66. The occupations of the dead in these regions are held usually to be the same as those of the living; no other view is possible in early stages of social life. Generally all the apparatus of earthly life (food, utensils, weapons) is placed on the grave or with the body, and wives and slaves are slain to be the companions of the deceased.
67. 4. A more decided separation between the living and the dead is made in the conception of the underground world as the abode of the latter. It was, however, only at a late period that this conception was carried far enough to make the separation effective. Among the Central Australians there were folk-stories of early men who traveled under the ground, but this is represented as merely an extraordinary way of getting from one place to another on the surface of the earth. Some North American tribes tell of an underground world inhabited by the ants and by beings similar to man, but those who live up on the earth are seen there only by accident, as when some hero dares the descent.135 The conception of a real subterranean or submarine hades is found, however, among many savage and barbarous peoples, as the Samoans, the inhabitants of New Guinea, the Zulus, the Navahos, the Eskimo, the Kafirs of the Hindu Kush, and others.136
68. These pictures of the future world are crude, and usually stand side by side with others; they are experiments in eschatology. But the constructive imagination moved more and more toward an organized underground hades as the sole abode of the dead—the place to which all the dead go. Such a hades is found among the civilized peoples of antiquity, Egyptians, Semites, Hindus, Greeks, and Romans, and, in more recent times, among the Teutons (Scandinavians). The suggestion for this position may have come from the grave (though it does not appear that the grave was regarded as the permanent abode of the dead), and from caverns that seemed to lead down into the bowels of the earth. The descent of souls into a subterranean world offered no difficulties to early imagination: ghosts, like the Australian ancestors, could move freely where living men could not go; where there was no cavern like that by which Æneas passed below,137 they could pass through the ground.
69. A lower region offered a wide land for the departed, with the possibility of organization of its denizens. Ghosts gradually lost their importance as a factor in everyday life; sights and sounds that had been referred to wandering souls came to be explained by natural laws. Wider geographical knowledge made it difficult to assign the ghosts a mundane home, and led to their relegation to the sub-mundane region. Further, the establishment of great nations familiarized men with the idea that every large community should have its own domain. The gods were gradually massed, first in the sky, the ocean, and hades, and then in heaven. For the dead the first organization (if that term may be allowed) was in hades; the separation into heaven and hell came later. A specific divine head of the Underworld is found in Egypt, Babylonia and Assyria, India, Greece, Rome, but not in Israel. Such a definite system of government could exist only when something approaching a pantheon had been established; the Babylonians, for example, whose pantheon was vague, had also a vague god of hades.
70. Theories of the occupations of the dead varied in the early civilized stage, before the rise of the idea of ethical retribution in the other life. In the absence of earthly relations, imagination could conceive of nothing for them to do, and hence an ardent desire for the continuance of earthly life.138 For the Hebrews the Underworld was without pursuits; the shades sat motionless, in the dress and according to the rank of the upper world, without emotions or aims (except a sparkle of malicious satisfaction when some great man came down from earth), and without religious worship.139 A similar view was held by the Greeks and the Romans. Certain Egyptian documents speak of mundane occupations for the dead, but these documents belong to a comparatively late stage of culture, and what the earlier view was we do not know.140 Of Hindu ideas, also, on this point we have only relatively late notices.
71. 5. A radical transformation in the conception of the state of the dead was effected by the introduction of the idea of moral retribution into the life of the Underworld.141 The basis of the movement was the natural conception of life as determined by ethical considerations, but the process of transformation has extended over thousands of years and has hardly yet reached its completion. In the lowest eschatological systems known to us there is no marked difference in the status of departed souls; so among the Central Australians, the tribes of New Guinea and the Torres Straits islands, the Zulus, the Malagasy, the West African peoples, and some North American tribes.142
72. The earliest grounds of distinction are ritualistic and social; these occur among the higher savages and survive in some civilized peoples. The Fijians assign punishment in the other world to bachelors, men unaccompanied by their wives and children, cowards, and untattooed women.143 Where circumcision was a tribal mark, the uncircumcised, as having no social status, were consigned to inferior places in hades: so among the Hebrews.144 The omission of proper funeral ceremonies was held in like manner to entail deprivation of privilege in hades: the shade had an undesirable place below, as among the Babylonians and the Hebrews,145 or was unable to enter the abode of the dead, and wandered forlorn on the earth or on the border of the Underworld, as was the Greek belief.146 Exposure of the corpse to beasts and birds, making funeral ceremonies impossible, was regarded as a terrible misfortune for the dead.147
73. Such of these beliefs as relate to violations of ritual appear to spring from the view that the tribal customs are sacred, and from the consequent distinction between tribesmen and foreigners. All persons without the tribal mark were shut out from the privileges of the tribe, were outlaws in this world and the next; and those whose bodies were not properly disposed of lost the support of the tribal deities or of the subterranean Powers.148 It was also held that the body retained the form in which it went down to hades;149 hence the widespread dread of mutilation, as among the Chinese still. On the other hand the brave were rewarded.150
74. Sometimes earthly rank determines future conditions—a natural corollary to what is stated above (§72 f.). A distinction is made between nobles and common people in the Bowditch Islands.151 The members of the Fijian Areoi Society are held to enjoy special privileges in the other world.152 The belief in the Marquesas Islands is that the sky is for high gods and nobles.153 According to John Smith, in savage Virginia only nobles and priests were supposed to survive after death.154 The North American Mandans (of Dakota), according to one view, assign to the brave in the hereafter the delightful villages of the gods.155 When souls are supposed to enter into animals different animals are assigned to nobles and common men.156 Kings and nobles retain their superiority of position and are sometimes attended by their slaves and officers.157
75. The manner of death is sometimes significant. The Karens hold that persons killed by elephants, famine, or sword, do not enter the abode of the dead, but wander on the earth and take possession of the souls of men.158 In Borneo it is supposed that those who are killed in war become specters.159 The belief in the Marquesas Islands is that warriors dying in battle, women dying in childbirth, and suicides go up to the sky.160 In regard to certain modes of death opposite opinions are held in the Ladrone (Marianne) Islands and the Hervey group: in the former those who die by violence are supposed to be tortured by demons, those who die a natural death are believed to be happy; according to the view in the latter group these last are devoured by the goddess of death, and the others are happy. In the one case violent death, it would seem, is supposed to be due to the anger of the gods, and to be a sign of something bad in the man; in the other case happiness is compensation for the misfortune of a violent death, and natural death, being the fate of ordinary people, leaves one at the mercy of the mistress of the other world.
76. The advance to the conception of moral retribution hereafter could take place only in communities in which earthly life was organized on a moral basis. The beginning of the movement is seen in certain savage tribes. Savages have their codes, which generally recognize some ethical virtues among the tribal obligations. Stealing, lying, failure in hospitality, cowardice, violation of marital rights—in general, all the acts that affect injuriously the communal life—are, as a rule, condemned by the common sense of the lowest peoples, and the moral character of the gods reflects that of their worshipers. By reason of the sense of solidarity the faults of individuals affect not only themselves but also their communities, and the gods care for communities as well as for individuals. Whenever, then, there is an inquest in the other world, these faults, it is likely, will be punished. On account of the paucity of our information, it is not possible to make a general statement on this point, but examples of future moral control occur in many savage creeds.161 In such systems the nature of the life beyond the grave is variously conceived: sometimes as cheerless and gloomy (as in Finland), sometimes as pleasant (as in Samoa, New Guinea, New Caledonia, Bowditch Islands, some North American tribes, Brazil).162
77. In tracing the growth of the conception of distinctions in the other world,163 we find first a vague opinion that those who do badly in this life are left to shift for themselves hereafter;164 that is, there is no authority controlling the lives of men below. In the majority of cases, however, distinctions are made, but these, as is remarked above, are based on various nonmoral considerations, and have small cultural value.165
78. In the published reports of savage beliefs there is not always mention of a formal examination of the character of the dead, and probably nothing of the sort was imagined by the lowest tribes. It appears, however, in such relatively advanced peoples as the Fijians166 and the Khonds.167
79. Moral retribution proper is found only in great civilized nations and not in all of them; the early Semites appear to have retained the old conception of punishment for ritual faults or failures, and for offenses against the national welfare. For the Hebrews the proof is found in the Old Testament passim; in the Babylonian and Assyrian literature, as far as published, there is one sign of departure from the scheme sketched in the Descent of Ishtar: Hammurabi (ca. 2000 B.C.) invokes the curses of the gods on any one who shall destroy the tablet of his penal code, and wishes that such a one may be deprived of pure water after death. In regard to the South Arabians, the pre-Mohammedan North Arabians, and the Aramæans, we have no information; and for the Phœnicians there is only the suggestion involved in the curse invoked on those who violate a tomb, and in the funeral ceremonies.168 But the same general religious ideas prevailed throughout the ancient Semitic area, and we may probably assume that the Hebrew conception was the universal one.
80. In Egypt, India, China, Persia, Greece, Rome, however, and among the Jews in the Greek period,169 higher ethical conceptions were carried over to the Underworld; judgment, it was held, was pronounced on the dead, and rewards and punishments dealt out to them according to their moral character. The Jews and the Persians went a step further, and conceived of a final general judgment, a final winding-up of human history, and a permanent reconstruction of the world on a basis largely moral, though tinged with local religious elements—a grandiose idea that has maintained itself up to the present time, embodying the conviction that the outcome of life depends on character, and that ethical retribution is the essence of the world.
81. This ethical constitution of the life hereafter led to the local separation of the good from the bad. Such a separation was imagined by comparatively undeveloped peoples whose ethical principle was chiefly ritualistic, as, for example, the Fijians, the American Indians, and by civilized peoples in their early stages, the Vedic Hindus170 (Yama's abode in the sky, and a pit) and the Greeks (the Homeric Elysian Fields, and Tartarus).171
82. In fact, a recognition of a place of happiness and a place of punishment in the other life accompanies sooner or later a certain stage of ethical culture in all communities. In India it appears in the late Vedic and post-Vedic periods, together with the ethical doctrine of metempsychosis, and though, as is natural in such a stage of development, various ideas are held respecting the destinies of the good and the bad, the ethical distinction between these classes of persons, with a systematic awarding of rewards and punishments, becomes firmly established: Yama becomes an ethical judge. In the Brahmanas, Manu, and the Mahabharata, we find a sort of heaven for the virtuous and a hell for the vicious. While the academic thought of Brahmanism and the altruistic systems of Jainism and Buddhism looked to the absorption of the departed into the All, the popular Hindu faith held fast to the scheme of happiness and wretchedness in the future.172 As in Dante's Divina Commedia, the heaven was somewhat colorless, the hell more distinct and picturesque; pain is acute and varied, happiness is calm and uniform.
83. The later Egyptian eschatological development was not unlike the later Hindu. The good were rewarded with delightful habitations in the West or with the Sun; the bad were tortured in a gloomy place.173
84. As regards the early Greek eschatological scheme, it is suggested by S. Reinach174 that the descriptions of punishments in Tartarus (as in the cases of Tantalus and others) arose from misunderstood representations of the condition of the dead in the other world, they being represented either as engaged in the occupations of this life, or as they were at the moment of death. The great punishments, in fact, are assigned only to heroic mythical offenders, but there seems to be no reason why the idea of retribution should not be supposed to enter into such descriptions. Separation of the good from the bad on ethical grounds appears in Greece in the time of Plato. In various passages he describes the savage places (Tartarus and others) to which criminals go after death, and the happy abodes of the virtuous.175 These abodes were not with the gods; the occasional translations to heaven (Heracles, Ganymede) are exceptional honors paid to heroes and favorites.
85. The Jewish conception of a punitive future belongs to the Greek period of Jewish history, and was probably developed on Hebrew lines under Greek and Egyptian influence. A combination of the Old Testament view of future retribution on earth with the conception of torture in the other world is given in Enoch.176 In some circles Sheol was placed in the West and divided into two regions, one of happiness, the other of punishment,177 or the good dwell with the angels in heaven, the bad in hell.178 By others the abodes of the dead were placed in the heavenly regions: of the seven heavens, the second was assigned to the bad and the third to the good.179 With all the variation of locality, the separation of the bad from the good is made permanent, and this distinction is maintained in the New Testament, which throughout assigns the wicked to hell (Gehenna or Tartarus), while the righteous dwell sometimes on the renovated earth, sometimes in the heavenly regions.180
86. The Jewish and Christian books mentioned above content themselves with the general statement that the punishment of the wicked will be torture by fire and cold. Succeeding Christian books elaborated the picture of torture with great ingenuity; the Apocalypse of Peter, following and expanding the description of Plato and Enoch, has an elaborate barbarous apparatus of punishment, and this scheme, continued through a series of works,181 has its culmination in Dante's Inferno, where, however, the ethical element is pronounced, though colored by the poet's likes and dislikes.
87. Purgatory. The wicked dead were not always left hopeless in their place of punishment. Kindly human feeling (shown in early stages by pious care for the well-being of the dead) and the analogy of earthly procedures, civil and religious, led to the view that, after the expiation of faults by suffering, the evildoer might be freed from his prison and gain a place of happiness. Pardon and purification were effected on earth by punishments (scourging, imprisonment, etc.) or by ritual processes (ablution, fastings, etc.)—why not in the other life? In some systems of transmigration the man, forced after death to assume a lower form, may rise by good conduct to a higher form. In Plato's imaginative construction of the Underworld182 those who have lived neither well nor ill are purified in the Acherusian lake and then receive rewards according to their deserts; and those who have committed great but not unpardonable crimes may come to the lake (after having suffered the pains of Tartarus) and be freed from trouble if they obtain pardon from those they have wronged. But as here, so hereafter, certain offenses were regarded as unpardonable. The purgatorial conception passed into patristic and Roman and Eastern Christianity and Talmudic and Medieval Judaism.183
88. Resurrection. The doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, which has been fully developed only by the Persians and the Jews (and from them taken by Christianity and Islam), appears to have grown from simple beginnings. It is the expression of the conviction that the perfect man is made up of soul and body, and its full form is found only in periods of high ethical culture. But in very early times the belief in the intimate connection between body and soul appears in the care taken among certain peoples to preserve the bones or the whole body of the deceased as a possible future abode for the soul;184 and, on the other hand, as the soul, it was held, might return to the body and be dangerous to the living, means were sometimes employed to frighten it off. It seems to have been believed in some cases that the destruction of the body involved the destruction of the soul (New Zealand). An actual entrance of a departed soul into a human body is involved in some early forms of the doctrine of reincarnation,185 but this is not the restoration of the dead man's own body. It was held in Egypt (and not improbably elsewhere) that the soul after death might desire to take possession of its own body, and provision was made for such an emergency; but this belief seems not to have had serious results for religious life. A temporary reunion of soul and body appears in the figure of the vampire, which, however, is a part of a popular belief and religiously not important. But these passing beliefs indicate a general tendency, and may have paved the way for the more definite conception of bodily restoration.
89. The more developed Hindu doctrine (Brahmanic, Jainistic, Buddhistic) recognized a great variety of possible forms of reincarnation (human and nonhuman), and made a step forward by including the continuity or reëstablishment of moral life and responsibility (the doctrine of karma).186 It, however, never reached the form of a universal or partial resurrection.
90. The birthplace of this latter doctrine appears to have been the region in which Mazdaism arose, the country south of the Caspian Sea. Windischmann infers from Herodotus, iii, 62, that it appears as a Mazdean belief as early as the sixth century B.C.187 This is doubtful, but it is reported as a current belief by Theopompus.188 Its starting-point was doubtless the theory of reincarnation, which, we may suppose, the Iranian Aryans shared with their Indian brethren. Precisely what determined the Iranian movement toward this specific form of reincarnation we have no means of knowing. It may be due to the same genius for simple organization that led the Zoroastrians to discard the mass of the old gods and elevate Ahura Mazda to the chief place in the pantheon; their genius for practical social religious organization may have induced them to select human reincarnation as the most natural and the most effective morally, and to discard other forms as unworthy.189 The dead man's own body would then be the natural dwelling place of his soul; but a refined body (as in 1 Cor. xv) might be regarded as better suited to the finer life of the future. Whatever the cause, they adopted this conception, and probably through their influence it passed to, or was formulated by, the Jews, among whom it appears in the second century B.C. (in the Book of Daniel).190 In Daniel and 2 Maccabees resurrection is confined to the Jews; in Enoch it is sometimes similarly confined, sometimes apparently universal.191 In the New Testament also the same diversity of statement appears; resurrection seems to be confined to believers in some passages192 and to be universal in others.193 In the former case it is regarded as a reward of piety and as a consequence of the intimate relation between the man and God or Christ; unbelievers then remain in hades, where they are punished. But universal resurrection was probably thought of as involved in the grandiose conceptions of a final judgment and a final moral restoration.194
91. Savage lore takes account of the powers of the separated soul only; the qualities and functions of the earthly incorporate soul are accepted as a part of the existing familiar order, and are not analyzed or discussed. It was different with the departed soul, which, because of its strangeness and mystery, was credited with extraordinary powers, and this part of savage science was gradually developed, through observation and inference, into an important system. In the search for causes, the Shade, its independent existence once established, came to be regarded as the agent in many procedures of which no probable account could otherwise be given.
92. The greatest activity of the departed soul is found in the earliest known period of culture, when it was not yet relegated to hades or to the sky, but dwelt on earth, either near its former habitation or in a distant region from which it might return. Its powers of movement and action are then held to be all that imagination can suggest. Such souls move through the air or under the ground, enter houses through obstacles impenetrable to the earthly man, pass into the human body, assume such shapes as pleases them. Divested of gross earthly bodies, they are regarded as raised above all ordinary limitations of humanity. Of these conceptions, that of the ghost's superhuman power of movement remains in the popular faith to the present day.
93. The practical question for the early man is the determination of the relation of departed souls to earthly life. Among savage tribes their attitude is sometimes friendly, sometimes unfriendly, more often the latter.195 To fear the unknown is a human instinct. Shades are looked on as aliens, and aliens are generally enemies. In particular, ghosts are conceived of as sometimes wandering about in search of food or warmth, or as cherishing enmity toward persons who had wronged them in their earthly life. They are supposed to be capable of inflicting disease or pain, and precautions are taken against them. Cases are reported of persons who killed themselves in order that, as ghosts, they might wreak vengeance on enemies.196 On the other hand, to the members of its own family the departed soul is sometimes held to be friendly, or not unfriendly, but among savages it is not thought of as a potent and valuable friend.
94. In the more advanced cults the functions of the departed souls become larger and more important. They are regarded as having the power of foretelling the future, and are consulted.197 They become guardian spirits, and a cult of souls arises.198 In some higher forms of religion (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) they are regarded as mediators between man and the deity, or as advocates for man in the heavenly court.
95. Prayer for the dead. Before the ethical stage of religion the moral condition and needs of the dead did not come into consideration; their physical wants were met by performance of funeral rites and by supplying them with food and other necessities of life,199 and they later came to be looked on as helpers rather than as needing help; but when this old view passed away, and the conceptions of judgment and ethical retribution after death were reached, the moral status of the dead became a source of anxiety to the living. It was held that the divine judge might be reached—by intercession or by petitions, or by the performance of certain ceremonies—and his attitude toward the dead modified.
96. A trace of such care for the deceased may be found in the Brahmanic ceremonies intended to secure complete immortality to fathers.200 In Egypt, in the later times, there was an arrangement for securing for the deceased immunity from punishment for moral offenses: a sacred beetle of stone, inscribed with a charm beginning "O my heart, rise not up against me as a witness," laid on the breast of the mummy, silences the heart in the presence of Osiris, and the man, even though guilty, goes free. Forms of charms were prepared by the priests, and the name of any one who could pay was inserted in blanks left for this purpose.201 This sort of corrupting procedure was reproduced in some periods of Christianity. In the early Church a custom existed of receiving baptism on behalf of such as died unbaptized;202 here, apparently, a magical efficacy was ascribed to the act. The first mention of prayer for the dead occurs in a history of the Maccabean wars, where a sin-offering, accompanied by prayer, effects reconciliation for certain soldiers who died in a state of sin (idol symbols were found on their persons).203 Prayer for the dead has been largely developed in Christianity and Islam.204
97. As early science identified life with the soul, it logically attributed a soul to everything that was regarded as living. This category seems to have embraced all the objects of the world—human beings, beasts, plants, weapons, rocks, waters, heavenly bodies. Savages rarely formulate their ideas on such a subject, but the belief in the future existence of nonhuman as well as human things is fairly established by the widespread practice of slaying animals at the tomb and burying with the dead the objects they are supposed to need in the other world. This custom exists among many tribes at the present day, and the contents of ancient tombs prove its existence in former times. The dead are provided with clothing, implements of labor, weapons, ornaments, food, and as these objects remain in their mundane form by or in the grave, it is held that their souls pass with the souls of their possessors into the world beyond. Further, the belief in transformation from human to nonhuman forms and vice versa involves the supposition of life in all such things. That the heavenly bodies, similarly, are supposed to be animated by souls appears from the fact that they are regarded as manlike in form, thought, and manner of life: the sun is frequently represented as a venerable man who traverses the sky—the moon being his wife, and the stars their children; and sun and moon sometimes figure as totems. This general conception has been expanded and modified in a great variety of ways among different peoples, but the belief in the anthropomorphic nature of the astral bodies has been an element of all religions except the highest.
98. The apparent incongruities in the savage theory—that all things are endowed with life—need occasion us no difficulty. Complete consistency and tenability in such theories is not to be expected. Early men, like the lower animals, were doubtless capable of distinguishing between things living and things dead: a dog quickly discovers whether a moving object is alive. Man and beasts have in such questions canons of criticism derived from long experience.205
99. But man differs from the beast in that he feels the necessity of accounting for life by the hypothesis of a soul, and as he seems to himself to find evidence of life in plants and minerals (movement, growth, decay), he is justified in attributing souls to all things. He is interested, however, only in movements that affect his welfare. Whatever his general theory about rocks, a particular rock, as long as it does not affect his life, is for him an inert and worthless mass, practically dead; but if he discovers that it has power to harm him, it becomes instinct with life, and is treated as a rational being. Man has shown himself practical in all stages of religion; he is always the center of his world, and treats objects and theories with sole regard to his own well-being.
100. The world of the savage was thus peopled with souls, and these came to have an independent existence. That this was the case with human souls is pointed out above,206 and by analogy the separateness was extended to all souls. Thus there arose tree-spirits, river-spirits, and other similar extrahuman beings. It is convenient to employ the term 'spirit' as the designation of the soul in a nonhuman object, isolated and independent, and regarded as a Power to be treated with respect. The term is sometimes used of a disembodied human soul, and sometimes of a deity resident in an object of nature. It is better to distinguish, as far as possible, between these different senses of the word. The functions of a spirit are sometimes practically identical with those of a god. The difference between these two classes of extrahuman agents is one of general culture; it is especially determined in any community by the extent of the organization of such agents that has been effected by the community. The cult of spirits is considered below in connection with the description of divine beings.207
101. The earliest known forms of social life are characterized by the performance of public ceremonies, which are almost always religious. Religion in some form enters into all the details of early life—there is no event that is not supposed to be caused or affected by a supernatural Power or influence. A vaguely conceived force (mana), an attribute of life, is believed to reside in all things, and under certain circumstances has to be reckoned with. Mysterious potencies in the shape of souls, spirits, gods, or mana are held to preside over and control all affairs—birth, sickness, death, hate and love, hunting and war, sowing and reaping. There is no dogma except belief in this extrahuman influence—no conception of moral effort as based on and sanctioned by a definite moral ideal, no struggle of the sort that we call spiritual. Religion consists of a body of practices whose authority rests on precedent; as it is supposed they have existed from time immemorial, they are held to be necessary to secure the well-being of the tribe (a sufficient supply of food, or victory over enemies); to the question why such and such things are done, the common reply of the savage is that without them the thing desired could not be got.
102. In the earliest stages known to us these procedures are already elaborate and distinct; they are generally conducted by the tribal leaders (old men, chiefs, magicians), by whom they are handed down from generation to generation.208 Their precise origin is lost in the depths of antiquity. Doubtless they arose from social needs, and their precise forms were suggested by crude observation and reasoning. Reflection on processes of nature, guided sometimes by fortunate or unfortunate accidents, may have led to the establishment of methods of procedure for gaining social and individual ends; and, as at this formative period the whole life of the community was permeated by religious conceptions, the procedures either were originally religious or speedily took on a religious coloring.
103. Two characteristics belong to early ceremonies: they are communal, and they are generally sacred mysteries. Whatever be the origin of the tribal and clan institutions of society, these are practically universal in the world as it is now known. Even in the few cases where men live in the comparative isolation of individual family groups (as the Eskimo, Fuegians, and others are said to do209), there is a communal feeling that is shown in the identity of customs and ideas among the isolated groups. In early man there is little individuality of thought or of religious experience,210 and there is no observable difference between public and private religious worship. Ceremonies, like language, are the product of social thought, and are themselves essentially social. When a man performs an individual religious act (as when he recognizes an omen in an animal or bird, or chooses a guardian animal or spirit, or wards off a sickness or a noxious influence), he is aware that his act is in accordance with general usage, that it has the approval of the community, and that its potency rests on the authority of the community. It is true that such communal character belongs, in some degree, to all religious life—no person's religion is wholly independent of the thought of his community; but in the lower strata the acceptance of the common customs is unreflective and complete. When definite individualism sets in, ceremonies begin to lose their old significance, though they may be retained as mere forms or with a new interpretation.
104. That the ceremonial observances are usually sacred is obvious from all the descriptions we have of them. Their power is not always attributed to the action of external personal, supernatural agencies (though such agencies may have been assumed originally); in many cases, it is held to reside in themselves.211 They are sacred in the sense that they are mysterious, acting in a way that is beyond human comprehension and with a power that is beyond human control.212 They are efficacious only when performed by persons designated or recognized by the community. Here there is undoubtedly a dim sense of law and unity in the world, based on an interpretation of experiences. This is a mode of thought that runs through the whole history of religion—only, in the earliest stages of human life, it is superficial and narrow. The earlier ceremonial customs contain the germs and the essential features of the later more refined procedures.
105. Without attempting to give an exhaustive list, the principal early ceremonies may be divided into classes as follows:
106. The dances that are so common among savage tribes are in many instances now (and doubtless this has always been the case) simply the expression of animal joyousness.213 They are like the caperings of young animals—only, the human feeling of rhythm asserts itself, the movements are often measured and graceful. There is naturally an accompaniment of noise—shouting and beating on pieces of wood, bone, or metal, with songs or chants, the beginnings of vocal and instrumental music.
Words and melodies are simple and rude; they are the productions of individual singers, often, of course, made from a stock of material common to all members of the clan or the tribe. In Australia songs are thought to be obtained by bards during sleep from the souls of the dead (sometimes from Bunjil), or the bard is possessed by the soul of a beast; chants are employed in magical ceremonies, and there are lullabies and other children's songs.214 The Muscogee "Song of the Sabbea" is very sacred.215 In West Africa minstrels recite song-stories, every story being attached to an object (bone, feather, etc.).216 Songs are chanted at festivals in Guiana (and at night men tell endless stories).217
107. The movements of the dance are sometimes in imitation of those of animals,218 sometimes spontaneous, and sometimes from our point of view indecent. The indecency and obscenity originated and has continued in a period when no moral element entered into such performances—they simply follow animal instincts and impulses, are controlled by them, and appear usually not to affect the customs relating to marriage and chastity (so in the Areoi festivities of Tahiti, and among the Central Australians219).
108. In accordance with the law by which religion appropriates social customs, the dance is devoted to religious purposes and acquires a sacred character.220 It is a common ceremony as a preparation for war: the warriors of the tribe jump about with violent gesticulations and shouts, brandishing weapons and mimicking the acts of attacking and slaying enemies.221 Here, doubtless, the object is partly to excite the men to fury and thus prepare them for combat, but there is also the conviction that the ceremony itself has a sacred potency.222 A similar occult power is attached to dancing in Timorlaut, where, when a ship is at sea, the girls sing and dance on the beach daily to bring the men back.223 There are dances in commemoration of the dead224—apparently a combination of affection and homage, with the general purpose of conciliating the departed and procuring their aid; the belief being, apparently, that the dead see these demonstrations and are pleased with them. A Ghost Dance formerly performed in California had for its object bringing back the dead.225
109. At a later time such ceremonies were connected with the worship of gods: sometimes they were of the nature of offerings of homage to the supernatural Powers, as in the Young Dog Dance;226 sometimes they took on a symbolic and representative or dramatic character. Among the Redmen the dramatic dances are elaborate, often representing the histories of divine persons, these latter frequently appearing in the form of animals.227 The accompanying songs or chants relate stories that are intended to explain, wholly or in part, the details of the rite.228
110. Thus combined with other ceremonies, dances become important means of religious culture. In Greece dances were connected with many cults, among others with the Dionysiac ceremonies, out of which grew the Greek drama. Among the Hebrews the ancient ceremonial dance appears as late as the time of David,229 though it was then, perhaps, falling into desuetude, since his wife, Michal, is disgusted at his procedures. The violent movement of the dance excites not only warlike rage but also religious ecstasy, and has been used abundantly for this purpose by magicians, prophets, and mystics; the performer is regarded as a vehicle of divine revelation, all abnormal excitement being ascribed to possession by a spirit.230
111. With dances may be classed processions, in which usually a god is invoked or praised. In Ashantiland, in time of war, when the men are with the army, processions of women, wives of the warriors, march through the streets, invoking the gods on behalf of the absent men.231 Often the performers bear a sacred object, as a stone (sometimes inclosed in a box232), a boat, or an image; in early times such objects not only represent the gods but actually embody them, or are themselves superhuman Powers.
112. A peculiar form of procession is that in which the worshipers move round a sacred object, perhaps the adoption of a natural form of play. The original design in such movements may have been simply to show respect to the object in question and secure its favor, the circular movement being a natural way of keeping in touch with it. In certain cases the circumambulation is connected with the movement of the sun in the sky—probably a later interpretation of the ceremony. Examples are found in Hindu, Greek, and Roman practices, and in some modern Christian usages (in the Greek and Roman churches). As a magical efficiency was held to attach to the ceremony, its effect was sometimes held to depend on the direction of the movement; if it was to the right—passing from east through south to west (the worshiper facing the east)—it was good, but bad if in the opposite direction. Though traces of solemn circumambulation are found in some lower tribes, it has been, and is, practiced chiefly in the higher cults.233
113. Sacred dances and processions are natural human expressions of emotions that have been adopted by religious sentiment, and are often supposed to have potency in themselves. They tend to disappear with the progress of general refinement and of ethical conceptions of life and of deity. They continue, however, far into the civilized period, in which we find dramatic representations (as the Eleusinian rites and the medieval Mystery Plays), processions of priests bearing or conducting sacred objects, processions of devotees with music, and pilgrimages to shrines. Such ceremonies, while they are regarded by educated persons simply as expressions of reverence and accompaniments of prayer, are still believed by many to have an innate or magic potency, insuring prosperity to the participants.
114. Love of ornament is found among all savage peoples; the value they attach to beads and all colored things is well known to travelers and traders. It has been plausibly argued that the origin of clothing is to be found in the desire of each sex to make itself beautiful in the eyes of the other.234 However that may be, the employment of leaves for headdresses and waistbands is general among lower tribes.235
115. Equally popular is the adornment of the body by colored marks made with red ocher, pipe-clay, turmeric, charcoal, and such like things as are furnished by nature. Elaborate designs, of straight and curved lines, are traced on the skin, and these are gradually differentiated and become marks of rank and function. The war paint of the American Indians is governed by fixed rules, the object being to make the warrior terrible to enemies.236 Rings, quills, sticks, and stones, worn in holes made in ears, nose, lips, and cheeks, are all originally decorative; and so also prickings and gashes in the body, often in regular outlines.237
116. These latter, made according to tribal custom and law, become tribal marks (tattoo), and are then essential to one's standing in the community. This custom is general in Polynesia and in parts of North America.238 The use of oil and other unguents early established itself as a custom of savage society. They were probably useful in a variety of ways. For the hair they made up for the absence of comb and brush; in combat they enabled the warrior to slip from the grasp of his enemy; they defended the naked body from rain, and from soiling and injury produced by contact with the earth and hard bodies; and in sickness they were regarded as curative.239 Oil was abundantly used as an article of food.
117. All these materials of decoration are transferred to the service of religion. The headdress becomes a mask to represent an animal in a sacred ceremony,240 or a priestly tiara. In such ceremonies (especially in those of initiation) the painting of the body plays an important part, the traceries varying according to the thing represented and the symbolism of the action.241 It is often difficult to see the precise significance of the paintings, but in certain cases they are totemic marks, and represent whatever is sacred in totemic belief.242
118. It is possible to construe the development in two ways: the paintings may be regarded as originally totemic or other clan marks, and as afterwards employed as ornaments, or the order of movement may be taken to be in the reverse direction; but when we consider the primitive character of decoration, the second suggestion seems the more probable. The same remark applies to the practice of pricking, scarring, and tattooing.243 For the body-markings blood is sometimes employed, perhaps in part on account of its decorative color, but also probably with a religious significance.244
119. Decoration has been and is largely employed in structures and dress connected with religious life. Posts and beams of houses, totem posts and masts of vessels are covered with figures in which artistic feeling is discernible;245 and in late periods all the resources of art are devoted to the form and adornments of temples, altars, and images. The designs are taken from familiar objects, mostly from plants and animals. The ultimate motive is love of ornament, which, while it finds abundant expression in ordinary social life, has its greatest development in religion—a natural result of the fact that in a large part of human history religion has been the chief organizing factor of society.
120. The tendency has been to make the dress of ministers of religion ornate.246 This tendency has arisen partly from love of ornament, and partly, doubtless, it is the transference of court customs to religious ceremonial.247
121. Symbolism has entered largely into religious decoration. In very early times figures of animals, plants, and human beings were used as records of current events, and were sometimes supposed to have magical power, the picture being identified with the thing represented. In a more advanced stage of culture the transition was easy to the conception of the figures as representing ideas, but the older conception is often found alongside of the later—a symbolical signification is attached to pictures of historical things. These then have a spiritual meaning for higher minds, while for the masses they may be of the nature of fetishes.248 In both cases they may serve a good purpose in worship by fixing the mind on sacred things.
122. The first necessity of savages is a sufficient supply of food, and this, they hold, is to be procured either by the application of what they conceive to be natural laws, or by appeal to superhuman Powers. Among economic ceremonies, therefore, we may distinguish those which may be loosely described as natural, those in which a supernatural element enters, and those in which the two orders of procedure appear to be combined.
123. Savages are generally skillful hunters. They know how to track game, to prepare nets and pits, and to make destructive weapons. The African pygmies have poisoned arrows, with which they are able to kill the largest animals.249 The people of British New Guinea organize hunts on a large scale.250 In Australia, Polynesia, and America there is no tribe that is not able to secure food by the use of natural means.
124. But such means are often supplemented by ceremonies that involve some sort of supernatural influence. These ceremonies appear to assume a social relation between man and beasts and plants; in some cases there is assumed a recognition by animals of the necessities of the case and a spirit of friendly coöperation; in other cases a magical power is called into play.
125. Desire to propitiate the hunted animal, in order not only to avert the anger of its kin but also to obtain its aid, appears in the numerous cases in which excuses are made for the killing, and the animal is implored to make a friendly report of the man to its friends and to return in order that it may be killed.251 Formal prayer is sometimes made to the animal in important tribal ceremonies, as in British Columbia a boy is ordered by the chief to pray to the first salmon sighted for a good catch;252 here the good will of the salmon tribe and the quasi-human intelligence of the fish are assumed.
126. Precautions are taken to guard against antagonistic extrahuman influences; there are taboos and rules of purification in preparation for hunting. In New Guinea hunters are required to abstain from certain sorts of food and to perform purificatory ceremonies.253 Among the Nandi some men are forbidden to hunt, make traps, or dig pits for game;254 these men, it would seem, are supposed to be, for ceremonial reasons, antipathetic to the animals to be hunted, as, on the other hand, there are men who attract game.255 The taboos of food and other things imposed are doubtless intended to guard against malefic spirits or mana. The particular rules are determined by local conditions.
127. Certain rules about eating the food secured by hunting appear to have come from the desire to act in an orderly manner and with due respect to the animal. When it is prescribed that a bone shall not be broken this may be for fear of giving offense to the animal kin and thus insuring failure in further hunting.256 The provision that each man shall gather of a fruit or vegetable only so much as will suffice for a single day may have had an economic ground, the desire to avoid waste; or it may have been made also partly in the interest of orderliness, and so have had originally no reference to any superhuman being.257 Naturally it was taken up into religion and given a religious sanction.
128. In Central Australia, where every clan is charged with the duty of procuring a particular food (its totem) for the tribe, the custom is that when the product of hunting or gathering is brought in to be thrown into the tribal store, the principal men of the hunting group begin by eating a little of the food, after which the food is licit for the rest of the tribe but illicit for the hunters.258 This custom has been held to have a sacramental significance; it has been suggested that the food is sanctified by the touch of the elders and thus made lawful for the tribe, or that, as naturally sacred, it secures, when eaten, union between the eater and a superhuman Power. But there is no hint of such a conception in the Australian ceremony or elsewhere. The procedure is obligatory and solemn—to omit it would be, in the feeling of the people, to imperil the life of the tribe; but all such usages are sanctified by time. We should rather seek for the origin of the custom in some simple early idea. It is not unusual, in parts of Australia and in other lands, that a man, though he may not eat his totem, may kill it for others; the eating in this case is the important thing—there is magical power in it—and the economic obligation to provide food overbears the sense of reverence for the totem. The only obscure point in the ceremony under consideration is the obligation on the killer or gatherer to taste the food before he gives it to his fellows. This may be a survival of the rule, known to exist among some tribes, that in a hunting party he who kills an animal has the first right to it. The Australian hunter cannot eat his totem, but he may hold to his traditional right; the result will be the custom as it now exists. With our present knowledge no quite satisfactory explanation of the origin of this particular rule can be given.
129. The employment of magical means for procuring food appears in the performance of ceremonial dances, in the use of charms, the imitation of animals, and other procedures. In California the supply of acorns and animals is supposed to be increased by dances.259 The New Guinea Koita give their hunting dogs decoctions of sago and other food into which are put pieces of odoriferous bark;260 these charms are said to have been got from the Papuans, the lowest race of the region. A Pawnee folk-story (which doubtless reflects a current idea) tells how a boy by his songs (that is, magic songs or charms) brought the buffalo within reach of his people.261 Among the Melanesians of New Guinea the hunting expert plays a great rôle—his presence is necessary for the success of an expedition.262 He fixes the date of the hunt, prepares himself by a series of abstinences,263 and at the appointed time assembles the men, recites spells addressed to ancestors, and passing along the lines of the hunters imitates the movements of the animal sought.264
130. Very elaborate ceremonies including imitations of animals (imitative or sympathetic magic) are found in Central Australia.265 When any animal is to be hunted the old men of the appropriate totemic group, dressed to imitate the totem and accompanied by some of the young men, repair to a spot regarded as sacred, and, along with other ceremonies, trace on the sacred rock, with blood drawn from the young men, a picture of the animal, or figures representing its growth—in general, something that sets forth its personality. These ceremonies, very numerous and extending over a long space of time, constitute the main business of the elders, as, in fact, the procuring of food is the chief concern of the people.
131. There is no perceptible religious element in these Australian ceremonies—no utterance of charms or prayers, no mention of any supernatural being. The acts appear to be simply procedures of imitative magic, customs sanctified by long usage. They relate to the life of the tribe; this life, like all life, is mysterious and therefore sacred.266 The belief in the potency of the ceremonies appears to come from belief in the vital identity of the two groups, human and nonhuman—the latter is supposed to respond, in some occult way, to the expression of kinship involved in the official proceedings.
132. The employment of blood (considered as the locus of life) may indicate more definitely a sense of the unity of life-force; the human blood is, perhaps, supposed to stimulate life in the kindred animal group, and so to produce a large supply of individuals. In the published accounts there is no hint that the blood is supposed to have atoning power. There is no sense of wrongdoing or unworthiness on the part of the performers, or of any relation to a deity. The theology of Central Australia is still obscure—the general religious situation in that region has much that is enigmatical.