Pagan and Christian creeds Part 9

It may be appropriate here, before leaving the subject of the Second Birth, to inquire how it has come about that this doctrine--so remote and metaphysical as it might appear--has been taken up and embodied in their creeds and rituals by quite PRIMITIVE people all over the world, to such a degree indeed that it has ultimately been adopted and built into the foundations of the latter and more intellectual religions, like Hinduism, Mithraism, and the Egyptian and Christian cults. I think the answer to this question must be found in the now-familiar fact that the earliest peoples felt themselves so much a part of Nature and the animal and vegetable world around them that (whenever they thought about these matters at all) they never for a moment doubted that the things which were happening all round them in the external world were also happening within themselves. They saw the Sun, overclouded and nigh to death in winter, come to its birth again each year; they saw the Vegetation shoot forth anew in spring--the revival of the spirit of the Earth; the endless breeding of the Animals, the strange transformations of Worms and Insects; the obviously new life taken on by boys and girls at p.u.b.erty; the same at a later age when the novice was transformed into the medicine-man--the choupan into the angakok among the Esquimaux, the Dacotah youth into the wakan among the Red Indians; and they felt in their sub-conscious way the same everlasting forces of rebirth and transformation working within themselves. In some of the Greek Mysteries the newly admitted Initiates were fed for some time after on milk only "as though we were being born again." (See Sall.u.s.tius, quoted by Gilbert Murray.) When sub-conscious knowledge began to glimmer into direct consciousness one of the first aspects (and no doubt one of the truest) under which people saw life was just thus: as a series of rebirths and transformations. (1) The most modern science, I need hardly say, in biology as well as in chemistry and the field of inorganic Nature, supports that view. The savage in earliest times FELT the truth of some things which we to-day are only beginning intellectually to perceive and a.n.a.lyze.

(1) The fervent and widespread belief in animal metamorphoses among early peoples is well known.

Christianity adopted and absorbed--as it was bound to do--this world-wide doctrine of the second birth. Pa.s.sing over its physiological and biological applications, it gave to it a fine spiritual significance--or rather it insisted especially on its spiritual significance, which (as we have seen) had been widely recognized before.

Only--as I suppose must happen with all local religions--it narrowed the application and outlook of the doctrine down to a special case--"As in Adam all die, so in CHRIST shall all be made alive." The Universal Spirit which can give rebirth and salvation to EVERY child of man to whom it comes, was offered only under a very special form--that of Jesus Christ. (1) In this respect it was no better than the religions which preceded it. In some respects--that is, where it was especially fanatical, blinkered, and hostile to other sects--it was WORSE. But to those who perceive that the Great Spirit may bring new birth and salvation to some under the form of Osiris, equally well as to others under the form of Jesus, or again to some under the form of a Siberian totem-Bear equally as to others under the form of Osiris, these questionings and narrowings fall away as of no importance. We in this latter day can see the main thing, namely that Christianity was and is just one phase of a world-old religion, slowly perhaps expanding its scope, but whose chief att.i.tudes and orientations have been the same through the centuries.

(1) The same happened with regard to another great Pagan doctrine (to which I have just alluded), the doctrine of transformations and metamorphoses; and whereas the pagans believed in these things, as the common and possible heritage of EVERY man, the Christians only allowed themselves to entertain the idea in the special and unique instance of the Transfiguration of Christ.

Many other ill.u.s.trations might be taken of the truth of this view, but I will confine myself to two or three more. There is the instance of the Eucharist and its exceedingly widespread celebration (under very various forms) among the pagans all over the world--as well as among Christians.

I have already said enough on this subject, and need not delay over it.

By partaking of the sacramental meal, even in its wildest and crudest shapes, as in the mysteries of Dionysus, one was identified with and united to the G.o.d; in its milder and more spiritual aspects as in the Mithraic, Egyptian, Hindu and Christian cults, one pa.s.sed behind the veil of maya and this ever-changing world, and entered into the region of divine peace and power. (1)

(1) Baring Gould in his Orig. Relig. Belief, I. 401, says:--"Among the ancient Hindus Soma was a chief deity; he is called the Giver of Life and Health.... He became incarnate among men, was taken by them and slain, and brayed in a mortar (a G.o.d of corn and wine apparently). But he rose in flame to heaven to be 'the Benefactor of the World' and the 'Mediator between G.o.d and Man!' Through communion with him in his sacrifice, man (who partook of this G.o.d) has an a.s.surance of immortality, for by that sacrament he obtains union with his divinity."

Or again the doctrine of the Saviour. That also is one on which I need not add much to what has been said already. The number of pagan deities (mostly virgin-born and done to death in some way or other in their efforts to save mankind) is so great (1) as to be difficult to keep account of. The G.o.d Krishna in India, the G.o.d Indra in Nepaul and Thibet, spilt their blood for the salvation of men; Buddha said, according to Max Muller, (2) "Let all the sins that were in the world fall on me, that the world may be delivered"; the Chinese Tien, the Holy One--"one with G.o.d and existing with him from all eternity"--died to save the world; the Egyptian Osiris was called Saviour, so was Horus; so was the Persian Mithras; so was the Greek Hercules who overcame Death though his body was consumed in the burning garment of mortality, out of which he rose into heaven. So also was the Phrygian Attis called Saviour, and the Syrian Tammuz or Adonis likewise--both of whom, as we have seen, were nailed or tied to a tree, and afterwards rose again from their biers, or coffins. Prometheus, the greatest and earliest benefactor of the human race, was NAILED BY THE HANDS and feet, and with arms extended, to the rocks of Mount Caucasus. Bacchus or Dionysus, born of the virgin Semele to be the Liberator of mankind (Dionysus Eleutherios as he was called), was torn to pieces, not unlike Osiris.

Even in far Mexico Quetzalcoatl, the Saviour, was born of a virgin, was tempted, and fasted forty days, was done to death, and his second coming looked for so eagerly that (as is well known) when Cortes appeared, the Mexicans, poor things, greeted HIM as the returning G.o.d! (3) In Peru and among the American Indians, North and South of the Equator, similar legends are, or were, to be found.

(1) See for a considerable list Doane's Bible Myths, ch. xx.

(2) Hist. Sanskrit Literature, p. 80.

(3) See Kingsborough, Mexican Antiquities, vol. vi.

Briefly sketched as all this is, it is enough to prove quite abundantly that the doctrine of the Saviour is world-wide and world-old, and that Christianity merely appropriated the same and (as the other cults did) gave it a special color. Probably the wide range of this doctrine would have been far better and more generally known, had not the Christian Church, all through, made the greatest of efforts and taken the greatest precautions to extinguish and snuff out all evidence of pagan claims on the subject. There is much to show that the early Church took this line with regard to pre-Christian saviours; (1) and in later times the same policy is remarkably ill.u.s.trated by the treatment in the sixteenth century of the writings of Sahagun the Spanish missionary--to whose work I have already referred. Sahagun was a wonderfully broad-minded and fine man who, while he did not conceal the barbarities of the Aztec religion, was truthful enough to point out redeeming traits in the manners and customs of the people and some resemblances to Christian doctrine and practice. This infuriated the bigoted Catholics of the newly formed Mexican Church. They purloined the ma.n.u.scripts of Sahagun's Historia and scattered and hid them about the country, and it was only after infinite labor and an appeal to the Spanish Court that he got them together again. Finally, at the age of eighty, having translated them into Spanish (from the original Mexican) he sent them in two big volumes home to Spain for safety; but there almost immediately THEY DISAPPEARED, and could not be found! It was only after TWO CENTURIES that they ultimately turned up (1790) in a Convent at Tolosa in Navarre. Lord Kingsborough published them in England in 1830.

(1) See Tertullian's Apologia, c. 16; Ad Nationes, c. xii.

I have thus dwelt upon several of the main doctrines of Christianity--namely, those of Sin and Sacrifice, the Eucharist, the Saviour, the Second Birth, and Transfiguration--as showing that they are by no means unique in our religion, but were common to nearly all the religions of the ancient world. The list might be much further extended, but there is no need to delay over a subject which is now very generally understood. I will, however, devote a page or two to one instance, which I think is very remarkable, and full of deep suggestion.

There is no doctrine in Christianity which is more reverenced by the adherents of that religion, or held in higher estimation, than that G.o.d sacrificed his only Son for the salvation of the world; also that since the Son was not only of like nature but of the SAME nature with the Father, and equal to him as being the second Person of the Divine Trinity, the sacrifice amounted to an immolation of Himself for the good of mankind. The doctrine is so mystical, so remote, and in a sense so absurd and impossible, that it has been a favorite mark through the centuries for the ridicule of the scoffers and enemies of the Church; and here, it might easily be thought, is a belief which--whether it be considered glorious or whether contemptible--is at any rate unique, and peculiar to that Church.

And yet the extraordinary fact is that a similar belief ranges all through the ancient religions, and can be traced back to the earliest times. The word host which is used in the Catholic Ma.s.s for the bread and wine on the Altar, supposed to be the transubstantiated body and blood of Christ, is from the Latin Hostia which the dictionary interprets as "an animal slain in sacrifice, a sin-offering." It takes us far far back to the Totem stage of folk-life, when the tribe, as I have already explained, crowned a victim-bull or bear or other animal with flowers, and honoring it with every offering of food and wors.h.i.+p, sacrificed the victim to the Totem spirit of the tribe, and consumed it in an Eucharistic feast--the medicine-man or priest who conducted the ritual wearing a skin of the same beast as a sign that he represented the Totem-divinity, taking part in the sacrifice of 'himself to himself.' It reminds us of the Khonds of Bengal sacrificing their meriahs crowned and decorated as G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses; of the Aztecs doing the same; of Quetzalcoatl p.r.i.c.king his elbows and fingers so as to draw blood, which he offered on his own altar; or of Odin hanging by his own desire upon a tree. "I know I was hanged upon a tree shaken by the winds for nine long nights. I was transfixed by a spear; I was moved to Odin, myself to myself." And so on. The instances are endless. "I am the oblation," says the Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita, (1) "I am the sacrifice, I the ancestral offering." "In the truly orthodox conception of sacrifice," says Elie Reclus, (2) "the consecrated offering, be it man, woman or virgin, lamb or heifer, c.o.c.k or dove, represents THE DEITY HIMSELF.... Brahma is the 'imperishable sacrifice'; Indra, Soma, Hari and the other G.o.ds, became incarnate in animals to the sole end that they might be immolated. Perusha, the Universal Being, caused himself to be slain by the Immortals, and from his substance were born the birds of the air, wild and domestic animals, the offerings of b.u.t.ter and curds.

The world, declared the Ris.h.i.+s, is a series of sacrifices disclosing other sacrifices. To stop them would be to suspend the life of Nature.

The G.o.d Siva, to whom the Tipperahs of Bengal are supposed to have sacrificed as many as a thousand human victims a year, said to the Brahamins: 'It is I that am the actual offering; it is I that you butcher upon my altars.'"

(1) Ch. ix, v. 16.

(2) Primitive Folk, ch. vi.

It was in allusion to this doctrine that R. W. Emerson, paraphrasing the Katha-Upanishad, wrote that immortal verse of his:--

If the red slayer thinks he slays, Or the slain thinks he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways I take, and pa.s.s, and turn again.

I say it is an astonis.h.i.+ng thing to think and realize that this profound and mystic doctrine of the eternal sacrifice of Himself, ordained by the Great Spirit for the creation and salvation of the world--a doctrine which has attracted and fascinated many of the great thinkers and n.o.bler minds of Europe, which has also inspired the religious teachings of the Indian sages and to a less philosophical degree the writings of the Christian Saints--should have been seized in its general outline and essence by rude and primitive people before the dawn of history, and embodied in their rites and ceremonials. What is the explanation of this fact?

It is very puzzling. The whole subject is puzzling. The world-wide adoption of similar creeds and rituals (and, we may add, legends and fairy tales) among early peoples, and in far-sundered places and times is so remarkable that it has given the students of these subjects 'furiously to think' (1)--yet for the most part without great success in the way of finding a solution. The supposition that (1) the creed, rite or legend in question has sprung up, so to speak, accidentally, in one place, and then has travelled (owing to some inherent plausibility) over the rest of the world, is of course one that commends itself readily at first; but on closer examination the practical difficulties it presents are certainly very great. These include the migrations of customs and myths in quite early ages of the earth across trackless oceans and continents, and between races and peoples absolutely incapable of understanding each other. And if to avoid these difficulties it is a.s.sumed that the present human race all proceeds from one original stock which radiating from one centre--say in South-Eastern Asia (2)--overspread the world, carrying its rites and customs with it, why, then we are compelled to face the difficulty of supposing this radiation to have taken place at an enormous time ago (the continents being then all more or less conjoined) and at a period when it is doubtful if any religious rites and customs at all existed; not to mention the further difficulty of supposing all the four or five hundred languages now existing to be descended from one common source. The far tradition of the Island of Atlantis seems to afford a possible explanation of the community of rites and customs between the Old and New World, and this without a.s.suming in any way that Atlantis (if it existed) was the original and SOLE cradle of the human race. (3) Anyhow it is clear that these origins of human culture must be of extreme antiquity, and that it would not be wise to be put off the track of the investigation of a possible common source merely by that fact of antiquity.

(1) See A. Lang's Myth, Ritual and Religion, vol. ii.

(2) See Hastings, Encycl. Religion and Ethics, art. "Ethnology."

(3) E. J. Payne, History of the New World called America (vol. i, p. 93) says: "It is certain that Europe and America once formed a single continent," but inroads of the sea "left a vast island or peninsula stretching from Iceland to the Azores--which gradually disappeared."

Also he speaks (i. 93) of the "Miocene Bridge" between Siberia and the New World.

A second supposition, however, is (2) that the natural psychological evolution of the human mind has in the various times and climes led folk of the most diverse surroundings and heredity--and perhaps even sprung from separate anthropoid stocks--to develop their social and religious ideas along the same general lines--and that even to the extent of exhibiting at times a remarkable similarity in minute details. This is a theory which commends itself greatly to a deeper and more philosophical consideration; but it brings us up point-blank against another most difficult question (which we have already raised), namely, how to account for extremely rude and primitive peoples in the far past, and on the very borderland of the animal life, having been SUSCEPTIBLE to the germs of great religious ideas (such as we have mentioned) and having been instinctively--though not of course by any process of conscious reasoning--moved to express them in symbols and rites and ceremonials, and (later no doubt) in myths and legends, which satisfied their FEELINGS and sense of fitness--though they may not have known WHY--and afterwards were capable of being taken up and embodied in the great philosophical religions.

This difficulty almost compels us to a view of human knowledge which has found supporters among some able thinkers--the view, namely, that a vast store of knowledge is already contained in the subconscious mind of man (and the animals) and only needs the provocation of outer experience to bring it to the surface; and that in the second stage of human psychology this process of crude and piecemeal externalization is taking place, in preparation for the final or third stage in which the knowledge will be re-absorbed and become direct and intuitional on a high and harmonious plane--something like the present intuition of the animals as we perceive it on the animal plane. However this general subject is one on which I shall touch again, and I do not propose to dwell on it at any length now.

There is a third alternative theory (3)--a combination of (1) and (2)--namely, that if one accepts (2) and the idea that at any given stage of human development there is a PREDISPOSITION to certain symbols and rites belonging to that stage, then it is much more easy to accept theory (1) as an important factor in the spread of such symbols and rites; for clearly, then, the smallest germ of a custom or practice, transported from one country or people to another at the right time, would be sufficient to wake the development or growth in question and stimulate it into activity. It will be seen, therefore, that the important point towards the solution of this whole puzzling question is the discussion, of theory (2)--and to this theory, as ill.u.s.trated by the world-wide myth of the Golden Age, I will now turn.

IX. MYTH OF THE GOLDEN AGE

The tradition of a "Golden Age" is widespread over the world, and it is not necessary to go at any length into the story of the Garden of Eden and the other legends which in almost every country ill.u.s.trate this tradition. Without indulging in sentiment on the subject we may hold it not unlikely that the tradition is justified by the remembrance, among the people of every race, of a pre-civilization period of comparative harmony and happiness when two things, which to-day we perceive to be the prolific causes of discord and misery, were absent or only weakly developed--namely, PROPERTY and SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. (1)

(1) For a fuller working out of this, see Civilisation: its Cause and Cure, by E. Carpenter, ch. i.

During the first century B.C. there was a great spread of Messianic Ideas over the Roman world, and Virgil's 4th Eclogue, commonly called the Messianic Eclogue, reflects very clearly this state of the public mind. The expected babe in the poem was to be the son of Octavian (Augustus) the first Roman emperor, and a messianic halo surrounded it in Virgil's verse. Unfortunately it turned out to be a GIRL! However there is little doubt that Virgil did--in that very sad age of the world, an age of "misery and ma.s.sacre," and in common with thousands of others--look for the coming of a great 'redeemer.' It was only a few years earlier--about B.C. 70--that the great revolt of the shamefully maltreated Roman slaves occurred, and that in revenge six thousand prisoners from Spartacus' army were nailed on crosses all the way from Rome to Capua (150 miles). But long before this Hesiod had recorded a past Golden Age when life had been gracious in communal fraternity and joyful in peace, when human beings and animals spoke the same language, when death had followed on sleep, without old age or disease, and after death men had moved as good daimones or genii over the lands. Pindar, three hundred years after Hesiod, had confirmed the existence of the Islands of the Blest, where the good led a blameless, tearless, life.

Plato the same, (1) with further references to the fabled island of Atlantis; the Egyptians believed in a former golden age under the G.o.d R[a^] to which they looked back with regret and envy; the Persians had a garden of Eden similar to that of the Hebrews; the Greeks a garden of the Hesperides, in which dwelt the serpent whose head was ultimately crushed beneath the heel of Hercules; and so on. The references to a supposed far-back state of peace and happiness are indeed numerous.

(1) See arts. by Margaret Scholes, Socialist Review, Nov. and Dec. 1912.

So much so that latterly, and partly to explain their prevalence, a theory has been advanced which may be worth while mentioning. It is called the "Theory of intra-uterine Blessedness," and, remote as it may at first appear, it certainly has some claim for attention. The theory is that in the minds of mature people there still remain certain vague memories of their pre-natal days in the maternal womb--memories of a life which, though full of growing vigor and vitality, was yet at that time one of absolute harmony with the surroundings, and of perfect peace and contentment, spent within the body of the mother--the embryo indeed standing in the same relation to the mother as St. Paul says WE stand to G.o.d, "IN whom we live and move and have our being"; and that these vague memories of the intra-uterine life in the individual are referred back by the mature mind to a past age in the life of the RACE. Though it would not be easy at present to positively confirm this theory, yet one may say that it is neither improbable nor unworthy of consideration; also that it bears a certain likeness to the former ones about the Eden-gardens, etc. The well-known parallelism of the Individual history with the Race-history, the "recapitulation" by the embryo of the development of the race, does in fact afford an additional argument for its favorable reception.

These considerations, and what we have said so often in the foregoing chapters about the unity of the Animals (and Early Man) with Nature, and their instinctive and age-long adjustment to the conditions of the world around them, bring us up hard and fast against the following conclusions, which I think we shall find difficult to avoid.

We all recognize the extraordinary grace and beauty, in their different ways, of the (wild) animals; and not only their beauty but the extreme fitness of their actions and habits to their surroundings--their subtle and penetrating Intelligence in fact. Only we do not generally use the word "Intelligence." We use another word (Instinct)--and rightly perhaps, because their actions are plainly not the result of definite self-conscious reasoning, such as we use, carried out by each individual; but are (as has been abundantly proved by Samuel Butler and others) the systematic expression of experiences gathered up and sorted out and handed down from generation to generation in the bosom of the race--an Intelligence in fact, or Insight, of larger subtler scope than the other, and belonging to the tribal or racial Being rather than to the isolated individual--a super-consciousness in fact, ramifying afar in s.p.a.ce and time.

But if we allow (as we must) this unity and perfection of nature, and this somewhat cosmic character of the mind, to exist among the Animals, we can hardly refuse to believe that there must have been a period when Man, too, hardly as yet differentiated from them, did himself possess these same qualities--perhaps even in greater degree than the animals--of grace and beauty of body, perfection of movement and action, instinctive perception and knowledge (of course in limited spheres); and a period when he possessed above all a sense of unity with his fellows and with surrounding Nature which became the ground of a common consciousness between himself and his tribe, similar to that which Maeterlinck, in the case of the Bees, calls the Spirit of the Hive. (1) It would be difficult, nay impossible, to suppose that human beings on their first appearance formed an entire exception in the process of evolution, or that they were completely lacking in the very graces and faculties which we so admire in the animals--only of course we see that (LIKE the animals) they would not be SELF-conscious in these matters, and what perception they had of their relations to each other or to the world around them would be largely inarticulate and SUB-conscious--though none the less real for that.

(1) See The Life of the Bee by Maurice Maeterlinck; and for numerous similar cases among other animals, P. Kropotkin's Mutual Aid: a factor in Evolution.

Let us then grant this preliminary a.s.sumption--and it clearly is not a large or hazardous one--and what follows? It follows--since to-day discord is the rule, and Man has certainly lost the grace, both physical and mental, of the animals--that at some period a break must have occurred in the evolution-process, a discontinuity--similar perhaps to that which occurs in the life of a child at the moment when it is born into the world. Humanity took a new departure; but a departure which for the moment was signalized as a LOSS--the loss of its former harmony and self-adjustment. And the cause or accompaniment of this change was the growth of Self-consciousness. Into the general consciousness of the tribe (in relation to its environment) which in fact had const.i.tuted the mentality of the animals and of man up to this stage, there now was intruded another kind of consciousness, a consciousness centering round each little individual self and concerned almost entirely with the interests of the latter. Here was evidently a threat to the continuance of the former happy conditions. It was like the appearance of innumerable little ulcers in a human body--a menace which if continued would inevitably lead to the break-up of the body. It meant loss of tribal harmony and nature-adjustment. It meant instead of unity a myriad conflicting centres; it meant alienation from the spirit of the tribe, the separation of man from man, discord, recrimination, and the fatal unfolding of the sense of sin. The process symbolized itself in the legend of the Fall. Man ate of the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Sometimes people wonder why knowledge of any kind--and especially the knowledge of good and evil--should have brought a curse. But the reason is obvious. Into, the placid and harmonious life of the animal and human tribes fulfilling their days in obedience to the slow evolutions and age-long mandates of nature, Self-consciousness broke with its inconvenient and impossible query: "How do these arrangements suit ME? Are they good for me, are they evil for me? I want to know. I WILL KNOW!" Evidently knowledge (such knowledge as we understand by the word) only began, and could only begin, by queries relating to the little local self. There was no other way for it to begin. Knowledge and self-consciousness were born, as twins, together. Knowledge therefore meant Sin (1); for self-consciousness meant sin (and it means sin to-day). Sin is Separation. That is probably (though disputed) the etymology of the word--that which sunders. (2) The essence of sin is one's separation from the whole (the tribe or the G.o.d) of which one is a part. And knowledge--which separates subject from object, and in its inception is necessarily occupied with the 'good and evil' of the little local self, is the great engine of this separation. (Mark! I say nothing AGAINST this a.s.sociation of Self-consciousness with 'Sin' (so-called) and 'Knowledge' (so-called). The growth of all three together is an absolutely necessary part of human evolution, and to rail against it would be absurd. But we may as well open our eyes and see the fact straight instead of blinking it.) The culmination of the process and the fulfilment of the 'curse' we may watch to-day in the towering expansion of the self-conscious individualized Intellect--science as the handmaid of human Greed devastating the habitable world and destroying its unworthy civilization. And the process must go on--necessarily must go on--until Self-consciousness, ceasing its vain quest (vain in both senses) for the separate domination of life, surrenders itself back again into the arms of the Mother-consciousness from which it originally sprang--surrenders itself back, not to be merged in nonent.i.ty, but to be affiliated in loving dependence on and harmony with the cosmic life.

(1) Compare also other myths, like Cupid and Psyche, Lohengrin etc., in which a fatal curiosity leads to tragedy.