Custom and Myth 13

Custom and Myth 13

Again, lame gods occur in Greek, Australian, and Brazilian creeds, and

the very coincidence of Tsui Goab's lameness makes us sceptical about his

claims to be a real dead man. On the other hand, when Hahn tells us that

epical myths are now sung in the dances in honour of warriors lately

slain (p. 103), and that similar dances and songs were performed in the

past to honour Tsui Goab, this looks more as if Tsui Goab had been an

actual person. Against this we must set (p. 105) the belief that Tsui

Goab made the first man and woman, and was the Prometheus of the

Hottentots.

 

* * * * *

 

So far Dr. Hahn has given us facts which entirely fit in with our theory

that an ancestor-worshipping people, believing in metamorphosis and

sorcery, adores a god who is supposed to be a deceased ancestral sorcerer

with the power of magic and metamorphosis. But now Dr. Hahn offers his

own explanation. According to the philological method, he will 'study

the names of the persons, until we arrive at the naked root and original

meanings of the words.' Starting then with Tsui Goab, whom all evidence

declares to be a dead lame conjurer and warrior, Dr. Hahn avers that

'Tsui Goab, originally Tsuni Goam, was the name by which the Red Men

called the Infinite.' As the Frenchman said of the derivation of jour

from _dies_, we may hint that the Infinite thus transformed into a lame

Hottentot 'bush-doctor' is diablement change en route. To a dead lame

sorcerer from the Infinite is a fall indeed. The process of the decline

is thus described. Tsui Goab is composed of two roots, tsu and goa. Goa

means 'to go on,' 'to come on.' In Khoi Khoi goa-b means 'the coming on

one,' the dawn, and goa-b also means 'the knee.' Dr. Hahn next writes

(making a logical leap of extraordinary width), 'it is now obvious that,

//goab in Tsui Goab cannot be translated with knee,'--why not?--'but we

have to adopt the other metaphorical meaning, the _approaching_ day, i.e.

the dawn.' Where is the necessity? In ordinary philology, we should

here demand a number of attested examples of goab, in the sense of dawn,

but in Khoi Khoi we cannot expect such evidence, as there are probably no

texts. Next, after arbitrarily deciding that all Khoi Khois

misunderstand their own tongue (for that is what the rendering here of

goab by 'dawn' comes to), Dr. Hahn examines tsu, in Tsui. Tsu means

'sore,' 'wounded,' 'painful,' as in 'wounded knee'--Tsui Goab. This does

not help Dr Hahn, for 'wounded dawn' means nothing. But he reflects that

a wound is red, tsu means wounded: therefore tsu means red, therefore

Tsui Goab is the Red Dawn. Q.E.D.

 

This kind of reasoning is obviously fallacious. Dr. Hahn's point could

only be made by bringing forward examples in which tsu is employed to

mean red in Khoi Khoi. Of this use of the word tsu he does not give one

single instance, though on this point his argument depends. His

etymology is not strengthened by the fact that Tsui Goab has once been

said to live in the red sky. A red house is not necessarily tenanted by

a red man. Still less is the theory supported by the hymn which says

Tsui Goab paints himself with red ochre. Most idols, from those of the

Samoyeds to the Greek images of Dionysus, are and have been daubed with

red. By such reasoning is Tsui Goab proved to be the Red Dawn, while his

gifts of prophecy (which he shares with all soothsayers) are accounted

for as attributes of dawn, of the Vedic Saranyu.

 

Turning from Tsui Goab to his old enemy Gaunab, we learn that his name is

derived from //gau, 'to destroy,' and, according to old Hottentot ideas,

'no one was the destroyer but the night' (p. 126). There is no apparent

reason why the destroyer should be the night, and the night alone, any

more than why 'a lame broken knee' should be 'red' (p. 126). Besides (p.

85), Gaunab is elsewhere explained, not as the night, but as the

malevolent ghost which is thought to kill people who die what we call a

'natural' death. Unburied men change into this sort of vampire, just as

Elpenor, in the Odyssey, threatens, if unburied, to become mischievous.

There is another Gaunab, the mantis insect, which is worshipped by

Hottentots and Bushmen (p. 92). It appears that the two Gaunabs are

differently pronounced. However that may be, a race which worships an

insect might well worship a dead medicine-man.

 

* * * * *

 

The conclusion, then, to be drawn from an examination of Hottentot

mythology is merely this, that the ideas of a people will be reflected in

their myths. A people which worships the dead, believes in sorcerers and

in prophets, and in metamorphosis, will have for its god (if he can be

called a god) a being who is looked on as a dead prophet and sorcerer. He

will be worshipped with such rites as dead men receive; he will be mixed

up in such battles as living men wage, and will be credited with the

skill which living sorcerers claim. All these things meet in the legend

of Tsui Goab, the so-called 'supreme being' of the Hottentots. His

connection with the dawn is not supported by convincing argument or

evidence. The relation of the dawn to the Infinite again rests on

nothing but a theory of Mr. Max Muller's. {209} His adversary, though

recognised as the night, is elsewhere admitted to have been, originally,

a common vampire. Finally, the Hottentots, a people not much removed

from savagery, have a mythology full of savage and even disgusting

elements. And this is just what we expect from Hottentots. The puzzle

is when we find myths as low as the story of the incest of Heitsi Eibib

among the Greeks. The reason for this coincidence is that, in Dr. Hahn's

words, 'the same objects and the same phenomena in nature will give rise

to the same ideas, whether social or mythical, among different races of

mankind,' especially when these races are in the same well-defined state

of savage fancy and savage credulity.

 

Dr. Hahn's book has been regarded as a kind of triumph over inquirers who

believe that ancestor-worship enters into myth, and that the purer

element in myth is the later. But where is the triumph? Even on Dr.

Hahn's own showing, ancestor-worship among the Hottentots has swamped the

adoration of the Infinite. It may be said that Dr. Hahn has at least

proved the adoration of the Infinite to be earlier than ancestor-worship.

But it has been shown that his attempt to establish a middle stage, to

demonstrate that the worshipped ancestor was really the Red Dawn, is not

logical nor convincing. Even if that middle stage were established, it

is a far cry from the worship of Dawn (supposed by the Australians to be

a woman of bad character in a cloak of red' possum-skin) to the adoration

of the Infinite. Our own argument has been successful if we have shown

that there are not only two possible schools of mythological

interpretation--the Euhemeristic, led by Mr. Spencer, and the

Philological, led by Mr. Max Muller. We have seen that it is possible to

explain the legend of Tsui Goab without either believing him to have been

a real historical person (as Mr. Spencer may perhaps believe), or his

myth to have been the result of a 'disease of language' as Mr. Muller

supposes. We have explained the legend and worship of a supposed dead

conjurer as natural to a race which believes in conjurers and worships

dead men. Whether he was merely an ideal ancestor and warrior, or

whether an actual man has been invested with what divine qualities Tsui

Goab enjoys, it is impossible to say; but, if he ever lived, he has long

been adorned with ideal qualities and virtues which he never possessed.

The conception of the powerful ancestral ghost has been heightened and

adorned with some novel attributes of power: the conception of the

Infinite has not been degraded, by forgetfulness of language, to the

estate of an ancestral ghost with a game leg.

 

* * * * *

 

If this view be correct, myth is the result of thought, far more than of

a disease of language. The comparative importance of language and

thought was settled long ago, in our sense, by no less a person than

Pragapati, the Sanskrit Master of Life.

 

'Now a dispute once took place between Mind and Speech, as to which was

the better of the two. Both Mind and Speech said, "I am excellent!" Mind

said, "Surely I am better than thou, for thou dost not speak anything

that is not understood by me; and since thou art only an imitator of what

is done by me and a follower in my wake, I am surely better than thou!"

Speech said, "Surely I am better than thou, for what thou knowest I make

known, I communicate." They went to appeal to Pragapati for his

decision. He (Pragapati) decided in favour of Mind, saying (to Speech),

"Mind is indeed better than thou, for thou art an imitator of its deeds,

and a follower in its wake; and inferior, surely, is he who imitates his

better's deeds, and follows in his wake."'

 

So saith the 'Satapatha Brahmana.' {211}

 

 

 

 

FETICHISM AND THE INFINITE.

 

 

What is the true place of Fetichism, to use a common but unscientific

term, in the history of religious evolution? Some theorists have made

fetichism, that is to say, the adoration of odds and ends (with which

they have confused the worship of animals, of mountains, and even of the

earth), the first moment in the development of worship. Others, again,

think that fetichism is 'a corruption of religion, in Africa, as

elsewhere.' The latter is the opinion of Mr Max Muller, who has stated

it in his 'Hibbert Lectures,' on 'The Origin and Growth of Religion,

especially as illustrated by the Religions of India.' It seems probable

that there is a middle position between these two extremes. Students may

hold that we hardly know enough to justify us in talking about the

_origin_ of religion, while at the same time they may believe that

Fetichism is one of the earliest traceable steps by which men climbed to

higher conceptions of the supernatural. Meanwhile Mr. Max Muller

supports his own theory, that fetichism is a 'parasitical growth,' a

'corruption' of religion, by arguments mainly drawn from historical study

of savage creeds, and from the ancient religious documents of India.

 

These documents are to English investigators ignorant of Sanskrit 'a book

sealed with seven seals.' The Vedas are interpreted in very different

ways by different Oriental scholars. It does not yet appear to be known

whether a certain word in the Vedic funeral service means 'goat' or

'soul'! Mr. Max Muller's rendering is certain to have the first claim on

English readers, and therefore it is desirable to investigate the

conclusions which he draws from his Vedic studies. The ordinary

anthropologist must first, however, lodge a protest against the tendency

to look for _primitive_ matter in the Vedas. They are the elaborate

hymns of a specially trained set of poets and philosophers, living in an

age almost of civilisation. They can therefore contain little testimony

as to what man, while still 'primitive,' thought about God, the world,

and the soul. One might as well look for the first germs of religion,

for _primitive_ religion strictly so called, in 'Hymns Ancient and

Modern' as in the Vedas. It is chiefly, however, by way of deductions

from the Vedas, that Mr. Max Muller arrives at ideas which may be briefly

and broadly stated thus: he inclines to derive religion from man's sense

of the Infinite, as awakened by natural objects calculated to stir that

sense. Our position is, on the other hand, that the germs of the

religious sense in early man are developed, not so much by the vision of

the Infinite, as by the idea of Power. Early religions, in short, are

selfish, not disinterested. The worshipper is not contemplative, so much

as eager to gain something to his advantage. In fetiches, he ignorantly

recognises something that possesses power of an abnormal sort, and the

train of ideas which leads him to believe in and to treasure fetiches is

one among the earliest springs of religious belief.

 

Mr. Muller's opinion is the very reverse: he believes that a

contemplative and disinterested emotion in the presence of the Infinite,

or of anything that suggests infinitude or is mistaken for the Infinite,

begets human religion, while of this religion fetichism is a later

corruption.

 

* * * * *

 

In treating of fetichism Mr. Muller is obliged to criticise the system of

De Brosses, who introduced this rather unfortunate term to science, in an

admirable work, 'Le Culte des Dieux Fetiches' (1760). We call the work

'admirable,' because, considering the contemporary state of knowledge and

speculation, De Brosses's book is brilliant, original, and only now and

then rash or confused. Mr. Muller says that De Brosses 'holds that all

nations had to begin with fetichism, to be followed afterwards by

polytheism and monotheism.' This sentence would lead some readers to

suppose that De Brosses, in his speculations, was looking for the origin

of religion; but, in reality, his work is a mere attempt to explain a

certain element in ancient religion and mythology. De Brosses was well

aware that heathen religions were a complex mass, a concretion of many

materials. He admits the existence of regard for the spirits of the dead

as one factor, he gives Sabaeism a place as another. But what chiefly

puzzles him, and what he chiefly tries to explain, is the worship of odds

and ends of rubbish, and the adoration of animals, mountains, trees, the

sun, and so forth. When he masses all these worships together, and

proposes to call them all Fetichism (a term derived from the Portuguese

word for a talisman), De Brosses is distinctly unscientific. But De

Brosses is distinctly scientific when he attempts to explain the animal-

worship of Egypt, and the respect paid by Greeks and Romans to shapeless

stones, as survivals of older savage practices.

 

The position of De Brosses is this: Old mythology and religion are a

tissue of many threads. Sabaeism, adoration of the dead, mythopoeic

fancy, have their part in the fabric. Among many African tribes, a form

of theism, Islamite or Christian, or self-developed, is superimposed on a

mass of earlier superstitions. Among these superstitions, is the worship

of animals and plants, and the cult of rough stones and of odds and ends

of matter. What is the origin of this element, so prominent in the

religion of Egypt, and present, if less conspicuous, in the most ancient

temples of Greece? It is the survival, answers De Brosses, of ancient

practices like those of untutored peoples, as Brazilians, Samoyeds,

Negroes, whom the Egyptians and Pelasgians once resembled in lack of

culture.

 

This, briefly stated, is the hypothesis of De Brosses. If he had

possessed our wider information, he would have known that, among savage

races, the worships of the stars, of the dead, and of plants and animals,

are interlaced by the strange metaphysical processes of wild men. He

would, perhaps, have kept the supernatural element in magical stones,

feathers, shells, and so on, apart from the triple thread of Sabaeism,

ghost-worship, and totemism, with its later development into the regular

worship of plants and animals. It must be recognised, however, that De

Brosses was perfectly well aware of the confused and manifold character

of early religion. He had a clear view of the truth that what the

religious instinct has once grasped, it does not, as a rule, abandon, but

subordinates or disguises, when it reaches higher ideas. And he avers,

again and again, that men laid hold of the coarser and more material

objects of worship, while they themselves were coarse and dull, and that,

as civilisation advanced, they, as a rule, subordinated and disguised the

ruder factors in their system. Here it is that Mr. Max Muller differs

from De Brosses. He holds that the adoration of stones, feathers,

shells, and (as I understand him) the worship of animals are, even among

the races of Africa, a corruption of an earlier and purer religion, a

'parasitical development' of religion.

 

However, Mr. Max Muller himself held 'for a long time' what he calls 'De

Brosses's theory of fetichism.' What made him throw the theory

overboard? It was 'the fact that, while in the earliest accessible

documents of religious thought we look in vain for any very clear traces

of fetichism, they become more and more frequent everywhere in the later

stages of religious development, and are certainly more visible in the

later corruptions of the Indian religion, beginning with the Atharvana,

than in the earliest hymns of the Rig Veda.' Now, by the earliest

accessible documents of religious thought, Professor Max Muller means the

hymns of the Rig Veda. These hymns are composed in the most elaborate

metre, by sages of old repute, who, I presume, occupied a position not

unlike that of the singers and seers of Israel. They lived in an age of

tolerably advanced cultivation. They had wide geographical knowledge.

They had settled government. They dwelt in States. They had wealth of

gold, of grain, and of domesticated animals. Among the metals, they were

acquainted with that which, in most countries, has been the latest

worked--they used iron poles in their chariots. How then can the hymns

of the most enlightened singers of a race thus far developed be called

'the earliest religious documents'? Oldest they may be, the oldest that

are accessible, but that is a very different thing. How can we possibly

argue that what is absent in these hymns, is absent because it had not

yet come into existence? Is it not the very office of pii vates et Phoebo

digna locuti to purify religion, to cover up decently its rude shapes, as

the unhewn stone was concealed in the fane of Apollo of Delos? If the

race whose noblest and oldest extant hymns were pure, exhibits traces of

fetichism in its later documents, may not that as easily result from a

recrudescence as from a corruption? Professor Max Muller has still,

moreover, to explain how the process of corruption which introduced the

same fetichistic practices among Samoyeds, Brazilians, Kaffirs, and the

people of the Atharvana Veda came to be everywhere identical in its

results.

 

Here an argument often urged against the anthropological method may be

shortly disposed of. 'You examine savages,' people say, 'but how do you

know that these savages were not once much more cultivated; that their

whole mode of life, religion and all, is not debased and decadent from an

earlier standard?' Mr. Muller glances at this argument, which, however,

cannot serve his purpose. Mr. Muller has recognised that savage, or

'nomadic,' languages represent a much earlier state of language than

anything that we find, for example, in the oldest Hebrew or Sanskrit

texts. 'For this reason,' he says, {218} 'the study of what I call

_nomad_ languages, as distinguished from _State_ languages, becomes so

instructive. We see in them what we can no longer expect to see even in

the most ancient Sanskrit or Hebrew. We watch the childhood of language

with all its childish freaks.' Yes, adds the anthropologist, and for

this reason the study of savage religions, as distinguished from State

religions, becomes so instructive. We see in them what we can no longer

expect to see even in the most ancient Sanskrit or Hebrew faiths. We

watch the childhood of religion with all its childish freaks. If this

reasoning be sound when the Kaffir tongue is contrasted with ancient

Sanskrit, it should be sound when the Kaffir faith is compared with the

Vedic faith. By parity of reasoning, the religious beliefs of peoples as

much less advanced than the Kaffirs as the Kaffirs are less advanced than

the Vedic peoples, should be still nearer the infancy of faith, still

'nearer the beginning.'

 

We have been occupied, perhaps, too long with De Brosses and our apology

for De Brosses. Let us now examine, as shortly as possible, Mr. Max

Muller's reasons for denying that fetichism is 'a primitive form of

religion.' The negative side of his argument being thus disposed of, it

will then be our business to consider (1) his psychological theory of the

subjective element in religion, and (2) his account of the growth of

Indian religion. The conclusion of the essay will be concerned with

demonstrating that Mr. Max Muller's system assigns little or no place to

the superstitious beliefs without which, in other countries than India,

society could not have come into organised existence.

 

* * * * *

 

In his polemic against Fetichism, it is not always very easy to see

against whom Mr. Muller is contending. It is one thing to say that

fetichism is a 'primitive form of religion,' and quite another to say

that it is 'the very beginning of all religion.' Occasionally he attacks

the 'Comtian theory,' which, I think, is not now held by many people who

study the history of man, and which I am not concerned to defend. He

says that the Portuguese navigators who discovered among the negroes 'no

other trace of any religious worship' except what they called the worship

of feiticos, concluded that this was the whole of the religion of the

negroes (p. 61). Mr. Muller then goes on to prove that 'no religion

consists of fetichism only,' choosing his examples of higher elements in

negro religion from the collections of Waitz. It is difficult to see

what bearing this has on his argument. De Brosses (p. 20) shows that

_he_, at least, was well aware that many negro tribes have higher

conceptions of the Deity than any which are implied in fetich-worship.

Even if no tribe in the world is exclusively devoted to fetiches, the

argument makes no progress. Perhaps no extant tribe is in the way of

using unpolished stone weapons and no others, but it does not follow that

unpolished stone weapons are not primitive. It is just as easy to

maintain that the purer ideas have, by this time, been reached by aid of

the stepping-stones of the grosser, as that the grosser are the

corruption of the purer. Mr. Max Muller constantly asserts that the

'human mind advanced by small and timid steps from what is intelligible,

to what is at first sight almost beyond comprehension' (p. 126). Among

the objects which aided man to take these small and timid steps, he

reckons rivers and trees, which excited, he says, religious awe. What he

will not suppose is that the earliest small and timid steps were not

unaided by such objects as the fetichist treasures--stones, shells, and

so forth, which suggest no idea of infinity. Stocks he will admit, but

not, if he can help it, stones, of the sort that negroes and Kanekas and

other tribes use as fetiches. His reason is, that he does not see how

the scraps of the fetichist can appeal to the feeling of the Infinite,

which feeling is, in his theory, the basis of religion.

 

After maintaining (what is readily granted) that negroes have a religion

composed of many elements, Mr. Muller tries to discredit the evidence

about the creeds of savages, and discourses on the many minute shades of

progress which exist among tribes too often lumped together as if they

were all in the same condition. Here he will have all scientific

students of savage life on his side. It remains true, however, that

certain elements of savage practice, fetichism being one of them, are

practically ubiquitous. Thus, when Mr. Muller speaks of 'the influence

of public opinion' in biassing the narrative of travellers, we must not

forget that the strongest evidence about savage practice is derived from

the 'undesigned coincidence' of the testimonies of all sorts of men, in

all ages, and all conditions of public opinion. 'Illiterate men,

ignorant of the writings of each other, bring the same reports from

various quarters of the globe,' wrote Millar of Glasgow. When sailors,

merchants, missionaries, describe, as matters unprecedented and unheard

of, such institutions as polyandry, totemism, and so forth, the evidence

is so strong, because the witnesses are so astonished. They do not know

that anyone but themselves has ever noticed the curious facts before

their eyes. And when Mr. Muller tries to make the testimony about savage

faith still more untrustworthy, by talking of the 'absence of recognised

authority among savages,' do not let us forget that custom ([Greek]) is a

recognised authority, and that the punishment of death is inflicted for

transgression of certain rules. These rules, generally speaking, are of

a religious nature, and the religion to which they testify is of the sort

known (too vaguely) as 'fetichistic.' Let us keep steadily before our

minds, when people talk of lack of evidence, that we have two of the

strongest sorts of evidence in the world for the kind of religion which

least suits Mr. Muller's argument--(1) the undesigned coincidences of

testimony, (2) the irrefutable witness and sanction of elementary

criminal law. Mr. Muller's own evidence is that much-disputed work,

where 'all men see what they want to see, as in the clouds,' and where

many see systematised fetichism--the Veda.