Pagan and Christian Creeds [3]
in-law, or passing a lightning-struck tree; and (what is especially to be noticed) they tended to include acts which offered any special PLEASURE or temptation--like sex or marriage or the enjoyment of a meal. Taboos surrounded these things too, and the psychological connection is easy to divine: but I shall deal with this general subject later.
It may be guessed that so complex a system of regulations made life anything but easy to early peoples; but, preposterous and unreasonable as some of the taboos were, they undoubtedly had the effect of compelling the growth of self-control. Fear does not seem a very worthy motive, but in the beginning it curbed the violence of the purely animal passions, and introduced order and restraint among them. Simultaneously it became itself, through the gradual increase of knowledge and observation, transmuted and etherealized into something more like wonder and awe and (when the gods rose above the horizon) into reverence. Anyhow we seem to perceive that from the early beginnings (in the Stone Age) of self-consciousness in Man there has been a gradual development--from crass superstition, senseless and accidental, to rudimentary observation, and so to belief in Magic; thence to Animism and personification of nature-powers in more or less human form, as earth-divinities or sky-gods or embodiments of the tribe; and to placation of these powers by rites like Sacrifice and the Eucharist, which in their turn became the foundation of Morality. Graphic representations made for the encouragement of fertility--as on the walls of Bushmen's rock-dwellings or the ceilings of the caverns of Altamira-- became the nurse of pictorial Art; observations of plants or of the weather or the stars, carried on by tribal medicine-men for purposes of witchcraft or prophecy, supplied some of the material of Science; and humanity emerged by faltering and hesitating steps on the borderland of those finer perceptions and reasonings which are supposed to be characteristic of Civilization.
The process of the evolution of religious rites and ceremonies has in its main outlines been the same all over the world, as the reader will presently see--and this whether in connection with the numerous creeds of Paganism or the supposedly unique case of Christianity; and now the continuity and close intermixture of these great streams can no longer be denied--nor IS it indeed denied by those who have really studied the subject. It is seen that religious evolution through the ages has been practically One thing--that there has been in fact a World- religion, though with various phases and branches.
And so in the present day a new problem arises, namely how to account for the appearance of this great Phenomenon, with its orderly phases of evolution, and its own spontaneous[1] growths in all corners of the globe--this phenomenon which has had such a strange sway over the hearts of men, which has attracted them with so weird a charm, which has drawn out their devotion, love and tenderness, which has consoled them in sorrow and affliction, and yet which has stained their history with such horrible sacrifices and persecutions and cruelties. What has been the instigating cause of it?
[1] For the question of spontaneity see chap. x and elsewhere.
The answer which I propose to this question, and which is developed to some extent in the following chapters, is a psychological one. It is that the phenomenon proceeds from, and is a necessary accompaniment of, the growth of human Consciousness itself--its growth, namely, through the three great stages of its unfoldment. These stages are (1) that of the simple or animal consciousness, (2) that of SELF-consciousness, and (3) that of a third stage of consciousness which has not as yet been effectively named, but whose indications and precursive signs we here and there perceive in the rites and prophecies and mysteries of the early religions, and in the poetry and art and literature generally of the later civilizations. Though I do not expect or wish to catch Nature and History in
It may be guessed that so complex a system of regulations made life anything but easy to early peoples; but, preposterous and unreasonable as some of the taboos were, they undoubtedly had the effect of compelling the growth of self-control. Fear does not seem a very worthy motive, but in the beginning it curbed the violence of the purely animal passions, and introduced order and restraint among them. Simultaneously it became itself, through the gradual increase of knowledge and observation, transmuted and etherealized into something more like wonder and awe and (when the gods rose above the horizon) into reverence. Anyhow we seem to perceive that from the early beginnings (in the Stone Age) of self-consciousness in Man there has been a gradual development--from crass superstition, senseless and accidental, to rudimentary observation, and so to belief in Magic; thence to Animism and personification of nature-powers in more or less human form, as earth-divinities or sky-gods or embodiments of the tribe; and to placation of these powers by rites like Sacrifice and the Eucharist, which in their turn became the foundation of Morality. Graphic representations made for the encouragement of fertility--as on the walls of Bushmen's rock-dwellings or the ceilings of the caverns of Altamira-- became the nurse of pictorial Art; observations of plants or of the weather or the stars, carried on by tribal medicine-men for purposes of witchcraft or prophecy, supplied some of the material of Science; and humanity emerged by faltering and hesitating steps on the borderland of those finer perceptions and reasonings which are supposed to be characteristic of Civilization.
The process of the evolution of religious rites and ceremonies has in its main outlines been the same all over the world, as the reader will presently see--and this whether in connection with the numerous creeds of Paganism or the supposedly unique case of Christianity; and now the continuity and close intermixture of these great streams can no longer be denied--nor IS it indeed denied by those who have really studied the subject. It is seen that religious evolution through the ages has been practically One thing--that there has been in fact a World- religion, though with various phases and branches.
And so in the present day a new problem arises, namely how to account for the appearance of this great Phenomenon, with its orderly phases of evolution, and its own spontaneous[1] growths in all corners of the globe--this phenomenon which has had such a strange sway over the hearts of men, which has attracted them with so weird a charm, which has drawn out their devotion, love and tenderness, which has consoled them in sorrow and affliction, and yet which has stained their history with such horrible sacrifices and persecutions and cruelties. What has been the instigating cause of it?
[1] For the question of spontaneity see chap. x and elsewhere.
The answer which I propose to this question, and which is developed to some extent in the following chapters, is a psychological one. It is that the phenomenon proceeds from, and is a necessary accompaniment of, the growth of human Consciousness itself--its growth, namely, through the three great stages of its unfoldment. These stages are (1) that of the simple or animal consciousness, (2) that of SELF-consciousness, and (3) that of a third stage of consciousness which has not as yet been effectively named, but whose indications and precursive signs we here and there perceive in the rites and prophecies and mysteries of the early religions, and in the poetry and art and literature generally of the later civilizations. Though I do not expect or wish to catch Nature and History in