The Psychological Origin and the Nature of Religion/Chapter 3

by James Henry Leuba

CHAPTER III

ORIGIN OF THE IDEAS OF GHOSTS, NATURE-BEINGS, AND GODS

Every savage tribe known to us has already passed beyond the naturistic stage of development. The living savages believe in ghosts, in spirits, and all of them, perhaps, also in particular spirits elevated to the dignity of gods. Whence these ideas of unseen personal beings? They may be traced to four independent sources.

(1) States of temporary loss of consciousness—trances, swoons, sleep, etc.—seem in themselves sufficient to suggest to ignorant observers the existence of ‘doubles,’ i.e. of beings dwelling within the body, animating it, and able to absent themselves from it for a time or permanently. These alleged beings have been called ‘ghosts’ or ‘souls.’ The belief in a second life of the dead would also spring easily enough from these observations.

(2) Apparitions in sleep, in the hallucinations of fever, of insanity, etc., of persons still living or dead, seem also sufficient to lead to a belief in ghosts and in survival after death.

These two distinct classes of facts have no doubt co-operated in the production of the belief in ghosts, so that I shall refer to them in the sequel as the double origin of the ghost-belief. Echos, and reflections in water and in polished surfaces may have played a subsidiary role in establishing, or confirming, the belief in ghosts and in spirits,

(3) When discussing animal behaviour, we saw reasons to admit that a fleeting personification of objects moving in an unusual way might be within the mental possibilities of the higher animals. The third independent source of belief in unseen personal agents is the spontaneous personification of striking natural phenomena, storms, tornadoes, thunder, sudden spring-vegetation, etc. The report of Tanner^[1] that one night Picheto (a North American Chief), becoming much alarmed at the violence of a storm, got up, offered some tobacco to the thunder and entreated it to stop, should not excite surprise even though it should refer to the lowest savage. There is, of course, a long way between the sudden, temporary, and isolated personification of a natural phenomenon and the stable and generalised belief in the existence of personal agents behind visible nature. What we mean to assert here is merely that the systematised belief can have arisen out of the impulsive and occasional personification of awe-striking and frightening spectacles.

(4) Many persons have observed with surprise the apparition in young children of the problem of creation. A child notices a curiously-shaped stone, and asks who made it. He is told that it was formed in the stream by the water. Then, suddenly, he throws out, in quick succession, questions that are as much exclamations of astonishment as queries, ‘Who made the stream, who the mountain, who the earth?’ The necessity of a Maker is, no doubt, borne in upon the savage at a very early time, not upon every member of a tribe, but upon some peculiarly gifted individual, who imparts to his fellows the awe-striking idea of a mysterious, all-powerful Creator. The form under which the Creator is imagined is, of course, derived from the beings with which his senses have made the savage familiar.

In what chronological order did the three kinds of unseen beings appear? Which was first: ghosts, nature-beings, or creator? Our present knowledge does not provide an answer to this query. But this one may venture to affirm: they need not have appeared in the same order everywhere. It is conceivable that among certain groups of men the idea of a creator first attained clearness and influence, while elsewhere the idea of ghosts implanted itself before the others.

A question of greater importance to the student of the origin of Religion is that of the lineage of the first god or gods, i.e. of the first unseen, personal agents with whom men entered into relations definite and influential enough to deserve the name Religion. Are they descended from ghosts, or are they nature-beings, or creators? I say, ‘descended’ from ghosts, for ghosts have not, originally, all the qualities required of a divinity. They are at first hardly greater than men, though somewhat different. They must be magnified and differentiated from human beings if they are to generate the religious attitude. A comparison of the double-source of the ghost-belief with the source of the belief in nature-beings suggests the following remarks. Phenomena belonging to classes one and two necessarily lead to a belief in unseen man-like beings. The familiar relation of ghosts with the tribe, and also the great number of them, offer a definite resistance to the process of deification. It is otherwise with the personified nature-powers, for they are not necessarily, like ghosts, mere dead men in another life. In conceiving of an agent animating nature, the imagination is not limited to the thought of a particular human being, not even of a human being at all. The thunder might be the voice of some monstrous animal. The surpassing variety, the magnitude and magnificence of nature, stimulate the imagination into more original activity than the apparitions of men and women in dreams or in trances. For these reasons, if the choice was between ghosts and nature-beings, it would be advisable to favour the hypothesis that the first gods were derived from the spontaneous personification of striking natural events. But the idea of a creator must take precedence of ghosts and nature-beings in the making of Religion, for a world-creator possesses from the first the greatness necessary to the object of a cult, and the creature who recognises a creator can hardly fail to feel his relationship to him. A Maker cannot, moreover, be an enemy to those who issue from him, but must, it seems, appear as the Great Ancestor, benevolently inclined towards his offspring. Incomparable greatness, creative power, benevolence, are as many attributes favourable to the appearance of a Religion in the high sense which, as we shall see, W. Robertson Smith gives to the word.

The order in which appeared the three kinds of unseen agents is of considerable importance, for if, for instance, the ghost-belief was first, it seems unavoidable that ghosts should have been projected into natural objects and used to explain natural phenomena. It is a task for the historian of Religion to trace the rise of the idea of God in its several possible sources, and to indicate in each particular case the contribution of each source to the making of the earliest gods.

Belief in the existence of unseen, anthropopathic beings is not Religion. It is only when man enters into relation with them that Religion comes into existence. The passage from the animistic interpretation of nature, or from the mere belief in ghosts, or in a creator, to Active Religion is not to be taken as a matter of course, for it may require on the one hand, as we have said, a transformation of the man-like or animal-like unseen beings, such as will make entering into relation with them possible and worth while, and, on the other, the invention of ways and means to that end, or, at least, the adaptation of old habits of behaviour to the requirements of the new relation. The slowness with which our modern ritual has been envolved should be sufficient to undeceive any one inclined to think that the establishment of the initial religious rites presented no difficulty.

That a belief in ghosts may coincide with only a pre-religious stage of culture is not a mere supposition. There are tribes in South-East Australia among which it is customary to make fires in the graves, and to place in them water, food, and weapons. Yet we are told that these people have no system of propitiation or of worship. It appears probable that in certain instances of this sort, the only motive of action is benevolence. They wish the ghost to be able to warm himself, eat, drink, and defend himself against enemies. At times, however, the promptings of fear are discernible, as, for instance, when the legs of the corpse are broken in order that he may not roam at night. It seems that originally ghosts are not endowed with sufficient mischievous or benevolent power to cause the appearance and the organisation of propitiatory reactions. But even when some particular ghost or spirit has been fabled into awe-striking magnitude, systematic worship is not necessarily present. How far the deification process can go without bringing with it active relations, is well shown in the case of the ‘Father’ of the tribes of South-East Australia. Different tribes call him by different names, Daramulun, Baiame, etc. Howitt tells us that Daramulun is an anthropomorphic, supernatural being who used to dwell upon the earth, but now lives in a land beyond the sky. He can make himself visible, and then appears in the form of an old man of the Australian race. ‘He is imagined as the ideal of those qualities which are, according to their standard, virtues worthy of being imitated. Such would be a man who is skilful in the use of weapons of offence and defence, all-powerful in magic, but generous and liberal to his people; who does no injury nor violence to any one, yet treats with severity any breaches of custom or of morality. Such is, according to my knowledge of the Australian tribes, their ideal of the Head-man, and naturally it is that of the Biamban, the master of the sky-country.’ Now, despite their belief in this definite, powerful, and benevolent Father, ‘there is not any worship of him’; but ‘the dances round the figure of clay and the invocating of his name by the medicine-men, certainly might have led up to it.’^[2] For my part, I see here an instance of what I have called Passive Religion. The point of special interest to us is that nothing more than these simplest of rites co-exists with the belief in a being so definite and elevated so high above ordinary spirits and above man as is this All-Father of the Australians.

It seems highly probable that for generations the relations maintained with ghosts, nature-beings, and creators, by primitive man were too occasional and unofficial to permit of our regarding them as anything more than steps preliminary to the formation of Positive Religion.

Rites and ceremonies serve, in addition to their ostensible purpose, to complete the work of fixation begun by language. It is only when a belief has become embodied in a system of actions that it has attained the full measure of reality and durability of which it is capable.

Notes

1. Lord Avebury, On the Origin of Civilisation (3rd edition, 1875), p. 212.
2. The Native Tribes of South-East Australia, pp. 500, 506-508.