Volume 4 — CHAPTER IV

EARLY CULTS

225. The lowest tribes known to us regard the whole world of nature and the human dead as things to be feared and usually as things to be propitiated. In most cases they conceive of some anthropomorphic being as the creator or arranger of the world. But in all cases they regard animals, plants, and inanimate objects as capable of doing extraordinary things. All these beings they think of as akin to men; transformations from human to nonhuman and from nonhuman to human are believed to be possible and frequent.

226. From the point of view of the savage mind this theory of the world is inevitable. Ignorant of what we call natural law, they can see no reason why the phenomena of life should not be under the control of any of the powers known to them; and for sources of power they look to the things around them. All objects of nature are mysterious to the savage—stones, hills, waters, the sky, the heavenly bodies, trees, plants, fishes, birds, beasts, are full of movement, and seemingly display capacities that induce the savage to see in them the causes of things. Since their procedures seem to him to be in general similar to his own, he credits them with a nature like his own. As they are mysterious and powerful, he fears them and tries to make allies of them or to ward off their injurious influences.

227. But while he excludes nothing from his list of possible powers, he is vitally interested only in those objects with which he comes into contact, and he learns their powers by his own experience or through the wisdom inherited from his forefathers. His procedure is strictly scientific; he adopts only what observation has shown him and others to be true. Different tribes are interested in different things—some are indifferent to one thing, others to another, according to the topographical and economic milieu. The savage is not without discrimination. He is quite capable of distinguishing between the living and the dead. Not all stones are held by him to be alive in any important sense, and not all beasts to be powerful. He is a practical thinker and deals with each phenomenon as it presents itself, and particularly as it shows itself to be connected with his interests. He is constantly on the alert to distinguish between the profitable and the unprofitable, the helpful and the injurious. He himself is the center of his whole scientific and religious system, and the categories into which he divides all things are determined by his own sense of self-interest.428

228. It is often by accident that one object or another displays itself as helpful or harmful, just as, in a later and higher form of religious belief, a theophany is often, as to time and place, a matter of accident. Indeed, most manifestations of extrahuman power in the earliest times may be said to come to man incidentally, since he does not generally demand them from the gods or make experiments in order to discover them. But in the nature of the case many things meet him as to which he is obliged to use judgment, and of these a certain number appear to him to be powerful.

229. These objects are held by him to be in some sort akin to man. This seems to be his view of certain dead things in which a mysterious power is held to reside. When such objects are parts of animals (bones, feathers, claws, tails, feet, fat, etc.), or of vegetables that are used as charms, it may be supposed that they simply retain the power resident in the objects of which they are parts—objects originally living and sacred. In other cases an indwelling supernatural being is assumed, as, for example, in minerals whose shape and color are remarkable.

230. Fetish objects in West Africa are believed to be inhabited by spirits.429 The Australian sacred object called churinga—a thing of mysterious potency—is believed to be the abode of the soul of an ancestor endowed with extraordinary power. Many such fetish objects are found all over the world.

231. Further, the conception of a life-force, existing in many things (perhaps in all things), appears to have been prominent in savage religious systems. Life implies power; but while it is held to reside in all things, its manifestations vary according to the relations between things and human needs. The life-force in its higher manifestations has been isolated in thought by some more advanced savages, especially in North America and Polynesia, and has been given a definite name; in Polynesia and Melanesia it is called mana, and other names for it occur elsewhere.430

232. It shows itself in any object, nonhuman or human, that produces extraordinary effects. In the Pacific islands all great achievements of men are attributed to it—all great chiefs possess it in an eminent degree;431 it is then nearly equivalent to what we call capacity or genius. When it resides in an inanimate thing it may produce a physical effect: it comes up in the steam of the American sacred sweat lodge, and gives health to the body (and thus buoyancy to the mind);432 here it is identical with the soothing and stimulating power of the steam. It is, in a word, a term for the force residing in any object.433 Like sickness and other evils, blessings, and curses, it is conceived of as having physical form and may be transmitted from its possessor to another person or object. In some cases its name is given to the thing to which it is attached.434

233. How widely the conception exists is uncertain; further research may discover it in regions where up to now it has not been recognized. Scarcely a trace of it exists in the higher ancient religions. The Latin genius, the indwelling power of the man, bears a resemblance to it. The Old Testament "spirit of God" is said to "come on" a man or to be "poured out on" him, as if it were a physical thing—it gives courage and strength to the warrior and knowledge to the worshiper;435 the power or energy is here (in the earlier Hebrew writings) identified with the spirit or animus of the deity, which appears to be thought of as physical.

234. Mana is conceived of by the peoples mentioned above not as a vague influence diffused through the world, but as a power resident in certain definite persons or things. It is impersonal in the sense in which any quality, as courage, is impersonal, but it is not itself an object of worship; worship is directed toward the thing that possesses or imparts mana. It may reside in a natural object or in a supernatural being—the object will be used to secure it, the supernatural being will be asked to bestow it. In both cases the act will be religious.

235. Mana is itself, strictly speaking, a scientific biological conception, but it necessarily enters into alliance with religion. Belief in it exists along with belief in ghosts, spirits, and gods—it is not a rival of these, but an attachment to them. As a thing desirable, it is one of the good gifts that the great Powers can bestow, and it thus leads to worship. It is found in distinct form, as is pointed out above, only in superior tribes—it has not been discovered in very low communities, and appears not to belong to the earliest stratum of religious beliefs. But it rests on the view that all things are endowed with life, and this view may be taken to be universal. The doctrine of mana gradually vanishes before a better knowledge of the human constitution,436 a larger conception of the gods, and a greater trust in them.437

236. Things and persons endowed with peculiar power, whether as seats of mana or as abodes of spirits, are set apart by themselves, are regarded with feelings of awe, and thus become "sacred." In process of time the accumulated experience of generations builds up a mass of sacred objects which become a part of the religious possessions of the community. The quality of sacredness is sometimes attached to objects and customs when these are regarded as necessary to the well-being of the community, or highly convenient. A house, for example, represents the life of the family, and is therefore a thing to be revered; and in many tribes the walls, which guard the house against intrusion, and the door and the threshold, which offer entrance into it, are considered sacred; the hearth especially, the social center of the dwelling, becomes a sacred place.

237. The savage communities with which we are acquainted all possess their stock of such things—the beliefs concerning sacred objects are held by all the members of the tribe. The development of the idea of 'sacred' is a social communal one, but it is impossible for us to say precisely how all the individual sacred objects were selected, or what was the exact attitude of primeval man toward all the things that are now regarded as sacred.

238. The conception of power resident in certain things to control human life is represented by our term "luck." The formulation of "luck" systems goes on in savage and half-civilized communities up to a certain point, and is then checked by the rise of higher religious ideas and by the growth of the conception of natural law. But long after the grounds of belief in luck have ceased to be accepted by the advanced part of the community, many individual forms of good luck and bad luck maintain themselves in popular belief.438 Some of these beliefs may be traced back to their savage sources, especially those that are connected with animals; the origin of most of them is obscure. They coalesce to some extent with conceptions derived from magic, divination, and taboo. The persistence of such savage dogma into civilized times enables us to understand how natural this dogma was for early forms of society.

239. In the practices mentioned above there is no worship proper. Mana is not thought of as being in itself a personal power, and worship is paid only to objects regarded as having personality. The fetish derives its value from the spirit supposed to be resident in the fetish objects; these are commonly worn as charms, and the attitude of the man to such a charm, though he regards it as powerful, seems to be not exactly that of worship—he keeps it as a protection so long as it appears to be useful, but, as is remarked above, he acts as if he were its master. He believes that the efficient factor is the indwelling spirit, but he commonly distinguishes between this spirit and a god proper. When, however, the fetish is regarded as a tutelary divinity, it loses its lower character and takes its place among the gods.

240. We turn now to man's attitude toward other objects, similarly regarded as sacred, but invested with distinct personality, and supposed to act consciously on human life. These are all such things as men's experiences bring them into intimate relations with, this relationship forming the basis of the high regard in which they are held. They are animals, plants, mountains, rivers, heavenly bodies, living men, and ghosts. These are objects of cults, many of them in some cases being worshiped at the same time in a single community. A chronological order in the adoption of such cults it is not possible to determine. All objects stand together in man's consciousness in early cultural strata, and the data now at command do not enable us to say which of them first assumed for him a religious character; the chronological order of cults may have differed in different communities when the general social conditions were different. We may begin with the cult of animals without thereby assuming that it came first in order of time.

Animals

241. Of all nonhuman natural objects it would seem to have been the animal that most deeply impressed early man.439 All objects were potentially divine for him, and all received worship, but none entered so intimately into his life as animals. He was doubtless struck, perhaps awed, by the brightness of the heavenly bodies, but they were far off, intangible; mountains were grand and mighty, but motionless; stones lay in his path, but did not approach him; rivers ran, but in an unchanging way, rarely displaying emotion; plants grew, and furnished food, but showed little sign of intelligence. Animals, on the other hand, dwelt with him in his home, met him at every turn, and did things that seemed to him to exhibit qualities identical with his own, not only physical but also mental—they showed swiftness, courage, ferocity, and also skill and cunning. In certain regards they appeared to be his superiors, and thus became standards of power and objects of reverence.

242. At a very early period the belief in social relations between men and animals appears. The latter were supposed to have souls, to continue their existence after death, sometimes to come to life on earth after death. Their social life was supposed to be similar to that of men;440 in Samoa the various species form social units,441 the Ainu see tattoo marks on frogs and sparrows,442 the Arabs recognize a clan organization in beasts.443

243. From identity of nature comes the possibility of transformation and transmigration.444 An Australian of the Kangaroo clan explained that he might be called either kangaroo or man—it was all the same, man-kangaroo or kangaroo-man, and the Australian legends constantly assume change from human to animal and from animal to human.445 The same belief appears in Africa and North America, and may be assumed to be universal among savages. It survives in the Greek transformation stories and in the werwolf and swan maiden of the European popular creed. It is the basis of a part of the theory of the transmigration of souls.446

244. The relations of early man with animals are partly friendly, partly hostile. A friendly attitude is induced by admiration of their powers and desire for their aid. Such an attitude is presupposed in the myths of intermarriage between beasts and men. It is perhaps visible also in the custom of giving or assuming names of animals as personal names of men, though this custom may arise from the opinion that animals are the best expressions of certain qualities, or from some conception underlying totemistic organization; the general history of savage proper names has not yet been written. Beast tales, likewise, bear witness to man's opinion of the cleverness or folly of his nonhuman brethren, and perhaps originally to nothing more. The distinctest expression of friendliness is seen in certain religious customs spoken of below.

245. On the other hand, early man necessarily comes into conflict with animals. Against some of them he is obliged to protect himself by force or by skillful contrivance; others must be slain for food. With all of them he deals in such a way as to secure his own well-being, and thus comes to regard them as things subservient to him, to be used in such way as he may find profitable. Those that he cannot use he gradually exterminates, or, at a later stage, these, banished to thickets, mountains, deserts, caves, and other inhospitable places, are excluded from human society and identified with demons.447

246. The two attitudes, of friendliness and of hostility, coexist throughout the savage period, and, in softened form, even in half-civilized life. They represent two points of view, both of which issue from man's social needs. Early man is logical, but he comprehends the necessity of not pushing logic too far—he is capable of holding at the same time two mutually contradictory views, and of acting on each as may suit his convenience; he makes his dogma yield to the facts of life (a saving principle not confined to savages, but acted on to a greater or less extent by all societies). He slays sacred animals for divinatory and other religious purposes, for food, or in self-defense; he fears their anger, but his fear is overcome by hunger; he offers profuse apologies, explains that he acts without ill will and that the bones of the animal will be preserved and honored, or he declares that it is not he but some one else that is the slayer—but he does not hesitate to kill.448

247. This fact—the existence of different points of view—enables us to understand in part the disrespectful treatment of sacred animals in folk-tales. Such tales are the product of popular fancy, standing apart from the serious and solemn conceptions of the tribal religion. The reciter, who will not fail at the proper time to pay homage to his tribal patron, does not hesitate at other times to put him into ridiculous and disgraceful situations.449

248. Man's social contact with the lower animals is doubtless as old as man himself, but there are no records of his earliest life, and it is not possible to say exactly when and how his religious relations with them began. His attitude toward them; as is remarked above, was a mixed one; in general, however, it may be assumed that constant intercourse with them revealed their great qualities and impressed on him the necessity of securing their good will. This was especially true of those of them that stood nearest to him and were of greatest importance for his safety and convenience. These, invested with mystery by reason of their power and their strangeness, were held in great respect as quasi-gods, were approached with caution, and thus acquired the character of sacredness. Gradually, as human society was better and better organized, as conceptions of government became clearer, and as the natures of the various animals were more closely studied, means were devised of guarding against their anger and securing their friendship and aid. Our earliest information of savage life reveals in every tribe an inchoate pantheon of beasts. All the essential apparatus of public religion is present in these communities in embryonic form—later movements have had for their object merely to clarify ideas and refine procedures.

249. The animals revered by a tribe are those of its vicinage, the inhabitants of its hunting grounds. Some of these man uses as food, some he fears. His relation to plains, mountains, forests, lakes, rivers, and seas, influences his choice of sacred beasts. Usually there are many of them, and the natural inference is that originally all animals are sacred, and that gradually those most important for man are singled out as objects of special regard.

250. Thus, to mention the principal of them: in Africa we find lion, leopard, hyena, hippopotamus, crocodile, bull, ram, dog, cat, ape, grasshopper; in Oceania, kangaroo, emu, pig, heron, owl, rail, eel, cuttlefish; in Asia, lion, elephant, bear, horse, bull, dog, pig, eagle, tiger, water wagtail, whale; in Europe, bear, wolf, horse, bull, goat, swan; in America, whale, bear, wolf, fox, coyote, hare, opossum, deer, monkey, tiger, beaver, turtle, eagle, raven, various fishes. The snake seems to have been generally revered, though it was sometimes regarded as hostile.450 Since animals are largely valued as food, changes in the animals specially honored follow on changes in economic organization (hunting, pastoral, and agricultural stages).

251. Often animals are looked on as the abodes or incarnations of gods or spirits: so various birds, fishes, and beasts in Polynesia (in Samoa every man has a tutelary deity, which appears in the form of an animal451), Siberia, Mexico, and elsewhere. In other cases they are revered as incarnations of deceased men.452 Where a species of animal is supposed to represent a god, this view is probably to be regarded not as a generalization from an individualistic to a specific conception (a process too refined for savages), but as an attempt to carry over to the animal world the idea of descent from a common ancestor combined with the idea of a special creator for every family of animals.453

252. In the course of religious growth the beast-god may be replaced or succeeded by an anthropomorphic god, and then the former is regarded as sacred to the latter—the recollection of the beast form still remains after the more refined conception has been reached, and the two, closely connected in popular feeling, can be brought into harmony only by making one subordinate to the other.454 A certain element or flavor of divinity clings to the beast a long time, but finally vanishes under the light of better knowledge.

253. While the cases, very numerous, in which animals are associated in worship with gods—in composite forms (as in Egypt, Babylonia, and Assyria) or as symbols of deities or sacred to them—point probably to early beast-cults, Egypt alone of the ancient civilized nations maintained the worship of the living animal.455 For the better thinkers of Egypt beasts doubtless were incarnations or symbols of deities; but the mass of the people appear to have regarded them as gods in their own persons.

254. Reverence for animals persists in attenuated form in civilized nations in various superstitions connected with them. Their appearances and their cries are believed to portend success or disaster. The great number of "signs" recognized and relied on by uneducated and educated persons at the present day bear witness to the strong hold that the cult of animals had on early man.456

255. It is in keeping with early ideas that savages often, perhaps generally, ascribe the creation or construction of the world (so far as they know it) to animals. The creation (whether by beasts or by other beings) is not conceived of as produced out of nothing; there is always preëxisting material, the origin of which is not explained; primitive thought seems not to have considered the possibility of a situation in which nothing existed. The "creation" conceived of is the arrangement of existing material into the forms familiar to man—every tribe accounting thus for its own environment. The origin of the land, of mountains, defiles, lakes, rivers, trees, rocks, sun, moon, and stars, wind and rain, human beings and lower animals, and sometimes of social organizations and ceremonies, is explained in some way natural to the thought of the time and place. Not all these details occur in the cosmogony of every tribe or clan, but the purpose of every cosmogony is to account for everything in the origin of which the people are interested.

256. The creator in the cosmogonies known to us is not always an animal—he is sometimes a man, sometimes a god; it is possible, however, that human and divine creators are the successors of original animal creators. In Central Australia the production of certain natural features of the country and the establishment of certain customs are ascribed to ancestors, mythical beings of the remote past, creatures both animal and human, or rather, either animal or human—possibly animals moving toward the anthropomorphic stage.457 However this may be, there are instances in which the creator is an animal pure and simple, though, of course, endowed with extraordinary powers. The beast to which the demiurgic function is assigned is selected, it would seem, on the ground of some peculiar skill or other power it is supposed to possess; naturally the reason for the choice is not always apparent. For the Ainu the demiurge is the water wagtail;458 for the Navahos and in California,459 the coyote or prairie wolf; among the Lenni-Lenâpé, the wolf.460 Various animals—as elephants, boars, turtles, snakes—are supposed to bear the world on their backs. The grounds of such opinions, resting on remote social conditions, are obscure.

257. Though, in early stadia of culture, animals are universally revered as in a sort divine, there are few recorded instances of actual worship offered them.461 Whether the Bushmen and the Hottentots worship the mantis (the Bushman god Cagn) as animal is not quite clear.462 The bear, when it is ceremonially slain, is treated by the Ainu as divine—it is approached with food and prayer, but only for the specific purpose of asking that it will speak well of them to its divine kin and will return to earth to be slain. The Zuñi cult of the turtle and the Californian worship of the bird called panes463 present similar features. The non-Aryan Santhals of Bengal are said to offer divine worship to the tiger.464 Such worship appears to be paid to the snake by the Naga tribes and the Gonds of India, and by the Hopi of North America.465

258. In these and similar cases it is sometimes difficult to say whether the animal is worshiped in its own person merely, or as the embodiment or representative of a god or of ancestors. The usages in question are almost entirety confined to low tribes, and disappear with the advance of civilization; wild animals are banished from society and cease to be sacred, and the recollection of their early character survives only in their mythological attachment to deities proper. For a different reason domesticated animals lose their sacredness—they become merely servants of men. The Egyptian cult of the bull is the best-attested instance of actual worship of a domestic animal, and parallels to this it is hard to find; the Todas, for example, for whom the buffalo is the central sacred object, do not now pay worship to the animal—they may have done so in former times.

259. The sacredness of animals, and the fact that they are regarded as embodying the souls of things and human beings, have led to a coalescence of their cults with other religious observances. They are abundantly employed in magical procedures and in sacrifices; they are often identified with spirits of vegetation, any locally revered animal being chosen for this purpose; they are brought into connection with astral objects and their forms are fancifully seen in sun, moon, and constellations; they play a great rôle in apotropaic and purificatory ceremonies; and they appear in myths of all sorts,466 especially in the histories of gods.

260. But, though they are in many cases regarded as tutelary beings, it is doubtful whether they ever develop into anthropomorphic deities.467 The creation of such deities followed a different line468 and dispensed with the lower quasi-divine forms. Such manlike attributes as beasts were supposed to have were taken up into the distincter and nobler conceptions of tribal gods to whom beasts were more and more subordinated. The latter were allegorized and spiritualized, and came to serve merely as material for poetry.

261. Yet beast worship, such as it was and is, has played an important part in religious development. It has furnished a point of crystallization for early ideas, and has supplied interesting objects in which man's demand for superhuman companionship could find satisfaction.469 It has disappeared when it has been no longer needed.

Plants

262. The cult of plants has been as widespread as that of animals, and, if its rôle in the history of religion has been less important than that of the latter, this is because plants show less definite signs of life than animals and enter less intimately than they into the social interests of man. But, like all other things, they are regarded by early man as living, as possessing a nature similar to that of man, and as having power to work good or ill. Trees are represented as thinking, speaking, entering into marriage relations, and in general doing whatever intelligent beings can do. Through thousands of years in the period before the dawn of written history man was brought into constant contact with the vegetable world, and learned by experience to distinguish between plants that were beneficial and those that were harmful. His observation created an embryonic science of medicine, and his imagination an embryonic religious cult.

263. The value of certain vegetable products (fruits, nuts, wild plants) as food must have become known at a very early time, and these would naturally be offered to the extrahuman Powers. At a later time, when cereals were cultivated, they formed an important part of sacrificial offerings, and were held—as, for example, among the Greeks and the Hebrews—to have piacular efficacy.

264. Among the discoveries of the early period was that of the intoxicating quality of certain plants—a quality that came to play a prominent rôle in religious life. Valued at first, probably, for the agreeable sensations they produced, such plants were later supposed to possess magical power, to exert a mysterious influence on the mind, and to be the source or medium of superhuman communications. Thus employed by magicians they were connected with the beginnings of religious ecstasy and prophecy. Their magical power belongs to them primarily as living things, but came to be attributed to extrahuman beings.

265. Plants as living things were supposed to possess souls.470 Probably the soul was conceived of at first as simply the vital principle, and the power of the plant was thought of as similar to the power of an animal or any other living thing. In the course of time this soul, the active principle, was distinguished from the vital principle, was isolated and regarded as an independent being dwelling in the plant. To it all the powers of the latter were ascribed, and it became a friend or an enemy, an object of worship or of dread.471

266. This difference of attitude on man's part toward different plants probably showed itself at an early period. Those that were found to be noxious he would avoid; the useful he would enter into relations with, though on this point for very early times there is in the nature of the case little information.472 Unfriendly or demonic spirits of plants are recognized by savage man in certain forests whose awe-inspiring gloom, disease-breeding vapors, and wild beasts repel and frighten him. Demons identified with plants or dwelling in them are of the same nature as animal demons, and have been dealt with in the same way as these.473

267. The progress of society brought men into association with useful plants, such as medicinal and edible herbs, and fruit-bearing and shade-giving trees; these, conceived of as inhabited by anthropomorphic spirits, fulfilled all the functions that attach to friendly animals. They became guardians and allies, totems and ancestors.474 Several of the Central Australian totems are plants, and form part of the mythical ancestral population constructed by the imagination or ethnographic science of the people.475 In Samoa a plant is often the incarnation of a spirit friendly to a particular family476—a conception that is not improbably a development from an earlier view that a certain plant had a special relation to a certain clan.477 In general, a plant important in a given region (as, for example, the tobacco plant in North America) is likely to be invested with a sacred character.

268. Trees, by reason of their greater dignity (size, beauty, protective character), have generally been singled out as special cultic centers.478 A great tree sometimes served as a boundary mark or signpost; under trees chiefs of clans sat to decide disputes. Thus invested with importance as a sort of political center as well as the abode of a spirit, a tree naturally became a shrine and an asylum.479 In India and Greece, and among the ancient Celts and Germans, the gods were worshiped in groves, by the Canaanites and Hebrews "under every green tree." To cut down a sacred tree was a sacrilege, and the spirit of the tree was believed to avenge the crime.480

269. As might be expected, there is hardly a species of tree that has not been held sacred by some group of men. The Nagas and other tribes of Northeast India regard all plants as sacred,481 and every village has its sacred tree. In Babylonia and Assyria, it is said, there were hundreds of trees looked on as invested with more or less sanctity. The oak was revered in some parts of Greece, and among the Romans and the Celts. The cult of particular species, as the pipal (Ficus religiosa), the vata or banyan (Ficus Indica), the karam and others, has been greatly systematized in India.482

270. Vegetable spirits in some cases have developed into real gods. A notable example of such growth is furnished by the history of the intoxicating soma plant, which in the Rig-Veda is represented not only as the inspiring drink of the gods but as itself a deity, doing things that are elsewhere ascribed to Indra, Pushan, and other well-established deities.483 The spirit, coming to be regarded as an anthropomorphic person, under peculiar circumstances assumes the character of a god. A similar development appears in the Iranian haoma, and the cultic identity of soma and haoma shows that the deification of the plant took place in the early Aryan period.484

271. Another example has been supposed to be furnished by corn-spirits. The importance of cereal crops for human life gave them a prominent position in the cult of agricultural communities. The decay and revival of the corn was an event of prime significance, and appears to have been interpreted as the death and resurrection of the spirit that was the life of the crop. Such is the idea in the modern popular customs collected by Mannhardt and Frazer.485 The similarity between these ceremonies and those connected with the Phœnician Tammuz (Adonis) and the Phrygian Attis makes it probable that the two are based on the same ideas; that is, that Adonis and Attis (and so also Osiris and Ishtar) were deities of vegetation. This, however, does not prove that they were developed out of spirits of vegetation; they may have been deities charged with the care of crops.486 The Phœnician name Adon is merely a title ('lord') that might be given to any god; he whom the Greeks called Adonis was a Syrian local deity, identical in origin with the Babylonian Tammuz, and associated in worship with Astarte, whom the Greeks identified with their Aphrodite.

272. A sacred tree often stood by a shrine; that is, probably, the shrine was put in the spot made sacred by a tree, and a ritual connection between the two was thus established. Later, when a shrine for any reason (in consequence of a theophany, for example) was built where there was no tree, its place was supplied by a wooden post, which inherited the cultic value of a sacred tree. In the Canaanite cult, which was adopted by the Hebrews, the sacred post (called "ashera") stood by the side of every shrine, and was denounced by the prophets as an accompaniment of foreign (that is, non-Yahwistic) worship.487 The transition from tree to post is illustrated, perhaps, by the conventionalized form of trees frequent on Babylonian seal cylinders.488 How far the sacred post was an object of worship by the people we have no means of knowing; but by the more intelligent, doubtless, it came to be regarded simply as a symbol, a sign of the presence of a deity, and was, in so far, in the same category with images.489

273. It is not impossible that totem posts may be connected with original totem trees or other sacred trees. A tree as totem would naturally be the object of some sort of cult, and when it took the form of a post or pole, would have totemic symbols carved on it. Oftener, probably, it was the sacred pole of a village (itself descended from a sacred tree) that would be adorned with totemic figures, as among the Indians of Northwestern America.490 In all such cases there is a coalescence of totemism and tree worship.

274. It was natural in early times, when most men lived in forests, which supplied all their needs, that trees should be looked on as intimately connected with human life. A tree might be regarded as in itself an independent personality, having, of course, a body and a soul, but not as dependent on an isolated spirit. A group of men might think itself descended from a tree—a conception that may have been widespread, though there is little direct evidence of its existence.491 Indirect evidence of such a view is found in the custom of marrying girls to trees,492 and in the belief in "trees of life," which are sometimes connected with individual men in such a way that when the tree or a part of it is destroyed the man dies, as in the case of Meleager whose life depended on the preservation of a piece of wood,493 the representative, probably, of a tree, and the priest of Nemi whose life was bound up in the "golden bough"494; sometimes the tree has a magical power of conferring life on whoever eats of its fruit, as in the case of the tree of Eden.495

275. These stories involve the conception of blood-kinship between man and tree. Closely related to the "tree of life" is the "tree of knowledge"—life is knowledge and knowledge is life. In the original form of the story in Genesis there was only one tree—the tree of the knowledge of good and evil496—whose fruit, if eaten, made one the equal of the gods;497 that is, the tree (in the original form of the conception, in remote times) was allied in nature (that is, in blood) to gods and to men, so that whoever partook of its substance shared its attribute of knowledge in sharing its life, and the command not to eat of it was due apparently to Yahweh's unwillingness that man should equal the gods in knowledge. The serpent-god, who belongs to the inner divine circle, but for some unexplained reason is hostile to the god of the garden,498 reveals the secret.

276. Probably, also, it is from this general order of ideas that the conception of the cosmic tree has sprung. The Scandinavian Yggdrasil is the source of life to all things and represents also wisdom; though the details may contain Christian elements, the general conception of the world as a tree or as nourished by a tree is probably old.499 The same conception appears in the cosmic tree of India.500 Such quasi-philosophical ideas of the unity of the life of the world suppose, doubtless, a relatively advanced stage of culture, but they go back to the simple belief that the tree is endowed with life and is a source of life for men. The transition to the cosmic conception may be found in those quasi-divine trees that grant wishes and endow their friends with wisdom and life.

277. The divinatory function of trees follows as a matter of course from their divine nature (whether this was regarded as innate or as due to an indwelling spirit). Their counsel was supposed to be expressed by the rustling of their leaves,501 or in some way that was interpreted by priests or priestesses (as at Dodona and elsewhere) or by diviners (so, perhaps, the Canaanite "terebinth of the diviners").502 The predictions of the Cumæan sibyl were said to be written on leaves that were whirled away by the wind and had to be gathered and interpreted. To what method of divination this points is not clear—possibly to supposed indications in the markings of the leaves; it may, however, be merely an imaginative statement of the difficulty of discovering the sibyl's meaning.503

278. The passage from the conception of the tree as a divine thing or person (necessarily anthropomorphic) to the view that it was the abode of a spirit was gradual, and it is not always easy to distinguish the two stages one from the other. The tree-spirits, in the nature of the case very numerous, were not distinguished by individual names, as the trees were not so distinguished.504 The spirits resident in the divine trees invoked in the Vedas are powerful, but have not definite personality, and it is hard to say whether it is the tree or the spirit that is worshiped. The Indian tree-spirits called Nagas appear to be always nameless, and are not mentioned in the list of deities that pay reverence to the Buddha (in the Maha Samaya).505 The large number of trees accounted sacred in Babylonia were doubtless believed to be inhabited by spirits, but to no one of these is a name given.

279. Thus the divine tree with its nameless spirit stands in a class apart from that of the gods proper. A particular tree, it is true, may be connected with a particular god, but such a connection is generally, if not always, to be traced (as in the parallel case of animals506) to an accidental collocation of cults. When a deity has become the numen of a tribe, his worship will naturally coalesce with the veneration felt by the tribe for some tree, which will then be conceived of as sacred to the god. Such, doubtless, was the history of the oak of Dodona, sacred to Zeus; when Zeus was established as deity of the place, the revered tree had to be brought into relation with him, and this relation could only be one of subordination—the tree became the medium by which the god communicated his will. There was then no need of the spirit of the tree, which accordingly soon passed away; the tree had lost its spiritual divine independence. The god who is said to have appeared to Moses in a burning bush, and is described as dwelling in the bush, is a local deity, the numen loci later identified with Yahweh, or called an angel.507 That a tree is sacred to a god means only that it has a claim to respect based on its being the property or instrument of a god.

280. While the tree-spirit has undoubtedly played a great rôle in early religious history, there is not decisive evidence of its ever having developed into a true god, with name, distinct personality, and distinct functions.508 There are many Greek and Roman titles that connect gods with trees,509 but these may be explained in the way suggested above: Zeus Endendros is a god dwelling in a tree, but the tree is only an abode, not a god, and the god Zeus does not come from the tree—rather two distinct sacred things have been brought together and fused into a unity, or the tree is a rude, incipient image. The Dionysos Hermes-figures may be explained in the same way.510

281. It appears to be the aloofness of trees that prevents their becoming gods; they are revered and worshiped, but without becoming personalities. Babylonian seal engravings and wall pictures often represent a tree before which men or higher beings stand in adoration; according to Maspero511 there was actual worship of trees in Egypt, and similar cults are found among the wild tribes of India.512 Adoration, however, does not necessarily imply a god; the Buddhist's worship under the bo-tree is not directed to any being; it is only the recognition of something that he thinks worthy of reverence.513

282. The cult of the corn-spirit is referred to above,514 and doubt is there expressed as to whether such a spirit has grown into a true god. The question is confessedly a difficult one on account of the absence of full data for the period involved. The chief ground for the doubt as to the development in question lies in what we know of early gods. The term 'Adon,' as is remarked above, is the Phœnician title of the local deity. The origin of such deities is involved in the obscurity of the remote past, but they are, each in his community, universal powers; their functions embrace all that their communities desire, and they represent each the total life of a people. It is the general rule that any popular custom may be introduced into the cult of the local god; of such sort of procedure there are many examples. In the case under consideration the god may have become the hero of a ceremony with which he had originally nothing to do, as the Hebrews when they entered Canaan connected Canaanite festivals with their national god, Yahweh, and later a cult of the wilderness deity Azazel515 was adopted and modified by the Yahwist leaders. Various cults attached themselves to the worship of Zeus, Apollo, Dionysos, and other Greek deities.516

283. A similar explanation may be given of the ceremonies of death and resurrection connected with Attis and Osiris. Of Attis we have only late accounts, and do not know his early history. Osiris is an old underground deity (later the judge of the Underworld), with functions that included more than the vivification of vegetation, and the absorption of the corn-spirit into his cult would be natural. The collocation of a male with a female deity, common to the three cults, may be merely the elaboration of the myth in accordance with human social usage (the dead deity is mourned by his consort).517 The descent of Ishtar has been interpreted of the weakening of the sun's heat in winter; but as she is obviously a deity of fertility and, in her descent, disappears entirely from among men, while the sun does not disappear entirely, she rather, in this story, represents or is connected with the decay and rebirth of vegetation.

284. It is thus possible that, though many ancient ceremonies stand in relation to the corn-spirit and also to a god, the explanation of this fact is not that the spirit has grown into a god, but that it has coalesced with a god. In all such explanations, however, our ignorance of the exact processes of ancient thought must be borne in mind.

285. Trees have been widely credited with the power of bestowing blessings of all sorts. But, like animals, they rarely receive formal worship;518 the reason for this is similar to that suggested above519 in the case of animals. The coalescence, spoken of above, of tree ceremonies with cults of fully developed gods is not uncommon, and trees figure largely in mythical divine histories.

Stones and Mountains

286. Like all other objects stones have been regarded, in all parts of the world, as living, as psychologically anthropomorphic (that is, as having soul, emotion, will), and, in some cases, as possessing superhuman powers.520 The term 'sacred,' as applied to them, may mean either that they are in themselves endowed with peculiar powers, or that they have special relations with divine beings; the first meaning is the earlier, the second belongs to a period when the lesser revered objects have been subordinated to the greater.

287. The basis of the special belief in their sacredness was, probably, the mystery of their forms and qualities, their hardness, brilliancy, solidity. They seem to have been accepted, in the earliest known stages of human life, as ultimate facts. When explanations of their presence were sought, they were supposed to have been deposited by ancestors or other beings, sometimes as depositories of their souls.521 Meteorites, having fallen from the sky, needed no other explanation. Popular science (that is, popular imagination), perhaps from fancied resemblances to the human form, assumed of some stones that they were human beings turned to stone, and stories grew up to account for the metamorphoses. In many different ways, according to differences of physical surroundings and of social conceptions, men accounted for such of these objects as interested them particularly.

288. That stones were believed to be alive and akin to men is shown by the stories of the birth of men and gods from stones,522 the turning of human beings to stone (Niobe, Lot's wife), the accounts of their movements (rocks in Brittany).523

289. Small stones, especially such as are of peculiar shape, are in many parts of the world regarded as having magic power; the peculiarity of shape seems mysterious and therefore connected with power. Doubtless accidental circumstances, such as the occurrence of a piece of good fortune, have often endowed a particular stone with a reputation for power. Certain forms, especially flat disks with a hole in the center, have preserved this reputation down to the present day. The Roman lapis manalis is said by Festus to have been employed to get rain.524

290. Magical stones were, doubtless, believed to possess souls. In accordance with the general law such stones and others were regarded later as the abodes of independent movable spirits.525 When the power of a fetish seems to be exhausted, and a new object is chosen and by appropriate ceremonies a spirit is induced to take up its abode in it, there seems to be no theory as to whether the incoming spirit is the old one or a new one, or, if it be a new one, what becomes of the old one, about which little or no interest is felt.526 The pneumatology is vague; the general view is that the air is full of spirits, whose movements may be controlled by magical means: spirits, that is, are subject to laws, and these laws are known to properly trained men.

291. Reverence for divine stones continues into the period of the rise of the true gods. When god and stone stand together in a community, both revered, they may be and generally are combined into a cultic unity: the stone becomes the symbol or the abode or the person of the god.527 It was, doubtless, in some such way as this that a stone came to be identified with the Magna Mater of Pessinus. When this stone was brought to Rome toward the end of the Second Punic War, the Roman leaders may have regarded it simply as a symbol of the goddess, but the people probably looked on it as itself a divine defense against Hannibal.528 The Israelite ark, carried out to the battle against the Philistines,529 appears to have contained a stone, possibly a meteorite, possibly a piece taken from the sacred mountain Sinai, itself divine, but in the Old Testament narrative regarded as the abode of Yahweh (a Sinaitic god), though it was probably of independent origin and only gradually brought into association with the local god of the mountain.

292. Similar interpretations may be given of other stones identified or connected with deities, as that of Zeus at Seleucia,530 that of Aphrodite at Paphos,531 that of Jupiter Lapis,532 and the black stone that represented the Syrian Elagabalos at Emesa.533 The remark of Pausanias, after he has described the thirty sacred stones of Pheræ, that the early Greeks paid divine honors to unhewn stones, doubtless expresses the traditions and beliefs of his time;534 and it is probable that in antiquity there were many divine stones, and that these were frequently in later times identified with local gods. In many cases, however, there was no identification, only a collocation and subordination: the stone became the symbol of the deity, or a sacred object associated with the deity.535

293. This seems to be the later conception of the character of the sacred stones mentioned in the Old Testament, as the one that Jacob is said to have set up as a masseba and anointed.536 The Canaanite massebas, adopted as cultic objects by the Israelites,537 were stone pillars standing by shrines and regarded as a normal if not a necessary element of worship; originally divine in themselves (as may be inferred from the general history of such objects), they came to be regarded as mere accessories; there is no indication in the Old Testament that they were looked on as gods, though they may have been so regarded by the people538—their presence at the Canaanite shrines, as a part of foreign, non-Yahwistic worship, sufficiently explains the denunciation of them by the prophets.539

294. In the story of Jacob he is said to have given the name Bethel to the place where he anointed the stone. It does not appear that he so called the stone itself; Bethel (in Hebrew, "house of God"540) seems to have been an old sacred place, and terms compounded with 'beth' in Hebrew are names of shrines. The relation between this name and the Semitic word whence, probably, comes Greek baitulos541 (Latin baetulus) is not clear; this last is the designation of a sacred stone held to have fallen from heaven (meteoric). Such an one is called by Philo of Byblos "empsuchos," 'endowed with life or with soul.'542 Pliny describes the baetulus as a species of ceraunia (thunderstone).543 The Greek word is now commonly derived from betel ('bethel')—a derivation possible so far as the form of the word is concerned.544 According to this view the stone is the abode of a deity—a conception common in early religion. Such an object would be revered, and would ultimately be brought into connection with a local god.545 If Hebrew bethel was originally a stone considered as the abode of a deity, then in the Old Testament the earlier form of the conception has been effaced by the later thought—the word 'bethel' has become the name of a place, a shrine, the dwelling place of God.546

295. The origin of the black stone of the Kaaba at Mecca is unknown—it was doubtless either a meteorite or in some way connected with a sacred place; it was, and is, regarded as in itself sacred, but whether it represented originally a deity, and if so what deity, is not known.547

296. The belief in the sacred character of stones may account, at least in part, for the custom of casting stones on the grave of a chieftain (as in Northern Arabia), though this may be merely intended to preserve the grave. So also the stones thrown at the foot of a Hermes pillar may have been meant as a waymark, yet with the feeling that the stone heap had a sacred character of its own.548 The stone circles at Stonehenge and Avebury may have had a religious significance, but their function is not clear. Boundary stones seem to have had at first simply a political function, but were naturally dedicated to the deities who were guardians of tribal boundaries (Roman Terminus, various Babylonian gods, etc.).

297. It is by virtue of their divine character that stones came to be used as altars.549 As things divine in themselves or as representing a deity they receive the blood of the sacred (that is, divine) sacrificial animal, which is the food of the god. Originally a part of the blood is applied to the stone, and the rest poured out or eaten (as sacred food) by the worshiper. In process of time, when the god has been divorced from the stone, the latter becomes a table on which the victim is offered;550 the old conception survives in the custom of slaying the victim by the side of the altar, and applying the blood to the horns of the altar as a representative part of the sacred structure. In the late Jewish ritual this application of blood is interpreted as a purification of the altar from ceremonial defilements.551

298. Originally, it seems, it was only natural stones that were sacred or divine and were employed as representatives of deities; but by a natural process of thought the custom arose of using artificial stones in the same way. By means of certain ceremonies, it was held, the deity could be induced to accept an altar or a house, or to take up his abode in an image, as a spirit is introduced by the savage into a fetish object.552 The basis of this sort of procedure is first the belief in the amenableness of the deity to magical laws, and, later, the belief in his friendly disposition, his willingness to accede to the wishes of his worshipers provided they offer the proper tribute; but even in very late ceremonies a trace of the magical element remains.

299. The significance of the high pillars, of stone or of metal, that stood at the entrance of certain Semitic temples, is not clear. Examples are: in Tyre, the temple of the local Baal (Melkart);553 Solomon's temple of Yahweh in Jerusalem, and the temple planned by Ezekiel in imitation of that of Solomon;554 compare the temple of the Carthaginian Tanit-Artemis, a form of Ashtart, the votive stela from the temple of Aphrodite in Idalium (in Cyprus), and similar figures on Cyprian coins.555 Of the various explanations offered of these pillars that which regards them as phallic symbols may be set aside as lacking proof.556 It is not probable that they were merely decorative; the details of ancient temples, as a rule, were connected with worship. It has been suggested that they were fire altars,557 in support of which view may be cited the figures on Cyprian coins (mentioned above), and the fact that sailors sacrificed at Gades at a place where there were two high pillars;558 but such a custom does not prove that the sacrifices were offered on the pillars, and these latter are generally too high to serve such a purpose; they are too high also to be convenient candelabra.559 It seems more probable that they were developments from sacred stones (such as the Canaanite massebas), which originally represented the deity, came to be conventional attachments to temples, and then were treated in accordance with architectural principles. They would be placed in pairs, one pillar on each side of the temple door, for the sake of symmetry, and dignity would be sought by giving them a considerable height.560 They might also be utilized, when they were not too high, as stands for lamps or cressets, but this would be a secondary use. The obelisks that stood in front of Egyptian temples, likewise, were probably sacred monuments reared in honor of deities.561

300. Images of gods and other extrahuman beings arise through the natural human impulse to represent familiar objects of thought. Very rude tribes have stone or wood carvings of spirits and gods, good and bad. These images are generally in human shape, because all Powers are thought of as anthropomorphic. Sometimes, as Réville suggests, a root, or branch of a tree, bearing some resemblance to the human face or figure, may have led to the making of an image; but the general natural artistic tendency is sufficient to account for the fact.562

301. The character assigned to images varies with stages of culture. In low communities they are themselves divine—the gods have entered into them and they are not thought of as different from their divine indwellers. In such cases they are sometimes chained to prevent their getting away; if they are obstinate, not listening to prayers, they are cuffed, scourged, or reviled.563 This conception lingers still among the peasants of Southern Europe, who treat a saint (a rechristened old god) as if he were a man to be won by threats or cajolements. In a more refined age the image becomes simply a symbol, a visible representation serving to fix the attention and recall divine things. Different races also differ in the extent of their demand for such representations of deity.

302. Stones and rocks, like other natural objects, are starting-points for folk-stories and myths. All over the world they lie on the ground or rise in the shape of hills, and, being mysterious, require explanation. The explanations given, and handed down from generation to generation, are always connected with superhuman or with extraordinary persons, ancestors, heroes, spirits. To each stone or rock a story is attached, a creation of the fancy suggested by the surroundings and by the popular traditions; and each story forms an episode in the history of the hero or spirit. The stones and rocks thus come to constitute a book chronicling the history of the tribe and the deeds of its great men—a book quite legible to the man who has been taught the stories. These grow with every generation, receiving such additions as fancy and reflection dictate, and gradually taking on literary form. In the territory of the Australian Arunta every stone is connected with some incident in the careers of the mythical ancestors, and the stories taken together form the legendary history of the origin of customs.564 In Samoa and New Guinea many stones are pointed out as having been set in place by local heroes. In North America innumerable rocks and stones are connected with the mythical ancestors and creators of the tribes.

303. Mountains have everywhere been regarded as abodes of spirits or deities, and therefore sacred. Their height and massiveness invested them with dignity (even as now they appeal mightily to the imagination), and their lofty summits and rugged sides were full of danger and mystery. Sacred mountains are found in North America, Bengal, Africa, and elsewhere. Naturally they are often abodes of gods of rain; they are feared on account of the spirits inhabiting them, but they are also resorted to as places where divine revelations may be obtained.565 The Semitic, Hindu, and Greek examples are familiar: the Hebrew and Canaanite Sinai (or Horeb), Nebo, Carmel, Hermon; the Arabian Arafat, near Mecca; the Babylonian Ekur; in India, Meru, Mandara, Himavat, and other mountains; in Greece, Olympus and Parnassus.

304. Mountains are also worshiped as being themselves divine.566 The cult, however, has not been important; the physical mass is too solid, lacking in movement, and human interest naturally centered in the spirit or deity who dwelt therein.567

305. Mythological fancy has made them the abodes and places of assembly of gods and glorified saints, usually in the north. The mythical Ekur was the dwelling place of Babylonian deities.568 In India various peaks in the Himalayas, inaccessible to men, were assigned to groups of deities, and the mythical world-mountain Meru was the special abode of great gods, who there lived lives of delight.569 On the highest peak of the Thessalian Olympus Zeus sat, surrounded by the inferior gods; here he held councils and announced his decrees.570 The two conceptions of the home of the gods—on mountains and in the sky—existed for a time side by side, having in common the feature of remoteness and secrecy; gradually the earthly abode was ignored, and the gods were assigned to the more dignified heavenly home.

Waters

306. To early man waters, fire, winds, are interesting because of their relation to his life, and sacred because of their power and mysteriousness.571 They are regarded by him not as "elements" of the world, but as individual phenomena that affect well-being. His conception of them is not cosmogonic or analytic, but personal; they are entities with which he has to deal.

307. The mobility of masses of water, seeming to be a sign of life, naturally procured them a definite place among sacred things. Any spring, pond, lake, or river with which a tribe was brought into intimate relations was regarded as a source of life or of healing, and of divination. Dwellers by the sea regarded it with awe; its depths were mysterious and its storms terrible.

308. As in the case of animals, plants, and stones, so here: the earliest conception of water masses is that they are divine in themselves (every one, of course, having its own soul), and are potent for bodily help or harm, and for divination. The waters of the Nile, the Ganges, the Jordan, were held to heal the diseased and purify the unclean; and a similar power is now ascribed to the water of the well Zamzam in the Kaaba at Mecca. Hannibal swore, among other things, by the waters,572 and the oath by the river Styx was the most binding of oaths, having power to control even the gods; the thing by which an oath is taken is always originally divine. In the Hebrew ordeal of jealousy the sacred water decides whether the accused woman is guilty or not.573 The sea is treated as a living thing, whose anger may be appeased by gifts; it is a monster, a dragon.574 The Spartan Cleomenes, about to start on a voyage, sacrifices a bull to the sea.575 Offerings to the sea are made in the Maldive Islands.576

309. Water is abundantly employed in religious ritual as a means of purification from ceremonial defilement, and in services of initiation. A bathing-place often stood by a shrine (as in pre-Islamic Arabia and in Islam now), and immersions came to play a prominent part in highly developed systems (Jewish, Christian, Mithraic). The purification was generally symbolic, but in some forms of Christian belief the water of baptism is held to have regenerating power577—a survival of the ancient conception of the divinity of water.

310. It is often hard to say whether a body of water is regarded simply as itself a living thing, or is conceived of as the dwelling place of an isolated or independent spirit. In savage systems the details on this point are hardly ever recorded or obtainable; but the beliefs involved in later folk-lore make it probable that this latter stage of the construction of creeds is passed through in savage life. The water maidens of Greek mythology and the Germanic nixies and water kelpies are developed forms of spirits. Sacred springs and wells are still believed to be inhabited by beings that are not gods, but possess superhuman power.

311. While wells and streams of a domestic character (such as are freely used by human beings) are generally friendly, they have their unfriendly side. The spirits that dwell in them are sometimes regarded as being hostile to man. They drag the incautious wanderer into their depths, and then nothing can save him from drowning. Fear of these malignant beings sometimes prevents attempts to rescue a drowning person; such attempts are held to bring down the vengeance of the water-demon on the would-be rescuer.578

312. In the course of time true water-gods appear. In Greece every river had its deity, and in India such deities are found in the Mahabharata.579 When in the Iliad the river Xanthos rises to seize and drown Achilles, it may be a question whether the stream or the god of the stream is the actor. Nor is it always possible to say whether the extrahuman Power inhabiting a water mass is a true god or a spirit; the latter form may pass by invisible gradations into the former.

313. Waters originally divine tend to become the abodes of the deity of the place, or sacred to him, and healing or other power is ascribed to his presence or agency.580 Sacred water, being unwilling to retain anything impure, thus becomes a means of detecting witches and other criminals, who, when thrown in, cannot sink, but are rejected by the divine Power.

314. Deities of streams and springs do not play an important part in worship or in mythology; their physical functions are not definite enough, and their activities are naturally merged in or subsumed under those of the greater or more definite local gods. If, for example, the Canaanite Baals are gods or lords of underground irrigation,581 this is because they, as divine lords of the particular regions, control all phenomena; they are, in fact, also gods of rain and thunderstorms, harvests and war. So rain-gods in general are to be regarded as local deities, among whose functions that of bestowing rain was regarded as specially important. In the lowest systems the rain-giver may be a sacred stone, dipped in a stream,582 or a royal or priestly magician who is held responsible and is punished if the expected result is not attained.583 In such cases the procedure is often one of imitative magic.584

315. If there be, in the next higher stratum of belief, a local or tribal god, it is he who is looked to for the rain supply; so the early Hebrews looked to Yahweh,585 and the Canaanites, doubtless, to the Baals. The economic importance of rain led, even in low tribes, to the conception of a special deity charged with its bestowal.586 In more elaborate mythologies various deities are credited with rain-making power. In India, for example, Dyaus, the Maruts, Parjanya, Brihaspati, Indra, Agni,587 all concerned with rain, have, all except Agni, evidently grown from local figures with general functions; this appears from the great variety of parts they play. The same thing is true, perhaps, of Zeus and Jupiter in their character of rain-gods—as all-sufficient divine patrons they would be dispensers of all blessings, including rain; they seem, however, to have been originally gods of the sky, and thus naturally the special guardians of rain.588

316. Great masses of water have given rise to myths, mostly cosmogonic. The conception of a watery mass as the primeval material of the world (in Egypt, Babylonia, India, Greece, Rome) belongs not to religion but to science; in a relatively advanced period, however, this mass was represented as a monster, the antagonist of the gods of light and order, and from this representation has come a whole literature of myths. In Babylonia a great cosmogonic poem grew up in which the dragon figures of the water chaos (Tiamat, Mummu, Kingu) play a great part,589 and echoes of this myth appear in the later Old Testament books.

317. In the more elaborate pantheons the local deities of streams and springs tend to disappear, and gods of ocean appear: in Babylonia, Ea; in Greece, Okeanos and Poseidon; in Rome, Neptune; and along with these are numerous subordinate figures—attendants on the great gods, and intrusted with various particular duties.

Fire

318. There was, doubtless, a time when man had not learned to produce fire, and there may now be tribes unacquainted with its domestic uses. But such ignorance, if it exists, is rare; savages generally know how to make fire, and to use it for warmth and for the preparation of food. When men began to reflect on the origin of things, fire seemed to them so wonderful that they supposed it must have been discovered or invented, and the knowledge of it bestowed on men by higher beings, gods or demigods; such benefactors are Hastsezini (of the Navahos), Lightning (of the Pawnees), the Beaver and the Eagle (of the Thompson River Indians of British Columbia), Maui (of the Maoris), Agni, Prometheus.590

319. Though, like other mysterious things, it has been regarded generally (perhaps universally) as sacred, there is no clear proof that it has been worshiped as divine. What may have been the case in remote ages we cannot tell, but, according to the information we possess, it has been, and is, merely revered as in itself mysterious or sacred,591 or as the abode or production of a spirit or a deity. Possibly in the early stages of culture known to us there is a fusion of the element with the indwelling or controlling god or spirit.592 The divine patrons of fire are found in all parts of the world, varying in form and function according to the degrees of advancement of the various communities, from the beast-gods of the Redmen to the departmental deities of the Maoris, Babylonians, Mexicans, and others, and to the more complicated gods of Hindus, Greeks, and Romans.593

320. The most elaborate and most interesting of all fire-cults is the Persian. The ritual of the Avesta appears at times to describe a worship of the element itself: in Fargard xviii the fire implores the householder to rise, wash his hands, and put pure wood on the flame; Yaçna lxi is a hymn of homage and petition addressed to the fire, which is called the son of Ahura Mazda—the householder asks that all the blessings of life may be his as a reward for his sacrifice. The numerous temples devoted to the fire-cult, mentioned by later writers,594 might seem to look in the same direction. But a comparison of other parts of the Avesta makes it doubtful whether in the passages just cited anything more is meant than that the fire, as a creation of Ahura Mazda and sacred to him, is for his sake worthy of reverence and through him a source of blessing. Thus Yaçna xvii is a hymn in honor of Ahura Mazda and all his creatures, among which are mentioned the law of Zarathustra, the fire (and five different fires are named), the soul of the ox, and pure deeds, along with the Amesha-spentas, the heavenly bodies, and good men. This collection shows vagueness in the conception of the divine and the sacred, and, to say the least, leaves it uncertain whether the singer does not think of the fire simply as a symbol of the Supreme God.

321. The relation of fire to the gods, and especially its use in sacrifice, have led to a number of religious ceremonies in which it plays a principal part.595 Certain fires must be kindled by specially appointed sacred persons: among the Todas of Southern India, when a new dairy is visited or an old dairy is reconsecrated;596 among the Lacandones of Central America, on the occasion of the renewal of the incense-bowls;597 in the Peruvian temple at the feast of Raymi, when the flame was intrusted to the care of the Virgins of the Sun, and was to be kept up during the year;598 in the temples of Hestia and Vesta; throughout Greece, when the fires had been polluted by the presence of the Persians, it was ordered that they should be put out and rekindled from the sacred fire at Delphi.599

322. The purificatory power of fire was, doubtless, a fact of early observation.

323. As the physical means of sacrifice, fire acquired a certain symbolic significance; in the Hebrew ritual "fire-offerings" are regarded as specially important. By Carthaginians, Moabites, and Hebrews children were devoted to the deity by fire.600

324. By reason of its brightness fire connects itself in religious imagery with the sun, with lightning, and with light in general, and so appears frequently as a representation of the glory of the deity.601

325. Light is sometimes regarded as an independent thing, and as sacred.602

Winds

326. Traces of an early cult of the physical wind may be found, perhaps, in certain customs that survive in modern communities; as, for example, in the offering of food to the wind that it may be placated and do no harm.603 The belief of sailors that wind may be called up by whistling rests on a process of imitative magic that may be connected with an early cult. Wind is said to be regarded as a divine being in some American tribes.604 But generally it is the spirit or god of a wind (and usually of a definite wind) that is invoked. Examples of wind-gods are found in all parts of the world.605 A wind may be the vehicle or the messenger of a deity.606

327. As in the cases of other elements, referred to above, it is often hard to say whether it is the thing or the deity that is invoked: Achilles's appeal, for instance, seems to be to the physical winds, but Iris, who goes to summon them, finds them carousing like men, and they act like gods.607 It must be borne in mind, however, that in early thought all active things are conceived of as being anthropomorphic, and there is the difficulty, just mentioned, of determining where the anthropomorphic object stops and the spirit or god begins.

Heavenly Bodies

328. The heavenly bodies seem to have been regarded at first merely as objects somehow thrown up into the sky or in some other way fixed there by gods or men.608 Later, under the general anthropomorphizing tendency, they are conceived of as manlike beings, and their characters and histories are worked out in accordance with local ideas. Their origin is ascribed at first to such creative beings as appear in the various early communities; for example, among the Navahos to the First Man, the First Woman, and the coyote.609

329. In half-civilized peoples elaborate cosmogonies arise, in which the sky is introduced along with sun, moon, and stars. The most noteworthy of these representations of the origin of the sky is one that occurs in almost identical forms in Egypt and New Zealand, among the Masai of Central East Africa, and elsewhere: two beings lie in marriage embrace—one is lifted up and stretches from horizon to horizon as the sky, the other remains as the earth.610 The sun is commonly male but sometimes female,611 and there is also diversity of views as to the sex of the moon. The stars are often called the children of the sun and moon.

330. Savage fancy sees in the groups of stars resemblances to human persons and objects.612 Such resemblances are worked out by civilized peoples, a descriptive science of constellations arises, and stories are invented to explain the origin of their names. These stellar myths, brought into connection with others, play a great part in developed mythologies.

331. Among higher communities there are diverse conceptions of the sex of the great luminaries. The word for 'sun' is feminine in Sanskrit, Anglo-Saxon, German, and often in Hebrew; masculine in Babylonian, Assyrian, Greek, and Latin. 'Moon' is masculine in Anglo-Saxon and German, and generally in Sanskrit and the Semitic languages; feminine in Greek and Latin. The reasons for these differences are to be sought in the economic relations of the communities to sun and moon, and in the play of imagination, but the history of the variations is not clear. One proposed explanation is that to those who traveled by night on land or on sea the moon was the strong guide and patron, and by day the sun appeared as a splendidly beautiful woman. Other explanations have been offered, but no general determining principle can be stated.613

332. The early anthropomorphic figures of sun and moon appear to be on the verge of becoming true gods. It is, however, often difficult to decide whether in the widespread veneration of the sun it is to be regarded as a living thing (it is frequently represented as a man, a great chief,614 dwelling in the sky), or a physical object inhabited by a spirit, or a fully developed god.615 The transition to the higher conception is gradual, and will be discussed below,616 along with the representations of the moon and the stars.

333. The view that the sky and the earth are the original progenitors of things appears among many peoples, low and high (notably among the Chinese); the two are sometimes taken for granted, but it is probable that there were always stories accounting for their origin. The sky is sometimes female, usually in the older myths (Maori, Egyptian), sometimes male (Greek, Roman).617

334. Thunder and lightning are regarded in early systems of thought as independent things, only locally or accidentally combined. They are awful and terrible to savage feeling,618 but they have never received religious worship. A quasi-scientific explanation of thunder found among certain peoples (North American, Brazilian, Bakuana, Karen, and others) is that it is produced by the flapping of the wings of a mighty bird.619 More commonly thunder is the voice of a deity, and lightning is his arrow,620 or these are said simply to be sent by a god.621

Worship of Human Beings622

335. We might naturally suppose that human beings, as well as animals, plants, and inanimate things, would be objects of religious reverence to undeveloped communities; men, it might seem, would be thought worthier objects of worship than beasts, plants, and stones. In fact, the cult of human beings has been and is widespread, but in this cult the savage mind makes a sharp distinction between the living and the dead. Living men are tangible and intelligible, affected with human frailties, and therefore offer less food for the imagination than beasts; the souls of dead men are remote, intangible, mysterious, and it is they that have most inspired religious emotion. The history of these cults is in some points obscure; though many facts have been collected, the data are not full and exact enough to furnish a complete explanation of the details of usage, diffusion, origin, and development.

The Cult of the Living

336. Savages appear to put no limit to the possible powers of men. In the absence of any exact knowledge of natural law there is no reason why a man should not be thought capable of inflicting sickness and death, bringing rain, securing food, and doing all that relates to human life. Magicians, prophets, ascetics, and saints are credited with such powers in early and later times. Polynesian chiefs are supposed to be imbued with a sacredness that makes contact with them dangerous, and everything that they touch becomes thereby taboo to the ordinary man; the same sort of sacredness clung to the Roman flamen dialis, to the emperor of Japan, and to many other high officials. This reverence, however, is simply fear of the mysterious, and does not, in itself, reach the height of worship, though it prepares the way for it and may sometimes be scarcely distinguishable from worship proper. The magician is the mouthpiece of a god, and in popular belief is often invested with power that is practically divine.

337. Many cases, in fact, are reported in which living men are worshiped as gods; but such reports are often open to doubt and need confirmation. Travelers and other observers are not always in position to state the facts precisely; particularly they do not always distinguish between awe and religious worship, and the statements of savages on this point are often vague. Frazer has collected a considerable number of examples of alleged worship of living men.623 One of these, that of the dairyman (palol) of the Todas of Southern India, is not supported by the latest observer, who says that the palol is highly respected but not worshiped.624 An apparently clear case of worship is the Panjab god Nikkal Sen, said to be General Nicholson;625 and it is not improbable that in other cases mentioned by Frazer (Marquesas Islands, Raiatea, Samoa, Fiji) actual deification takes place.

338. Among many more-advanced communities divinity has been ascribed to living monarchs: to the kings of ancient Egypt; to many early Babylonian kings; to the emperor of China; to some of the Ptolemies and Seleucids; to certain Roman emperors; to the kings of Mexico and Peru; and in more modern times to the emperor of Japan. Whether such titles involve a real ascription of divinity, or are only an assertion of kinship with the gods, or express nothing more than the adulation of courtiers, it may not be easy always to determine; probably all these conceptions have existed at various times. The conception that men are akin to gods, that there is no difference of nature between the two classes, is an old one, and the ascription of divinity to a king might involve, in earlier stages of civilization or even in relatively advanced stages, no break in the order of things. The custom once established, it might continue to be observed, long accepted seriously by the mass of the people, but coming gradually to be regarded by the educated classes as a mere form.

339. The development of the custom appears most plainly in Egypt.626 The identification of the king with Horus (apparently the ancient patron deity of Egypt) runs through the history down to the Persian conquest: he is called "Horus" or "Golden Horus," and sometimes (as, for example, Mentuhotep IV) "heir of Horus," or is said to sit on the throne of Horus, and has a "Horus name," the affirmation of his divine character; even the monotheistic reformer Amenhotep IV is called "Golden Horus." At the same time he is styled the "son" of this or that deity—Re, Min, Amon, Amon-Re, Osiris—according to the particular patron adopted by him; the liberal interpretation of such filial relation is illustrated by the title "son of the gods of the Northland" given to one monarch. The king is "the good god"; at death he flies to heaven (so, for instance, Totmose III, of the eighteenth dynasty).

340. The official honorific character of divine titles appears as early as the fifteenth century, when Queen Hatshepsut is officially declared to be the daughter of Amon. By such an official procedure Alexander, though not akin to any Egyptian royal house, was declared to be the son of Amon; Ptolemy Philadelphus became the son of the sun-god, and his wife Arsinoë was made a goddess by a solemn ceremony. Possibly the recognition of the divine title, in educated Egyptian circles, as a conventional form began at a relatively early time—the easy way in which a man was made a god may have been felt in such circles to be incompatible with real divinity. Nevertheless the cult of the divinized king was practiced seriously. In some cases the living monarch had his temple and retinue of priests, and divine honors were paid him.627

341. The case was different in the Semitic treatment of kings styled divine. The custom of so regarding them is found only in early Babylonia. The evidence that they were held to be divine consists in the fact that the determinative for divinity (Sumerian dingir, Semitic an) is prefixed to their names in the inscriptions.628 It appears that the determinative occurs at times during a period of about a thousand years (ca. 3000-2000 B.C.—the chronology is uncertain), and is then dropped. The data do not explain the reasons for this change of custom; a natural suggestion is that there came a time when the conception of the deity forbade an ascription of divinity to human beings. However this may be, the nominal divinization of kings seems not to have had any effect on the cultus. As far as the known evidence goes, the king seems never to have been approached with divine worship.629

342. It may be doubted whether the Babylonian usage can properly be called Semitic. As such a custom is found nowhere else in the Semitic area, and as the early Babylonian Semites borrowed much from the non-Semitic Sumerians (they borrowed their system of writing and some literary material), it is conceivable that they adopted this practice from them. There is, to be sure, no proof, except from the inscriptions, that the practice was Sumerian; but, as it is found in some Asiatic non-Semitic lands,630 there is the possibility that it existed among the Sumerians, of whose history, however, we unfortunately know little. It is to be noted that the cessation of the practice appears to be synchronous with the establishment of the first great Semitic dynasty at Babylon.

343. No ascription of divinity to men is found among the Hebrews. The Elohim-beings (called "sons of God" in the English translation of the Bible) are gods. The code forbids men to curse God (not "judges")631—judges are not called "gods." There is nothing going to show that the old Hebrew kings were looked on as divine. Frazer's hypothesis that the king was identified with the God Adonis632 is not supported by the statements of the Old Testament; the title 'my lord' (adoni) given him is simply the ordinary expression of respect and courtesy. He is "the anointed of Yahweh," as many ancient official persons (kings and priests) were inducted into office by the pouring of oil on their heads, but, as a mouthpiece and representative of the deity, he is inferior to the prophet; at best, flattery, such as that of the woman of Tekoa, might liken him to an angel.633 The epithet el gibbor (English Bible, "mighty God"), applied to a Jewish prince, must probably be rendered 'mighty hero.'634 The title 'gods' has been supposed to be given to men (judges) a couple of times in the Psalter,635 but the reference there seems to be to Greek deities regarded as acting as judges.

344. The ascription of divinity to human beings is lacking in Arabia also and among Semitic Moslems generally. The Ismailic and Babist dogmas of the incarnation of God in certain men are of Aryan (Indian) origin.

345. The Chinese conception of the all-pervading and absolute power of the Universe naturally invests the emperor with divinity.636 All human beings are supposed to possess some portion of the divine essence, but he alone, as head and representative of the nation, possesses it in full measure. He is theoretically perfect in thought, word, and deed, and is entitled not only to the reverence and obedience of his subjects, but also to their religious homage. Larger acquaintance with other peoples has doubtless led educated Chinese to regard him as only one among several great kings in the world, but for the people at large he is still practically a god. Other living men also are worshiped as divine.

346. The Japanese formal divinization of the emperor appears to have begun with the establishment of the monarchy (in the sixth or seventh century of our era), but, like the Chinese, goes back to the crude conception of early times. It has been generally accepted seriously by the people, but has not received philosophical formulation. It is now practically given up by the educated classes, and will probably soon vanish completely.637

347. Among the Greeks and the Romans the belief in the divinity of living men and women was of a vague character. In Homer the epithet dios when applied to human beings (individuals or peoples) means little more, if any more, than 'of exalted character' (except in the case of mythical heroes, like Achilles, who were of actual divine parentage). At a later time such divinization was sometimes treated jestingly. If Plutarch may be accepted as authority,638 Alexander did not take his own godhead seriously, did not believe in it, but allowed it merely for its effect on others. It was little more than a farce when the Syrian-Greek Antiochus II, for services rendered to a city, was called "Theos" by the grateful citizens;639 it was the baldest flattery when Herod's oration640 was greeted by a tumultuous assembly as the "voice of a god." Augustus, though he allowed temples and altars to be consecrated to him in the provinces, did not permit it in Rome, being, apparently, ashamed of such procedures.641 The most infamous of the early emperors, Caligula, received divine honors in his lifetime by his own decree.642 Apart from these particular cases, however, the general conception of the possibility of a man's being divine had a notable effect on the religious development in the Roman Empire.643 The custom, for example, of burning incense before the Emperor's statue (which faithful Christians refused to do), while it strengthened the idea of the presence of the divine in human life, doubtless debased it.

348. Deification of living men is not found in the great national religions of India and Persia. Mazdaism, like Hebraism, kept the human distinctly apart from the divine: Ahura Mazda is virtually absolute, and Zoroaster and the succeeding prophets, including the savior Çaoshyanç, are men chosen and appointed by him.644 Vedism developed the nature-gods, and in Brahmanism the goal of the worshiper was union with the divine, but not independent divinity; the muni by ascetic observances might attain a power equal or superior to that of the gods and feared by them,645 but he remained (like the old magician) a powerful man and did not receive divine worship.646 In recent times the followers of the Brahma-Samaj leader Sen are said to have worshiped him as a god647—apparently an isolated phenomenon, the origin of which is not clear. Buddha was purely human to himself and his contemporaries. The ascription of divinity to the Tibetan Grand Lamas is a product of the transformation of Buddhism under the influence of a crude non-Aryan population that retained the old conception of the essential identity of nature of men and gods.

349. When chiefs and kings are divinized, offerings are usually made to them as to other gods; their cult becomes a part of the polytheistic system. But it is rare that they displace the old local deities or equal them in influence. Their worship passes with the passing of polytheism.

The Cult of the Dead

350. In the history of religion the veneration of the dead, as is remarked above, is more widely diffused and more effective than that of the living. We may distinguish between the cult of known historical persons after death (which is closely related to that of living men), the deification of mythical ancestors, and the worship of ghosts.

351. Historical persons. In simple communities commanding personalities that have impressed the imagination of the people by proofs of power and by conferring benefits on communities may not unnaturally receive divine honors after death. Lyall reports a case of this sort in recent times: the French officer Raymond in Hyderabad is said to have been worshiped as a god.648 Other cases are reported as occuring in Samoa and in India.649 Rivers mentions traditions among the Todas of Southern India which, he thinks, may vouch for the worship of gods who were originally men, but implicit reliance cannot be placed on such traditions.650 Two apparently definite instances of deification are given by Ellis,651 both of cruel kings (one dethroned in 1818), to whom temples with complete rituals are dedicated; but the deification in one of these cases (and probably in the other) was a deliberate act of political leaders, and not a product of spontaneous popular feeling. Two other local gods mentioned by Ellis were, according to the tradition, two men who began the trade that made Whydah the chief port of the west coast of Africa; but here also the tradition is not perfectly trustworthy.

352. Egyptian kings were regularly deified after death, being identified with Osiris; their cult, though not equal in sanctity to that of the gods proper, was still prominent and important.652 It is probably to be regarded as a revision and magnification of the cult of the dead kin, combined with the desire to honor great representative men. No such custom is known to have existed among Semitic peoples, by whom a sharp distinction was made between the divine and the human. In India it was chiefly the ascetic sages that were religiously eminent, and in the prevailing pantheistic system these (as is remarked above), absorbing the divine essence, sometimes became as powerful as gods, but passed after death into the cosmic All, and remained human. The Mazdean faith, like the Israelite, made it impossible to accept a deceased man as a god.

353. Examples of the occasional divinization of deceased men in the Hellenic world are given below.653 In Rome the custom arose at a comparatively late period, and it was the work not of spontaneous Roman thought but of political philosophy.654 The deification of the Roman emperors after death had its ground in the reconstruction of Roman life undertaken by Augustus. He recognized a principle of unification in the resuscitation of the old national religion, in which the people believed, whether he himself did or not. Religion in Rome was largely an affair of the state; the leaders of the public religion were great state officials. Augustus was made pontifex maximus, and it was only one step farther to elevate the chief magistrate to the rank of a god. The good sense of the time generally forbade the bestowment of this honor during the imperator's lifetime, but an apotheosis was in accord with the veneration paid to the manes and with the exalted position of the Emperor as absolute lord of the Western world.655 Popular feeling appears to have accepted this divinization without question and in sincerity; educated circles accepted it as an act of political policy. The elevation of Julius Cæsar and Augustus to the rank of gods established the rule, and deceased emperors received divine honors up to the triumph of Christianity.656

354. In China, Confucius was deified as the special exponent of the state religion and the authoritative teacher of the principles of social and political life. His religious cult is practiced by the government (officially) and by the masses of the people; how far it is sincerely accepted by the educated classes is uncertain. In China and in Japan the gods of war are said to be historical persons deified.