary) method, and devote themselves to an analysis of the two ancient rituals, the Hindu and the Hebrew, that are known in detail and with exactness. They thus arrive at the formula: "Sacrifice is a religious act which, by the consecration of a victim, modifies the state of the moral person who performs it, or of certain objects in which this person is interested." The procedure in sacrifice, they say, consists in establishing a communication between the sacred world and the profane world by the intermediation of a victim, that is, of a thing that is destroyed in the course of the ceremony; it thus serves a variety of purposes, and is dealt with in many ways: the flesh is offered to hostile spirits or to friendly deities, and is eaten in part by worshipers or by priests; the ceremony is employed in imprecations, divination, vows, and is redemptive by the substitution of the victim for the offender; the soul of the beast is sent to join its kin in heaven and maintain the perpetuity of its race; all sacrifices produce either sacralization or desacralization—both offerer and victim must be prepared (for the victim is not, as Smith holds, sacred by nature, but is made sacred by the sacrifice), and, the ceremony over, the person must be freed from his sanctity (as in the removal of a taboo); all sacrifice is an act of abnegation, but the abnegation is useful and egoistic, except in the case of the sacrifice of a god.
1050. The essay of MM. Hubert and Mauss is rather a description of the mode of procedure in Hindu sacrifice than an explanation of the source of its power. A victim, it is said, sanctified by the act of sacrifice, effects communication between the two worlds, but we are not told wherein consists this sanctifying and harmonizing efficacy. The rituals chosen for analysis are the product of many centuries of development and embody the conceptions of theological reflection; it does not appear why they should be preferred, as sources of information concerning the essential nature of sacrifice, to the simple rites of undeveloped communities. The authors of the essay, though they deny the possibility of finding a single explicative principle chosen arbitrarily, themselves announce a principle, which, however, amounts simply to the statement that sacrifice is placatory. In thus ascribing the virtue of the ceremony to the act itself it is possible that they may have been influenced by the Brahmanic conception that sacrifice had power in itself to control the gods and to secure all blessings for men; it was credited by them with magical efficacy, and the efficacy depended on performing the act with minutest accuracy in details—the slightest error in a word might vitiate the whole proceeding.1901 The developed Hindu system thus embodied in learned form the magical idea that is found in many early procedures, and in some other cults of civilized communities. So far as regards the variety of functions assigned by MM. Hubert and Mauss to sacrifice, they may all be explained as efforts to propitiate supernatural Powers; and the obligation on priests and worshipers to purify themselves by ablutions and otherwise arises from a sense of the sacredness of the sacrificial act, which is itself derived from the feeling that the sacredness of supernatural beings communicates itself to whatever is connected with them. The view that the victim is not in itself sacred is contradicted by all the phenomena of early religion. Though the essay of MM. Hubert and Mauss formulates no definition of the ultimate efficient cause in sacrifice, passing remarks appear to indicate that they look on the offering as a gift to superhuman Powers, and that their object is to show under what conditions and circumstances it is to be presented.
1051. Sacrifice as the expression of desire for union with the Infinite. Professor C. P. Tiele, dissatisfied with existing theories of the significance of sacrifice, contents himself with a general statement.1902 After pointing out that the material of sacrifice in any community is derived from the food of the community, he passes in review briefly the theories of Tylor (gifts to deities), Spencer (veneration of deceased ancestors), and Robertson Smith; all these, though he thinks it would be presumptuous to condemn them hastily, he finds insufficient, most of them, he says, confining themselves to a single kind of offering, whereas every kind should be taken into account, gifts presented, objects and persons consecrated, victims slain with or without repasts, possessions and pleasures renounced, acts of fasting and abstinence, every kind of religious self-denial or self-sacrifice. The question being whether one and the same religious need is to be recognized in all the varieties, he finds the root of sacrificial observances in the yearning of the believer for abiding communion with the supernatural Power to which he feels himself akin, the longing of finite man to become one with the Infinity above him.
1052. Tiele here has in mind the highest form of the religious consciousness, which he carries back to the beginnings of religious thought. He is justified in so doing in so far as all later developments must be supposed to exist in germinal form at the outset of rational life; but such a conception tells us nothing of the historical origin of customs. The idea of the relation between the finite and the infinite is not recognizable in early thought; to trace the history of such an institution as sacrifice we desire to know in what sort of feeling it originated, and we may then follow its progress to its highest definition. All the details mentioned by Tiele are included under the head of gift except acts of abstinence and self-sacrifice, and these last belong properly not to what is technically known as "sacrifice," but to man's endeavor to bring himself into ethical harmony with an ethical deity. With equal right prayer and all moral conduct might here be included; Tiele thinks of "sacrifice" as embracing the whole religious life. In the earliest known cults the "yearning for union with the Infinite" takes the form of desire to enter into friendly relations with superhuman Powers by gifts, in order to derive benefit from them; when old forms have been outgrown the conviction arises that what is well-pleasing to God is the presentation of the whole self, as a "living sacrifice," in service in accordance with reason (Rom. xii, 1).
1053. The various theories of the origin and efficacy of sacrifice (omitting the ambassadorial conception) are thus reducible to three types: it is regarded as a gift, as a substitution, or as an act securing union (physical or spiritual) with the divine. These have all maintained themselves, in one form or another, up to the present day. The old ritual slaughter of an animal and the presentation of vegetables and other things have, indeed, vanished. The movement of thought against animal sacrifice began in the Western world (among the Greeks and the Hebrews) probably as early as the fourth century B.C.1903 In Greece the formulation of philosophic thought and the rise of individualism in religion (embodied, for example, in the great Mysteries) brought larger and more spiritual ideas into prominence. Rational law and inward impulse took the place, in the higher circles, of ritual offerings. The object of law, says Plato, is the encouragement of virtue of all kinds and the securing of the highest happiness; but, he holds, there is something higher than law: the good Athenian is above other men, for he is the only man who is freely and genuinely good by inspiration of nature, and is not manufactured by law.1904 The Mysteries assumed that every man, with suitable inward preparation, was fitted to enter into a spiritual union with the deity. The later Jews showed equal devotion to their law, held to be divinely given, laying the stress on the moral side;1905 jurists became more important than priests, and the synagogue (representing individual worship) more influential than the temple-ritual. In certain psalms1906 sacrifice is flatly declared not to be acceptable to God; this attitude had been taken by the earlier prophets,1907 but is emphasized in the psalms in the face of the later opinion that the sacrificial ritual was of divine ordination (so in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers). In the Gospels the sacrificial ritual is practically ignored. In India the Brahmanic and Buddhistic movements toward rational conceptions of religion showed themselves as early as the sixth century B.C. Thus, over a great part of the civilized world intellectual and moral progress took the form of protest against the old idea of sacrifice.
1054. Yet old customs are long-lived, and the ancient theories, as is remarked above, still have a certain power. The crudest of them—that the deity may be propitiated by gifts—shows itself in the belief that ill-doing may be atoned for by the support of charitable and religious institutions—by the building of churches and hospitals, by the maintenance of religious worship, and by aid to the poor. Society has benefited largely by this belief, especially in medieval Europe and to some extent in Buddhistic and Moslem communities; it has formed a transition to higher conceptions, by which it has now been in great measure replaced. The same thing is true of ascetic observances. The idea of sacrificial substitution, which has been prominent in organized Christianity from an early period (though it has no support in the teaching of Jesus), might seem to be prejudicial to religion for the reason that it tends to depress the sense of individual responsibility by relegating the reconciliation with the deity to an external agency—and such has often been its effect; but this unhappy result has been more and more modified, partly by the natural human instinct of moral responsibility and the ethical standard of the Christian Scriptures, partly by the feeling of gratitude and devotion that has been called forth by the recognition of unmerited blessing. The third theory of sacrifice, according to which its essence is union with the divine, has passed gradually from the sphere of ritual to that of moral culture. In mystical systems, Christian and Moslem, it has lent itself sometimes to immorality, sometimes to a stagnant, egoistic, and antisocial quietism; but in the main it has tended to avoid or abandon mechanical and mystical features, and confine itself to the conception of sympathetic and intelligent coöperation with what may be regarded as the divine activities of the world.
1055. Further external apparatus of religion. Along with the growth of sacrifice there has been a natural development of everything that was necessary to give permanent form to public worship—ritual, priests, temples, idols, and whatever was connected with the later church organizations.
Ritual
Apart from magical procedures the earliest known public religious worship consisted simply in the offering of an animal, a vegetable, a fluid, or other object to a superhuman being, the offering being performed by any prominent person and without elaborate ceremonies. Inevitably, however, as the social organization grew more complex and the conception of sanctity more definite, the ceremonial procedure became more elaborate. The selection and the handling of the victim came to be objects of anxious care, and the details increased in importance as they increased in number. It was believed that minute accuracy in every ritual act was necessary for the success of the offering. Various elements doubtless entered into this belief: often a magical power was attributed to the act of sacrifice; and there was a feeling, it may be surmised, that the deity was exacting in the matter of ceremonies—these were marks of respect, such as was paid to human potentates, and well-defined court rituals (on which the religious ritual was probably based) appear in early forms of society. Thus ritual tended to become the predominant element in worship, serving first the interests of unity and order in religion, and later always in danger of becoming a mechanical and religiously degrading influence.
1056. In most savage and half-civilized communities sacrifice is a simple affair, and the details of the ceremonies of worship are rarely reported by travelers and other observers.1908 An exception exists in the case of the Todas of Southern India, who have elaborate ceremonies connected with the milking of buffaloes.1909 The ordinary buffaloes of a village are cared for by some prominent man (never by a woman), who is sometimes a sacred person and while carrying on his operations performs devotional acts (prayer and so forth), but without a fixed ritual. A higher degree of sanctity attaches to the institution called ti, which comprises a herd of buffaloes belonging to a clan and provided with dairies and grazing-grounds; each dairy has appropriate buildings, and the ti is presided over by a sort of priest called a palol. The migration of the buffaloes from one grazing-ground to another is conducted as a sacred function. In the case of an ordinary herd the procession of animals is accompanied by a religious official who carries the dairy implements; on reaching the destination the new dairy is purified, the sun is saluted, and prayer is offered. In a ti migration the procedure is more elaborate: the milking of the buffaloes is accompanied by prayers for the older and the younger members of the herd, and every act of the palol is regulated by law. The same thing is true of the animal sacrifices: the slaughter of the victim and the disposal of the various parts are accomplished in accordance with definite rules that are handed down orally from one generation to another. The Todas are a non-Aryan people, hardly to be called half-civilized: if the buffalo-ritual is native with them, the natural inference will be that the custom is ancient. Rivers adduces a considerable number of similarities between Toda institutions and those of the Malabar coast (such as polyandry and other marriage institutions), and this agreement, as far as it goes, may point to a common culture throughout a part of Southern India;1910 the early history of these tribes is, however, obscure. It is possible that the Todas have borrowed some customs from the Hindus. They have certainly adopted some Hindu gods, and Rivers suspects Hindu influence in their recognition of omens and lucky and unlucky days, in certain of their magical procedures, and in their use of pigments and ashes in some sacred ceremonies. There seems, however, to be no proof that the buffalo-ritual has been borrowed from the Hindus. On this question, which is of importance as bearing on the early history of ritual, it is to be hoped that further information will be got.
1057. Various nonsacrificial rituals (dances and so forth) are referred to above.1911 Magical processes should be here included so far as they involve a recognition of superhuman agents; they are then to be regarded as religious. Definite magical ritual is found in many of the lower tribes, and there are ceremonies in which a shaman is the conductor—these are governed by fixed customs as to dress, posture, acts, and words.1912 They differ from magical processes in that they are assemblies of the people, religious because there is communication with spirits. In the Californian tribes and others they become occasions of merrymaking; a peculiar feature of these gatherings among the Maidu and other tribes is the presence of a clown who mimics the acts and words of the dancers and performs knavish tricks; the origin of this feature of the dances is not clear. In all such ceremonies the tendency to regulate the details of religious performances is apparent, and such regulation is found in so many parts of the world that it may be regarded with probability as universal.
1058. For the ancient national religions we have the fullest details in the case of the Hindus and the Hebrews. The Hindu sacrificial ritual is described by MM. Hubert and Mauss;1913 the Hebrew procedure is given in the later sections of the Pentateuch.1914 The Egyptian ritual also appears to have been elaborate, including much music.1915 These show methods similar to those described above, and probably the same general modes of procedure were followed in Babylonia and Persia, though of the ritual in these countries only slight notices have been handed down.1916 The great Chinese Imperial sacrifices are described by H. Blodget.1917
1059. These national systems exhibit a gradual quiet enlargement of the ritual resulting from increasing specialization in the conception of sin and forgiveness and in the functions of religious officials. A different sort of development appears in the rites of the cults that sprang up on the ruins of the old faiths—Greek Mysteries, Mithraism, Isisism, Christianity. These were all redemptive religions, highly individualistic and intense, efforts to infuse into old forms the ideas concerning moral purity, union with the deity, immortality, and future salvation that had arisen in the Græco-Roman world by the natural growth of thought and the intermingling of the various existing schemes of religious life. They are all marked by a tendency toward elaborate organization, a sharp differentiation from the national cults, and purificatory and other ceremonies of initiation. The differentiation was most definite in Christianity, the ritual was most highly developed in the other movements. In the Greek public Mysteries1918 and in those of Mithra1919 there were (besides ablutions) the old communal meals, processions, striking dramatic performances, and brilliant effects of light and music, and in Mithraism trials of courage for the neophyte after the manner of the old savage initiations. The ceremonies in the Isis cult were less sensational, more quiet and dignified.1920 In all these cults there was symbolism, and the moral teaching was of a lofty character.