Note 112.1 — The Evolution of Religion

We deceive ourselves if we are content to say that terms such as “pure heart,” “pure soul” are mere metaphors. The theory of metaphors is a refuge for those who do not understand, or who do not wish to understand, religious history, and much might be said of the far-reaching effects of this fallacy of interpretation. The soul was not called “ψυχή” or “animus” or “spiritus” by mere metaphor: nor was the phrase “white liver” a metaphor for the people who first applied it to the coward. Primitive man may be the victim of false analogy and association of ideas, but these mental processes mean for him something other than metaphor means for us. It is not by way of metaphor that the modern Basuto speaks of his heart “being black and dirty,” that is, “impure” or “sad,” the same word being used for corporeal impurity, sadness, and sin.112.1 The colour of the impure act or bodily state is, so to speak, transferred inwards: if the act involves a physical stain, then, as things, words, and thoughts are so closely correlated in early psychology, the term “unclean word,” “unclean thought” expresses a literal belief: gradually, as the concept of mind and soul becomes more and more immaterial, we may reach the spiritual concept of mental purity which is of value for modern ethics. The example quoted above reveals the Basuto at the half-way point in this evolution: and a certain North-American Indian tribe, whose customs have been recorded by Miss Alice Fletcher, appears to have reached the same mental stage; in her paper called the “Shadow of a Ghost Lodge,”113.1 she mentions that the kinsmen who sit together isolated from others and mourning the dead for a period must rigidly abstain from any tales of fighting or “bad words,” they must forget old injuries and cancel all grudges. The mental process that leads to this excellent tapu may be stated thus: the mourners are in a condition of deep impurity which they are endeavouring to cleanse away; quarrelling, vindictive speech, and memories would intensify the impurity, because all these are associated with bloodshed and death. This analogy may serve to explain the curious rule prevailing at Athens that anyone who laid a suppliant-bough on the altar in the Eleusinion during the period of the Eleusinian Mysteries was liable to the penalty of death or a heavy fine.114.1 I would suggest that the underlying thought is the same: the laying the suppliant-bough indicated a grievance and was a legally quarrelsome act, and therefore a violation of the purity of the solemn season. It was probably a similar chain of reasoning that induced the Greeks and other races of the higher religion to enforce silence before and during the sacrifice, not merely in order that the priest should not be disturbed by the chatter of the crowd; for the word used for this sacred silence is εὐφημία, “auspicious speech”: it is obvious that the original motive of the rule was to guard against the utterance of any impure word that might produce an ill-omened condition of mind in the congregation.