Introduction to the History of Religions Handbooks on the...

635. The climax of the organization of external religion appears in the conception of gods proper; this conception is always associated with more or less well-developed institutions. Early religious life expresses itself in ceremonies; the god is the embodiment of man's ideal of the extrahuman power that rules the world. It is not always easy to distinguish the true gods from the other supernatural beings with which early man's world is peopled.1052 As far as concerns power, the ghosts and the spirits appear to do all that the gods are credited with doing; the sphere of ghostly action is practically unlimited, and the spirit that dwells in a spring, in a river, or in a mountain, is as mighty in his sphere as Indra or Apollo in his sphere; the difference between them and gods is a difference of intellectual and moral culture and of the degree of naturalization in a human society—a god might be defined as a superhuman Being fashioned by the thought of a civilized people (the term 'civilized' admitting, however, of many gradations). Still, gods proper may be distinguished from other Powers by certain characteristics of person and function. Ghosts are shadowy doubles of human beings, sometimes nameless, wandering about without definite purpose except to procure food for themselves, uncertain of temper, friendly or unfriendly according to caprice or other circumstances, able to help or to harm, and requiring men to be constantly on the alert so as not in an unguarded moment to offend them.

Souls of recently deceased ancestors, more highly organized ghosts, conceived of also as attenuated bodies, have powers not essentially different from those of the simpler ghosts, but are differentiated from these in function by their intimate relations with the family or clan to which they belong, and by their more definite human nature; they are as a rule permanently friendly, are capable of definite sympathetic social intercourse with living men, and are sometimes controllers and patrons, hardly to be distinguished from local or departmental gods. Spirits are ethereal beings residing in, or closely connected with, certain objects (trees, rivers, springs, stones, mountains, etc.), sometimes permanently attached to these objects, sometimes detached; roaming about, sometimes kindly, more generally inimical, authors of disease and death, to be feared and to be guarded against, but sometimes in function (though not in origin) identical with ancestral ghosts. Totems, in their developed form, are revered, but rarely if ever worshiped. The term 'animal-gods' may mean either living animals regarded as divine, or animals believed to be the forms assumed by gods; in the latter case they may be taken to be real gods of an inferior type.

In distinction from the four classes of Powers just mentioned, a true god is a supernatural being with distinct anthropomorphic personality, with a proper name or a distinctive title, exercising authority over a certain land or people or over a department of nature or a class of phenomena, dwelling generally in a sanctuary on the earth, or in the sky, or in the other world, and in general sympathetic with men. Gods have rational human qualities, human modes of procedure, and are human beings in all things except power.1053

636. The god appears to have been at the outset a well-formed anthropomorphic being. His genesis is different from that of the ghost, spirit, ancestor, or totem. These, except the spirit, are all given by experience: totems are familiar objects plainly visible to the eye; ghosts and ancestors are known through dreams and appearances by day, and by tradition; and the conception of the spirit is closely allied to that of the ghost, though it is in part a scientific inference rather than a fact of experience. In distinction from these a god is a larger product of imagination, springing from the necessity of accounting for the existence of things in a relatively refined way. The creator is a beast only in low tribes, and in process of time, if the tribe continues to grow in culture, is absorbed in the cult of a true god. It is rarely, if ever, that a beast, whether a totem or only a sacred thing, becomes a god proper.

The best apparent examples of such a growth are the Egyptian bull Apis, who had his temple and ministers, the Hindu monkey-god Hanuman, and the divine snake of the Nagas of India.1054 But, though in these cases the beast forms receive divine worship, it is not clear whether it is the beast that is worshiped or a god incarnate in the beast; the question is difficult, the data being meager. The myths in which gods appear in beast forms do not prove a development of the former out of the latter. It is not necessary to suppose that Zeus was once a bull, Artemis a bear or a sow, Adonis a boar, and Aphrodite a sow or a dove. The myths may be naturally explained as arising from the coalescence of cults, the local sacred beast becoming attached to a local deity who had a different birth.

The god is a figure of slow growth. Beginning as a sort of headman, identified sometimes with an ancestor, sometimes with a beast, his character is shaped by all the influences that go to form the tribal life, and he thus embodies from generation to generation the tribe's ideals of virtue.

637. The list of classes of supernatural Powers given above must be regarded, as is there intimated, as a general one. One class appears sometimes to shade into another; in the theistic schemes of low tribes it is often difficult to define the conceptions of supernatural beings with precision.

Early mythical founders of culture. Before proceeding to a consideration of true gods, a class of beings must be mentioned that appears to stand on the borderland between divine animals, spirits, and gods. There are various sorts of beings that appear sometimes in animal form, sometimes in human form, their function being the arranging of the affairs of the world, the origination of institutions, and sometimes a definite creation of various things. The title "founders" or "transformers" or "culture-heroes" has been given them. They arise, just as the true gods do, from the necessity of accounting for the beginnings of things,1055 and, from a comparison of the ideas of various tribes, a certain growth in the conception may be recognized.

638. In some cases the figure is that of a mere trickster, a mischievous being, the hero of countless stories, who acts from caprice or malice, though his actions may result in advantage to men. Such are many of the animal forms of the North American Indians: the coyote of the Thompson River Indians,1056 the raven of North British Columbia,1057 the mink and the blue jay of the North Pacific Coast.1058 In other cases, as also to some extent in the Thompson River region, he appears in a more dignified form as a benevolent organizer.

This growth of the trickster into the real culture-hero may be referred to a progress in thought and refinement.1059 Among the Northern Maidu of California there is a sharp distinction between the two characters: the coyote is tricky and mischievous in the bad sense, with no desire to do anything profitable to men; the benevolent and useful work of the world is ascribed to a personage called "the creator," who is always dignified and regardful of the interests of man.1060 This sort of distinction, intended to account for the presence of both good and evil elements of life, is found in inchoate form among other low peoples (as, for example, the Masai and the Australians1061), but reaches its full proportions only in the great civilized religions.

639. In this class of vaguely conceived creators or transformers we may place the Central Australian Arunta ancestors, who embodied the idea of the identity of beasts and human beings, and are the originators of all the arts and institutions of the tribes; they established the totemic groups and the ceremonies, and, in the developed myth, perpetuate their existence by entering the bodies of women and being born as human beings.1062 The relative antiquity of this conception of the origin of things is uncertain; in one point of view it is crude, but in another it is an elaborate and well-considered attempt to explain the world. These Arunta ancestors, notwithstanding their half-bestial forms, are represented as acting in all regards like human beings, and as having planned a complete system of tribal organization, but no religious worship is offered them—they figure only in sociogonic myths and in the determination of the totemic status of newborn children. Among the Navahos we find a combination of beast and man in the work of creation.1063 In their elaborate cosmogonic myth the first actors are Coyote, First Man, and First Woman, and there is discord between Coyote and his human coworkers. Here again the object seems to be to account for the diverse elements of the tribal life.

640. Many such personages, originators or introducers of the arts of life and the distribution of territory, are described in the folk-tales and myths of the North American tribes. The conception, it may be concluded, existed all over the world, though for many communities the details have not yet been brought to light.1064 A noteworthy personage of this class is the Melanesian Qat (especially prominent in the Banks Islands), a being credited with almost plenary power, the creator or arranger of seasons, the introducer of night, therefore an important cultural power, yet mischievous, the hero of numerous folk-stories; he does not appear in animal form but lives an ordinary family life. He is not worshiped—he is regarded rather as the explanation of phenomena, a genuine product of early cosmogonic science. He appears to be the nearest approach in Melanesia to a real creator (with the exception perhaps of a somewhat uncertain female being called Koevasi); but alongside of him stand a number of spirits and ancestral ghosts who play an important part in the organization of society.1065 For the Koryaks of Northeastern Siberia the "Big Grandfather" is an arranger of all things out of preëxisting material;1066 the Chukchee, on the other hand, regard as creator a benevolent being residing in the zenith. Vague stories of simitar arrangers are found among the East African Nandi, and the South African Zulus.1067

641. Traces of this function of organizing society appear in the mythical figures of some higher religions. Among such figures may be reckoned the Babylonian Gilgamesh, the Old Testament Cainides, the Greek Heracles, Theseus, Orpheus, and others.1068 But these personages generally take on human form and are treated as factors in the regular social development.

642. The "culture-hero" thus seems to be a natural product of incipient civilization. He represents the vague feeling that the institutions of society arose out of human needs and that the origination of these institutions demanded more than human wisdom and power.1069 He partakes of the nature of both men and gods—he is all-powerful, yet a creature of caprice and a slave of accident. To him society is supposed to owe an incalculable debt; but his mixed nature affords a wide field for bizarre myths and folk-stories, and he of necessity gives way to more symmetrical divine figures.

643. The god, in the true sense of the word, is the highest generalization of the constructive religious imagination. In his simplest and earliest form he appears as a venerable supernatural man, wise according to the wisdom of his place and time—such is the natural conception of the lower tribes. His position is described by the titles "the old one," "the father," "the grandfather";1070 he is a superhuman headman or chief, caring for his people, giving them what they need, sharing their ethical ideas and enforcing their ethical rules. He is an all-sufficient local ruler or overseer, his functions touching the whole life of his people and of no other people. In the progress of myth-making (that is, in the construction of early scientific theology) such gods are not infrequently represented as men who have gone up to the sky; this is a natural way of accounting for their superterrestrial abode. Savage conceptions of the origin and history of such figures are usually vague, and their theologies fluctuating and self-contradictory; but there are two points as to which opinion is firm: the god is like men in everything except power, and his functions are universal. He represents not a monotheistic creed (which takes the whole world as the domain of God), but a narrow tribal acceptance of the sufficiency of the local divine patron.1071