Myth and Science Part 7

Those readers who have gone with us so far will perceive that these were not mere accidents of rare occurrence in animal life, but that they are the necessary effect of mythical representation in its first stage, although they cannot in any way be supposed to be produced by fetis.h.i.+sm, properly so called. For if the dog were frightened and agitated by the movement of the umbrella, or ran away, as Herbert Spencer tells us, from the stick which had hurt him while he was playing with it, it was because an unusual movement or pain produced by an object to which habit had rendered him indifferent, aroused in the animal the congenital sense of the intentional subjectivity of phenomena, and this is really the first stage of myth, and not of its subsequent form of fetis.h.i.+sm.

I must therefore repeat that the first form of myth which spontaneously arises in man as an animal, is the vague but intentional subjectivity of the phenomena presented to his senses. This subjectivity is sometimes quiescent and implicit, and sometimes active, in which case it may arouse the fear of evil, or the hope of physical pleasures.

As in man the reflex power slowly and gradually grows--although at first in an exclusively empirical form--so he slowly and gradually accepts the first form of fetis.h.i.+sm, which consists in the permanent and fixed individuation of a phenomenon or object of nature, as a power which he reflectively believes to be the artificer of good or evil.

In this stage it is no longer the phenomenon actually present which arouses the apprehension of an intentional subjectivity, while its image and efficacy disappear with the sensible object; the phenomenon, or the inanimate or animate form, is reflectively retained by the memory, in which it appears as a malignant or benignant power. In a word, the first stage of fetis.h.i.+sm, which is the second form of the evolution of myth, is the universal and primitive sense of myth in nature, which man alone is capable of applying permanently to some given phenomenon, such as wind, rain, and the like, or lakes, volcanoes, and rocks, and these remain fixed in the mind as powers of good or evil. In the earlier stage of myth the scene is constantly changing, while in the latter, certain objects or phenomena remain fixed in the memory, exciting the same emotions whether they are present or absent, and to this consciousness we may trace the dawn of wors.h.i.+p.

Ethnography affords plain proofs of the fetis.h.i.+sm which preceded the civilization of many peoples, and among those which still remain in the stage of fetis.h.i.+sm we can trace the primitive form of a vague impersonation of natural objects and phenomena.[28]

As we have already seen, every animal and unfamiliar object is in this first stage of fetis.h.i.+sm regarded as the external covering of a spiritual power which has a.s.sumed what is believed to be the primordial form of the fetish; this fetish takes the place of the natural phenomenon, and is believed to be capable of exercising a direct subjectivity which is vague but perfectly real.

We pa.s.s from this first form of fetish to the second, namely to the veneration of objects, animals, plants, and the like, in which an extrinsic power is supposed to be incarnated. Many ages elapsed before man attained to this second stage of fetis.h.i.+sm, since it was necessarily preceded by a further and reflex elaboration of myth, namely, the genesis of a belief in spirits.

Herbert Spencer and Tylor are among the writers who have given a masterly description of this phase of the human intellect, and history and ethnography have confirmed the accuracy of their researches and conclusions. The shadow cast by a man's own body, the reflection of images in the water, natural echoes, the reappearance of images of the departed in dreams, the general instinct which leads man to vivify all he sees, produced what may be called the reduplication of man in himself, and the savage's primitive theory of the human soul. Originally this soul was multiplied into all these natural phenomena, but it was afterwards distributed by the mythical faculty into three, four, five, or more powers, personifying the spirits. This belief in a multiplicity of souls in man is not only still extant among more or less rude peoples of the present day in Asia, Europe, Africa, America, and Polynesia, but it is also the foundation of the belief of more civilized nations on the subject, including our own Aryan race. Birch and others observe that the Egyptians ascribed four spirits to man--Ba, Akba, Ka, and Khaba. The Romans give three:

"Bis duo sunt homines, manes, caro, spiritus, umbra."

The same belief is found among nearly all savages. The Fijians distinguish between the spirit which is buried with the dead man and that more ethereal spirit which is reflected in the water and lingers near the place where he died. The Malagasy believe in three souls, the Algonquin in two, the Dakotan in three, the native of Orissa in four.

Since a fetish, strictly so called, is the incarnation of a power in some given object, it must be preceded by this rude belief in spirits and shades. Such a complex elaboration takes time, since it involves a previous creation of powers, spirits or the shades of men; these lead to the belief in independent spirits of various origin, which people the heavens and all parts of the world. Hence arose the belief in transmigration, the necessary prelude to the theory of the incarnation, which was ultimately const.i.tuted by fetis.h.i.+sm. The comparative study of languages shows that including the Aryan and Semitic races, the belief in spirits was developed in all peoples, and in all of them we also find a belief in the transmigration of souls.

The transmigration of the human soul was first believed to take place in the body of a new-born child, since at the moment of death the soul of the dying person entered into the foetus. The Algonquins buried the corpses of their children by the wayside, so that their souls might easily enter into the bodies of the pregnant women who pa.s.sed that way.

Some of the North American tribes believed that the mother saw in a dream the dead relation who was to imprint his likeness on her unborn child. At Calabar, when the mother who has lost a child gives birth to another, she believes that the dead child is restored to her. The natives of New Guinea believe that a son who greatly resembles his dead father has inherited his soul. Among the Yorubas the new-born child is greeted with the words: "Thou hast returned at last!" The same ideas prevail among the Lapps and Tartars, as well as among the negroes of the West Coast of Africa. Among the aborigines of Australia the belief is widely diffused that those who die as black return as white men.

Primitive and ignorant peoples perceive no precise distinction between man and brutes, so that, as Tylor observes, they readily accept the belief of the transmigration of the human soul into an animal, and then into inanimate objects, and this belief culminates in the incarnation of the true fetish. Among some of the North American tribes the spirits of the dead are supposed to pa.s.s into bears. An Eskimo widow refused to eat seal's flesh because she supposed that her husband's soul had migrated into that animal. Others have imagined that the souls of the dead pa.s.sed into birds, beetles, and other insects, according to their social rank when still alive. Some African tribes believe that the dead migrate into certain species of apes.

By pursuing this theory, as we shall presently show more fully, the transition was easy to the incarnation of a spirit, whether that of a man or of some other being, into any object whatever, which was thereby invested with beneficent or malignant power. It is easy to show that in this second stage of fetis.h.i.+sm, which some have believed to be the primitive form of myth, there would be no further progress in the mythical elaboration of spirits, their mode of life, their influence and possible transmigrations. This elaboration is indeed a product of the mythical faculty, but in a rational order; it is a logical process, mythical in substance, but purely reflective in form. For which reason it was impossible for animals to attain to this stage.

Some peoples remained in this phase of belief, while others advanced to the ulterior and polytheistic form. This may also be divided into two cla.s.ses; those who cla.s.sify and ultimately reduce fetishes into a more general conception, and those whose conception takes an anthropomorphic form. Let us examine the genesis of both cla.s.ses.

When the popular belief in spirits had free development, the number of spirits and powers was countless, as many examples show. To give a single instance--the Australians hold that there is an innumerable mult.i.tude of spirits; the heavens, the earth, every nook, grove, bush, spring, crag, and stone are peopled with them. In the same way, some American tribes suppose the visible and invisible world to be filled with good and evil spirits; so do the Khonds, the Negroes of New Guinea, and, as Castren tells us, the Turanian tribes of Asia and Europe.

Consequently, fetishes, which are the incarnation of these spirits in some object, animate or inanimate, natural or artificial, are innumerable, since primitive man and modern savages have created such fetishes, either at their own pleasure or with the aid of their priests, magicians, and sorcerers.

Man's co-ordinating faculty, in those races which are capable of progressive evolution, does not stop short at this inorganic disintegration of things; he begins a process of cla.s.sification and, at the same time, of reduction, by which the numerous fetishes are, by their natural points of likeness and unlikeness in character and form, reduced to types and cla.s.ses, which, as we have already shown, comprise in themselves the qualities of all the particular objects of the same species which are diffused throughout nature.

By this spontaneous process of human thought, due to the innate power of reasoning, man has gradually reduced the chaos of special fetishes to a tolerably systematic order, and he then goes on to more precise simplification. Let us try to trace in this historic fact the cla.s.sifying process at the moment when the first form of polytheism succeeds to irregular and anarchical fetis.h.i.+sm.

In the Samoan islands, a local G.o.d is wont to appear in the form of an owl, and the accidental discovery of a dead owl would be deplored, and its body would be buried with solemn rites. The death of this particular bird does not, however, imply the death of the G.o.d himself, since the people believe him to be incarnated in the whole species. In this fact we see that a special fetish is developed into a specific form; thus a permanent type is evolved from special appearances.

Acosta has handed down to us another belief of the comparatively civilized Peruvians, which recalls the primitive genesis of their mythical ideas. He says that the shepherds used to adore various stars, to which they a.s.signed the names of animals; stars which protected men against the respective animals after whom they were called. They held the general belief that all animals whatever had a representative in heaven, which watched over their reproduction, and of which they were, so to speak, the essence. This affords another example of the more general extension and cla.s.sification, and, at the same time, of the reduction of the original mult.i.tude of fetishes.

Some of the North American Indians a.s.serted that every species of animal had an elder brother, who was the origin of all the individuals of the species. They said, for example, that the beaver, which was the elder brother of this species of rodents, was as large as one of their cabins.

Others supposed that all kinds of animals had their type in the world of souls, a _manitu_, which kept guard over them. Ralston, in his "Songs of the Russian People," tells us that Buyan, the island paradise of Russian mythology, contains a serpent older than all others, a larger raven, a finer queen bee, and so of all other animals. Morgan, in his work upon the Iroquois, observes that they believe in a spirit or G.o.d of every species of trees and plants.

From these beliefs and facts, drawn from different peoples and different parts of the world, we can understand how a vague and inorganic fetis.h.i.+sm gradually became cla.s.sified into types which const.i.tute the first phase of polytheism. The logical effort which transformed the manifold beliefs into types goes on, but from their vague and indefinite nature, not only the power, but also the extrinsic form of man is easily infused into them, so that they are invested with human faculties and sensations, and also with the anthropomorphic form and countenance of which we have spoken elsewhere. In fact, when the special fetishes which are naturally alike are united in a single type, the object, animal, or phenomenon which corresponds to it in this early stage of polytheism is no longer perceived, but a _numen_ is evolved from this type, which has not only human power, but a human form; and hence follow the specific idols of serpents, birds, and all natural phenomena, in which the primitive fetish has been incarnated.[29]

In this second stage of polytheism, anthropomorphism appears in an external form, and the specific type is transformed into the idol which represents and dominates over it, inspiring the commission of beneficent or hurtful acts. Of this it is unnecessary to adduce examples, since all the mythologies which have reached this polytheistic stage are anthropomorphic, and in these the specific type, which serves as the first step to polytheism, subsequently becomes a completely human idol.

After this anthropomorphic cla.s.sification has been reached by logical elaboration, a new field is opened for the reduction of special types into those which are more general, as had been previously the case in the early stages of myth. By continually concentrating, and at the same time by enlarging the value of the conception, it is united in a single form which const.i.tutes the dawn and genesis of monotheism. This methodical process, which is characteristic of human thought, may be traced in all peoples which have really attained to the monotheistic idea, in the Aryan and Semitic races, in China, j.a.pan, and Egypt, in Peru and Mexico; the belief may also be obscurely traced in an inchoate form among savage and inferior tribes, as, for example, among the Indians of Central and North America, and among some of the inhabitants of Africa and barbarous Asia.

While this conception took a more or less definite form among the more advanced peoples, the earlier and debased myths maintained their ground, and still continue to do so. Of this we have examples in Europe itself, and among its more civilized peoples which have been transplanted elsewhere; for while in one direction a capacity for cla.s.sification leads to a purer monotheistic conception, and even to rational science, the great majority of the common people, and even of those of higher culture, still hold many ideas which are polytheistic and anthropomorphic, and some which really belong to the debased stage of fetis.h.i.+sm and vulgar superst.i.tion.

Other causes contribute to produce the natural and intrinsic concurrence of the several stages of myth which are found existing together in the life of a people. Such, for example, is the conquest effected by a more civilized nation over another race, inferior by nature or r.e.t.a.r.ded by other circ.u.mstances. The mythical ideas of the conquered people remain, and are even diffused through the lower cla.s.ses of the conquering race; or they are ingrafted by a synthetic and a.s.similating process, so as to modify other mythical and religious beliefs. This compound of various stages and various beliefs also occurs through the moral and intellectual diffusion of dogma, without the acquisition of really new matter. Manifest proofs of these various stages of myth, co-existent together, may be traced in the development of the Vedic ideas among the earlier aboriginal nations, and conversely; as in the case of the Aztecs and Incas in Mexico and Peru, whose earlier beliefs were mixed with those of their conquerors. The same thing may be observed in the development of Judaism during the Babylonish captivity, in the biblical and messianic doctrines which were grafted on pagan beliefs, and in the teaching of Islam, as it was adopted in the East and among the black races of Africa.

We must make allowance for these extrinsic accidents if we are to describe correctly the natural course and logical evolution of myth.

Even with respect to the special evolution of myth in a separate people, unmixed with others, while it is normal in what may be termed its general form and categorical phases, yet like all natural objects and phenomena, and much more in all which concerns the human mind, there are variations in its forms, and it attains its ends by many ways.

If we take a wider view of the general and reciprocal influences of ethnic myths; as respects the historic results of mythologies, we shall see that if every race evolved its sphere of myth in accordance with the canons laid down by us, their effect upon each other would work together for a common result more quickly than when each is taken apart. The reader must allow me to make my meaning clear by the following pa.s.sage from my work on the "Dottrina razionale del Progresso," which I published in 1863, in the "Politecnico," Milan, on the fusion of the monotheistic conception of the Semitic race with the beliefs of Greece and Rome at the dawn of Christianity:--

"Christianity was originally based on the absolute idea of the divine first Principle, to which one portion of the Semitic race had attained by intellectual evolution, and by the ac.u.men of the great men who brought this idea to perfection. Either because of their clearer consciousness, or from their environment and the physical circ.u.mstances of the race, the Semitic people pa.s.sed from the primitive ideas of mythology to the conception of the absolute and infinite Being, while other races still adhered to altogether fanciful and anthropomorphic ideas of this Being. Our race had an Olympus, like the others, and throughout its history this Olympus was always a.s.suming new forms, although a human conception was the basis of its religious ideas. The Chinese and Semitic races were the first to rise to the conception of an absolute first principle, but in both cases the conception was more or less unfruitful.

"The gradual transition from consciousness to conception, from the fact to the idea, from the idol to the law, from the symbol to the thought, from the finite to the infinite, is the characteristic and essential course taken by the human mind. But, practically, this process is more gradual or more rapid, is r.e.t.a.r.ded or advanced, attains its aim or stops short in its first rudiments, according to the race in which it occurs.

So it was that, as we have just said, the Chinese and Semitic races were the first to reach the final goal of this psychological progress; other peoples, such as the Aryans and their offshoots, savages and partially civilized races, remained in the early stages of this dialectic scale.

Undoubtedly, in our own race, the early religious conceptions which const.i.tuted a simple wors.h.i.+p of nature in various forms were constantly becoming of purer character, and they were not only exalted in their spiritual quality, but in the Greek and Roman religions they attained to something like scientific precision. Yet even in these higher aspirations the race did not surrender its mythical faculty, to which it was impelled by its physical and psychological const.i.tution, and the pure conception was unconsciously overshadowed by symbolic ideas. We can plainly see how far this symbolism, peculiar to the race, obscured the minds of Plato and Aristotle, and of almost all the subsequent philosophers. In the Semitic and Chinese races this inner symbolism of the mind, with reference to the interpretation of nature, was less tenacious, intense, and productive, and they soon freed themselves from their mental bonds in order to rise to the conception of the absolute Being, distinct from the world. When this idea had been grasped by rude and popular intuition, men of the highest intellectual power perfected the still confused conception, and founded upon it science, civil and political inst.i.tutions, and national customs.

"The idea of Christianity arose in the midst of the Semitic people through him whose name it bears, and who perfected the religious idea of his nation. This idea, in its Semitic simplicity, consisted in a belief in the existence of one, eternal, infinite G.o.d, the immediate creator of all things; it included the tradition of man's loss of his original felicity, and the promise of a restoration of all peoples, and of the Israelites in particular, to their former condition of earthly happiness. Christ appeared, and while he upheld the Mosaic law and its original idea, he declared himself to be the promised deliverer, sent of G.o.d; the Son of G.o.d, which among the Semitic people was the term applied to their prophets. His moral teaching gave a more perfect form to the old law, and by his example he afforded a model of human virtue worthy of all veneration; the germs of a marvellous civilization were to be found in his moral and partially new teaching. The same doctrine had been, to some extent, inculcated by the Jewish teachers, and the schools of Hillel and Gamaliel were certainly not morally inferior to his own, as we learn from the tradition of the Talmud, and from some pa.s.sages in the Acts of the Apostles. The origin, development, and teaching of primitive Christianity were therefore essentially Semitic, since it had its origin in a people of that race, and in a man of that people. Yet the Semitic race did not become Christian; and, after so many ages have elapsed, it still rejects Christianity. It was the Aryan race, to which we Europeans belong, which adopted this teaching and became essentially Christian, although this race is psychologically the most idolatrous of the world, as far as the aesthetic idol--not the common fetish--is concerned. Let us inquire into the cause of this remarkable fact.

"As soon as the teaching of Christ was adopted by those familiar with Aryan civilization and opinions, an idea repugnant to Semitic conceptions, and still unintelligible to that race, was evolved from it--I mean the idea that the human Christ, the Son of G.o.d, was G.o.d himself. The Semite holds that G.o.d is so far exalted above all creation, so great and eternal in comparison with the littleness of the world and of man, that G.o.d incarnate is not merely a blasphemy but an unmeaning and absurd phrase. Such a dogma was therefore energetically repudiated, and the Semitic race submitted to persecution and dispersal rather than accept it. This is the real reason why Christianity has not been received and will never be received by the Semitic race. When Mahomet reorganized and perfected the Arab creed, he preserved intact the Semitic principle of the absolute and incommunicable nature of G.o.d: the Semitic religion has ever held that there is one G.o.d, and his prophet.

"On the other hand, Christianity was rapidly diffused among the Greek and Latin peoples, and in all parts of Europe inhabited by our race: even savages and barbarians accepted more or less frankly a doctrine rejected by the Semites in whom it had its origin. Many and various causes have been a.s.signed for this rapid diffusion of the new doctrine, and the old Greek and Latin fathers ascribed it to the fact that men's minds had been naturally and providentially prepared for it. It was attributed by others to the miseries and sufferings of the slave population, and of the poor, who found a sweet illusion and comfort in the Christian hope of a world beyond the grave. Some, again, suggest the omnipotent will of a tyrant, or the extreme ignorance of the common and barbarous people. Although all these causes had a partial effect, they were secondary and accidental. The true and unique cause lay deeper, in the intellectual const.i.tution of the race to which Christianity was preached; just as physiological characteristics are reproduced in the species until they become permanent, so do intellectual inclinations become engrained in the nature.

"We have said that our race is aesthetically more mythological than all others. If we consider the religious teaching of various Aryan peoples, from the most primitive Vedic idolatry to the successive religions of Brahma and Zend, of the Celts, Greeks, Latins, Germans, and Slavs, we shall see how widely they differ from the religious conceptions and ideas of other races. The vein of fanciful creations is inexhaustible, and there is a wealth of symbolic combinations and a profusion of celestial and semi-celestial dramas. The intrinsic habit of forming mythical representations of nature is due to a more vivid sense of her power, to a rapid succession of images, and to a constant projection of the observer's own personality into phenomena. This peculiar characteristic of our race is never wholly overcome, and to it is added a proud self-consciousness, an energy of thought and action, a constant aspiration after grand achievements, and a haughty contempt for all other nations.

"The very name of Aryan, transmitted in a modified form to all successive generations, denotes dominion and valour; the Brahmanic cosmogony, and the epithet of apes, given to all other races in the epic of Valmiki, bear witness to the same fact; it is shown in the slavery imposed on conquered peoples, in the hatred of foreigners felt by all the h.e.l.lenic tribes; in the omnipotence of Rome, the haughtiness of the Germanic orders; in the feudal system, in the Crusades; and finally, in the modern sense of our superiority to all other existing races. The quickness of perception, and the facile projection of human personality into natural objects, led to the manifold creations of Olympus, and this was an aesthetic obstacle to any nearer approach to the pure and absolute conception of G.o.d, while the innate pride of race was a hindrance to our humiliation in the dust before G.o.d. The Semites declared that man was created in the image of G.o.d, and we created G.o.d in our own image; while conscious of the power of the _numina_ we confronted them boldly, and were ready to resist them. The Indian legends, and those of the h.e.l.lenes, the Scandinavians, and the whole Aryan race, are full of conflicts between G.o.ds and men. The demi-G.o.ds must be remembered, showing that the Aryans believed themselves to be sufficiently n.o.ble and great for the G.o.ds to love them, and to intermarry with them. Thus the Aryan made himself into a G.o.d, and often took a glorious place in Olympus, while he declared that G.o.d was made man.

"We might imagine that the doctrine of G.o.d incarnate would be as repugnant to the ideas, feelings, and intellect of the Aryan as it was to the Semitic race. But the anthropomorphic side of Christianity was readily embraced by the former as a mythical and aesthetic conception, and indeed it was they who made a metaphorical expression into an essential dogma: the pride natural to the Aryan race made them eager to accept a religion which placed man in a still higher Olympus: a belief in Christ was rapidly diffused, not as G.o.d but as the Man-G.o.d. These are the true reasons, not only for the rapid spread of Christianity in Europe, but also for the philosophic systems of the Platonists and Alexandrines which preceded it. Although Philo was a Hebrew, and probably knew nothing of Christ, he attained by means of h.e.l.lenism to the idea of the Man-G.o.d; the Platonic Word, which was merely the projection of G.o.d into human reason, was accepted for the same reason as the Christian dogma of the Word made man.

"Let us see what new principles, what higher morality and civilization were added by the diffusion of Christianity to those principles which were the spontaneous product of the race. We must first consider what part the pagan G.o.ds, as they were regarded by educated men, played in the history of the European race, with respect to the individual and to the commonwealth. The pagan Olympus, considered as a whole, and without reference to the various forms which it a.s.sumed in different peoples, was not essentially distinct from human society. Although the G.o.ds formed a higher order of immortal beings, they were mixed up with men in a thousand ways in practical life, and conformed to the ways of humanity; they were constantly occupied in doing good or ill to mortals; they were warmly interested in the disputes of men, taking part in the conflicts of persons, cities, and peoples; special divinities watched over men from the cradle to the grave, and they were loved or hated by the G.o.ds by reason of their family and race. In short, the heavenly and earthly communities were so intermixed that the G.o.ds were only superior and immortal men.

"The people were accustomed to consider their deities as ever present, distinct from, and yet inseparably joined with them; so that the individual, the country, the tribes, were ever governed, guarded, favoured, or opposed by special and peculiar G.o.ds. Olympus had a history, since the acts of the G.o.ds took place in time and were coincident with the history of nations, so that every event in heaven corresponded with one on earth; the idea of divine justice was exemplified in that of men, and both were perfected together. Among pagans of the Aryan race there was a perpetual and repeated alliance between men and G.o.ds made in the image of man. This action of the G.o.ds both for good and evil became in its turn the rule of life for the ignorant mult.i.tude, and they acted in conformity with the supposed will and actions of the G.o.ds; the divine will was, however, nothing but an _a priori_ religious conception of an idol representing the forces of nature or some moral or religious idea. The moral perfection of nations, as time went on, also perfected the supreme justice of Olympus, and the moral worth of the G.o.ds increased as men became better. So that it was not the original theological idea, but man himself, who made heaven more perfect, and the G.o.ds morally better and more just.

"The explicit power of mental reasoning and of science was added to this spontaneous evolution of the religious idea, so far as the improved morality of the race perfected the heavenly justice which was its own creation. The pagan Olympus was gradually simplified by sages and philosophers; the illicit pa.s.sions of the G.o.ds were set aside, and it was transformed into a providential government of individuals and of society, much more remote from direct contact with men. The conception of the immortal G.o.ds included one supreme power, formative, protecting or avenging, and this conception bordered on the Semitic idea of the absolute Being, although without quite attaining to it. G.o.d was confounded with the order of things, his laws were those of the universe, by which he was also bound, and the righteous man lived in conformity with these laws. When Christianity began, pagan rationalism had arrived at the idea of a spiritual and directing power, organically identical with the universe. It was neither the Olympus of the common people, nor the Semitic Jehovah, but rather the conscious and inevitable order of nature. Although, either as an Olympus or as a dogma, the deity was confounded with men or constrained them to follow a more rational rule of life, yet paganism clearly distinguished the G.o.ds from men in their concrete personality, and the action of humanity was therefore distinct from that of the deity.

"When Christianity began, the peoples of the Aryan race in Europe, or at least those of more advanced civilization, had const.i.tuted for themselves a heavenly Pantheon, which contained nearly all the primitive deities, but in a more human form and exercising a juster rule over the world, while at the same time they were regarded as quite distinct from the society of men. Although there was in this multiplicity of divine forms an hierarchical order of different ranks, there was no general conception to include the destinies of the whole human race, and to manifest by its unity its providential and historical development. Each people believed in their own special destiny, which should either raise them to greater glory and power or bring them to a speedy and inevitable end; but there was no common fate, no common prosperity nor disaster.

Rome had, as far as possible, united these various peoples by the idea of her power, by the inforcement of her laws, and by the benefits of her citizens.h.i.+p, yet the Roman unity was external, and did not spring from the intimate sense of a common lineage. While the nations were so closely united to Rome by brute force, the subject peoples were agitated by a desire for their ancient independence and self-government. Some of these pagan mult.i.tudes advanced in civilization through their education in the learning of the Romans, and in morality through their spontaneous activity, but they did not possess any deep sense of a general providence, and heaven and earth continued to be under the sway of an incomprehensible fate.

"If we now turn to consider the mental conditions of educated men at that time, we shall see that they transformed the Olympus of personal and concrete G.o.ds into symbols of the forces of nature, and that they had risen to a purer conception of the deity by making it agree with the progress of reason; but this deity was so remote from earth as to have scarcely anything to do with the government of the world. According to the teaching of the Stoics, which was very generally diffused, man was supposed to be so far left to himself that he was the creator of his own virtue, and had to struggle, not only against nature and his fellow-man, but against fate, the underlying essence of every cosmic form and motion. If this pagan rationalism gave rise to great theoretic morality, and produced amazing examples of private and public virtue, it had little effect on the mult.i.tudes, nor did it contain any guiding principle for the historical life of humanity as a whole.

"Christianity proclaimed the spiritual unity of G.o.d, the unity of the race, the brotherhood of all peoples, the redemption of the world, and consequently a providential influence on mankind. Christianity taught that G.o.d himself was made man, and lived among men. Such teaching was offered to the people as a truth of consciousness rather than of dogma, although it was afterwards preserved in a theological form by the preaching of Paul, and the pagan mind was more affected by sentiment than by reason. The unity of G.o.d was a.s.sociated in their aesthetic imagination with the earlier conception of the supreme Zeus, which now took a more Semitic form, and Olympus was gloriously transformed into a company of elect Christians and holy fathers of the new faith. A confused sentiment as to the mystic union of peoples, who became brothers in Christ, had a powerful effect on the imagination and the heart, since they had already learned to regard the world as the creation of one eternal Being. In the ardour of proselytism and of the diffusion of the new creed, they hailed the historical transformation of the earthly endeavour after temporal acquisitions and pleasures into a providential preparation for the heavenly kingdom.

"In Christ, the incarnation of the supreme G.o.d, they beheld the apotheosis of man, so acceptable to the Aryan race, since he thus became the absolute ruler of the world and its fates. Ideas and sentiments, of which the Semitic mind was incapable, and which were opposed to their historical and intellectual development, moved and satisfied the Aryan mind, and became a.s.sociated as far as possible with the dogma and belief to which the race had attained in their pagan civilization. Thus heaven, dogma, and Christian rites a.s.sumed from the first a pagan form; and while the original idols were repudiated in the zeal for new principles, their common likeness was maintained by the imaginative power of the race.

"In this way Christianity became popular, and the Semitic idea was invested with pagan forms, in order to carry on the gradual and more intimate spiritual transformation which is not yet terminated. Its teaching was at first decidedly rejected and opposed by cultivated minds, accustomed as the Greeks were with few exceptions to use their reason. Among philosophers, the popular belief in a personal Olympus had disappeared, and a more rational study of mankind did not allow them to understand or comprehend a dogma which re-established anthropomorphism under another aspect, so that this new and impious superst.i.tion became the object of persecution. These were, however, mere exceptions, an antic.i.p.ation of the opposition of reason to mythical ideas, which became more vigorous in every successive age, until the time arrived when reason, educated by a long course of exercise, was able to renew the effort with greater authority and success. The common people gradually became Christian, and so also did educated men, who thus added the authority of the schools to a teaching accepted by the feelings and innate inclination of the race, and hence followed the theological development of Christian dogma.

"These new principles and beliefs, eventually accepted by all the nations of Europe, both barbarous and civilized, not only brought to perfection the religious intuition characteristic of the morality and civilization of the race, but they produced a new and renovating power in historical and social life. This fresh virtue consisted in the belief in a power consubstantially divine and human. Although the pagan G.o.ds were human in their extrinsic and intrinsic form, only differing from mortals by their mighty privileges, yet they were personally distinct from men, and while the acts of Olympus mingled with those of earth, they had an habitation and destinies apart. But by the new dogma, the one G.o.d who was a Spirit took on him the substance of man and was united with humanity as a whole, according to the Pauline interpretation, which was generally accepted by our race. The divine nature was continually imparted to man, the body and members in which the divine spirit was incarnated, since the Church or mystical community of Christians was the temple of G.o.d. Through this lively sense of the divine incarnation, the Christian avatar with which the race had been acquainted under other forms, G.o.d was no longer essentially distinguished from mankind in the form of a number of concrete beings, but was spiritually infused into men and acted through them. The Christian as man felt himself to be a partic.i.p.ator with G.o.d himself by a mystic intercourse. Since, therefore, the human faculty was historically identical with the divine, and shared in the spiritual work which was to effect the redemption of society, this new and Christian civilization added daring, confidence, and virtue to the natural energy of the race.

"Not many years elapsed before men ceased to contemplate the immediate end of the world predicted by the first apostles and the Apocalypse; they looked forward to a more distant future, and except in the case of some particular sects, they applied the prophecies which referred to the first generation of Christians to the future history of the race. It was therefore Christianity which introduced into the consciousness of our Aryan peoples the principles of a divine historic power acting on the social economy of mankind, and in this way the natural dignity and enterprising pride of the race was increased. Through this fresh religious intuition and spiritual exaltation, the purity and moral sweetness of the Semitic Nazarene became the law of society, and the church organization gradually a.s.similated everything to itself, and received divine wors.h.i.+p in the person of the supreme Pontiff, who continued for many ages to be the temporal ruler of consciences, of public inst.i.tutions, and of civilization. Strange daring in a race which from its early beginnings down to our own days has been always true to its own character, and in one form or other has displayed vigour, energy, ambition, transforming power, and great designs.