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

945. The first stage in the final theistic history of the world up to the present day, polytheism, appears in all the great civilized nations. The great polytheistic systems have much in common: for example, protection of civil order and morality by a god; prominence of the god of a ruling tribe or family or of a great city; disposition to embody certain general facts, as war, love, learning, in divine figures; tendency to make some god universal. On the other hand, they differ among themselves in certain regards: in the degree of specialization and differentiation of divine functions, and in the stress that they lay on the various departments of human life. Their agreements and disagreements seem to be in some cases independent of racial relations and climatic conditions; their roots lie so far back in history that we have no means of tracing their genesis and development.

946. The Egyptian and the Semitic peoples were parts of the same original stock,1730 and their systems of social and political organization were substantially identical—the government in its developed form was monarchical, but tribal and other locally isolated forms of organization maintained themselves to a certain extent—and their literary and artistic outputs do not differ materially. We might, then, expect their religions to be in the main identical. In fact they agree in having a relative meagerness of theistic differentiation, but in some important points they are far apart. The Semites were indifferent to the future life, the Egyptians constructed it elaborately (in this point taking precedence among the ancients); the Semites were averse to divinizing human beings, for the Egyptians kings were divine. In this last point Egypt resembles China, but in other respects is at a world-wide remove from it. Other peoples thought of their gods as having relations with beasts; the Egyptians alone, among civilized nations, worshiped the living animal.1731 Some Greek writers regarded Egypt as the religious mother of Greece, but Hellenic cults show little resemblance to Egyptian.

947. The Hebrews had the general Semitic theistic and cultic scheme, but in their capacity (in their higher development) to content themselves with one deity, and in their elaboration of ritualistic forms and institutions, were more closely akin to the Aryan Persians than to any Semitic community, and borrowed freely from them. The resemblance between the two cults, however, was confined to these two points; in other respects they were very different.

948. The linguistic identity of the Indo-European peoples does not carry with it theologic identity. The theistic scheme of India is more nearly allied, in the disposition to grant equality of significance to all gods, to the Egyptian and Semitic than to the Persian and the Greek, yet the tone and color of the Hindu deities do not resemble the tone and color of the Egyptian and Babylonian divinities.

Even between Greece and Rome the religious differences are great. Greece stands alone in its artistic creation of divine forms. Rome rather resembles the Hebrews in its sobriety of theistic creations, and particularly is like the Chinese in the purpose to make religion subservient to the interests of the family and the State; Roman religion, like Chinese, might be described as a body of public and private ceremonies to which gods were attached.1732 The Roman gods, however, are much more definite figures than the Chinese; the latter are either unimportant folk-gods or powers of nature.

949. The contrast between Mexico, with its considerable number of departmental gods, some of them savage, and Peru, whose quasi-monotheistic system is relatively mild, is striking. But the origin of these two peoples (who perhaps are made up of different sets of tribes) is involved in obscurity, and it is uncertain whether or not we should expect a greater resemblance between their cults.

950. The differentiation in the theistic scheme of the Teutons, especially the Scandinavians, is noteworthy. Several of their deities, particularly Wodan (Odin), Thor, and Loki, are well-developed persons, and these and some others do not differ materially in character from the earlier corresponding Hindu and Greek gods. A comparison between the Teutonic figures and the Celtic and Slavic would be pertinent if we knew more of the character of these last; but the information about them is slight.1733

951. The extent of the anthropomorphization of gods in any system may be measured by the richness and refinement of its mythology. When the gods live apart from men, being conceived of mainly as transcendent Powers, or when they are not fully developed men, there is little room for the play of social emotions and for the creation of biographies of individual deities. It is the humanized god that has emotional life, and it is in this mythical life that the religious feeling of the worshiper is expressed with greatest fullness of detail.

952. The development of mythology through all its gradations of fullness and fineness can be traced in the religious systems of the world.1734 Where there is no recognizable worship there is, of course, no mythology. This is the case in Australia, in Pygmy lands, in Tierra del Fuego, in parts of New Guinea, and perhaps elsewhere.1735 Scarcely above these are parts of Central and Southern Africa, the countries of the Bantu, the Hottentots, and the Bushmen.1736 A feeble mythological invention appears among the Zulus, whose conception of gods is indistinct;1737 and the Masai and the Nandi, who are somewhat farther advanced in the construction of deities, show mythopœic imagination in a single case only (the famous myth of the embrace of the earth and the sky), and this is perhaps borrowed.1738 Along with these we may place the Todas whose theogonic conceptions appear to have been cramped by their buffalo cult, and their mythical material is small and vague.1739

953. A somewhat higher stage of mythopoeic development is represented by peoples of Oceania and North America. The myths are still prevailingly cosmologic and sociologic, but the beginning of biographical sketches of supernatural Powers is visible. The Melanesian Qat and the Polynesian Maui are on the border line between culture-heroes and gods, but they are real persons, and their adventures, while they describe origins, are also descriptions of character. Hawaii and Borneo have departmental gods and a body of stories about them.1740 Certain tribes of Redmen have not only divine genealogical systems but also narratives resembling the Melanesian in character, the line between myth proper and folk-lore being often hard to trace.1741 The stories fall into more or less well-defined groups, and of the Coyote and, less definitely, of certain other personages biographies might be written.

954. The half-civilized peoples of Madagascar, West Africa (Dahomi, Ashanti, Yoruba), the Malay Peninsula, and Southern India (Khonds) have more coherent figures and stories of divine personages.1742 Here something like living human beings appear, though there is crudeness in the portraiture, and the interest is chiefly in the history of origins. The Malayan and Khond figures are especially noteworthy, but are not free from the suspicion of influence from higher religions.

955. True literary mythology is found only in civilized peoples, and among these a gradation is recognizable. We have first the stage of culture represented by the Japanese, the Finns, the Mexicans, and the Peruvians, with fairly well-developed gods, who have emotions and histories. In this group Japan takes the lowest place;1743 it is chiefly in the figures regarded as deified men that definiteness of character and human warmth are found. Japanese theogony was depressed by the interest of the people in family and State organization; the gods, though civilized, are vague personalities. The Finnish literary mythical material, given in the Kalevala, has a highly humanized coloring and is worked up into a coherent story; the social system revealed in the myths is superior in many regards to that of the Redmen, but the theistic scheme is crude.1744 The few Mexican myths that have come down to us (probably only the remains out of a large mass) show reflection and portray human experiences.1745 Both in Mexico and in Peru the Spanish conquest appears to have destroyed no little material that, if preserved, would have illustrated the mythical constructions of these lands. In Peru, further, it may be that the monotheistic tinge of the State religion had the effect of banishing subordinate deities and the stories connected with them. For whatever reason little is known of its mythical material, but the little that is known shows a certain degree of refinement. South America, excluding Peru, has no mythical constructions of interest.1746

957. The Persian cosmogonic myths are merely statements of great facts without biographical features. In the hands of late writers they shaded into legendary accounts of the origin of the kingdom, and the whole was colored by the developed Mazdaism. We thus have theological constructions rather than true myths.1748 The few mythical stories that have survived play an insignificant part in the religious system—a sort of result that is to be expected whenever a substantially definite monotheistic conception has been reached.

958. Egypt produced a couple of myths of great interest.1749 The story of Ra's anger with men, and his act of wholesale destruction, belongs in the group of myths (in which flood stories and others are included) the motif of which is antagonism between gods and men. The conception of such antagonism seems to go back to the early opinion that all misfortunes were caused by supernatural beings; in civilized times some great calamity would be singled out as a special result of divine anger, and imagination would construct a history of the event, why the god was angry, and how he was appeased. What particular occurrence this Egyptian story refers to is unknown.

The Osiris myth has better literary form and more cultic significance.1750 The slaying of Osiris by Set, Isis's search for the body of her husband, and the rôle of the young Horus as avenger of his father make a coherent history. Osiris had the singular fortune of being the most widely popular god in Egypt, the hero of a romantic episode, and the ethical judge of men in the Underworld. The motif of the myth is the cosmic struggle between life and death; the actors are made real persons, and the story is instinct with human interest. No great cultic association like the Eleusinian mysteries was created in connection with it, but the echo of the conception appears in the great rôle later assigned to Isis.

959. All Semitic myths of which we have records are cosmogonic or sociologic or, in some late forms, theological constructions. It is Babylonia that has furnished the greater part of the material, perhaps all of it.1751 The stories preserved give little or no portraiture of divine persons—it is always cosmic phenomena that are described, and gods and heroes are introduced simply as actors. The purpose in the two cosmogonic poems—to explain the reduction of the world to order and the existing constitution of earth and sky—is one that is found everywhere in ancient systems of thought. The Gilgamesh epic, a collection of popular usages and tales without definite unity, is contaminated with legend; Gilgamesh is now a god, now a national hero; at the end, however, there is a bit of speculation concerning the future state of men. Ishtar's descent to the Underworld is a pure nature myth; Ishtar and the goddess of the Underworld are real persons, yet merely attachments to the fact. The seizure of the tablets of fate from Bel by the storm-god Zu represents some natural phenomenon (perhaps the reign of winter), possibly, also, a transference of headship from one deity to another. The story of Adapa is in part an explanation of how men came to lose immortality. There is, thus, in these myths a fairly full history of the origin of the large facts of human life, with little interest in the personalities of the divine actors.

Hebrew mythical material is in general identical with Babylonian; its Old Testament form has been more or less revised by late monotheistic editors. The two cosmogonies in Genesis, the flood story, and the dragon of chaos (a late figure in the Old Testament1752) are merely descriptions of cosmic or local facts. The dispersion at Babel (not now found in Babylonian records, but paralleled elsewhere) deals with a sociological fact of great interest for the Hebrews, marking them off, as it did, from all other peoples.1753 The heroes of the early time1754 belong to folk-lore, probably a mixture of myth and legend. The explanation of various human experiences in the Eden story1755 appears to be of Hebrew origination; it is, however, rather a late theological theory than a myth. The Syrian and Palestinian Tammuz (Adonis) myth is identical in general form with the Babylonian myth of Tammuz and Ishtar.1756

960. The Indo-European mythical material shows an advance over the Egyptian and Semitic in distinctness and fullness of life corresponding to the distincter individuality of the Indo-European divine personages. These are not mere powers in the world, more or less identified with natural forces and phenomena, nor a collection of deities substantially identical in character and functions; they have grown into persons, differing, indeed, in the degree of individualization, but all pronounced personalities.

961. Hindu myths, though less numerous and less highly elaborated than the Greek, still reflect fairly well the characters of certain divinities, especially Indra, Agni, the Açvins, the Maruts, and some others.1757 Indra, particularly, is portrayed in detail, so that he is as distinct a person as Ares or Mars. Krishna and other figures in the epics live human lives with all human virtues and vices.

962. The full literary form of the myth is found only in Greece. As Zeus, Apollo, Athene, Aphrodite, and others are well-defined personalities, each with certain intellectual and moral characteristics and with a unity of development, so the stories about them recount adventures and acts that form biographical unities; and, as these stories are of diverse nature, some reflecting barbarous periods, others marked by refinement, they exhibit, when brought together and arranged in order of moral or intellectual excellence or according to their geographical or ethnical origin, not only the history of the gods, but also the development of Greek religious feeling. Being the embodiment of human experiences, they lend themselves readily to processes of allegorizing and spiritualizing.1758

963. Roman gods, homely figures, occupied with agriculture and affairs of State, have no adventures and no biographies. The practical Roman mind was concerned with the domestic functions of divine beings, and the Roman genius was not of a sort to conceive gods as individuals leading lives filled with human passions. Myths do not figure in the Roman religious scheme except as they are borrowed from Greece or from some other land.

964. Teutonic mythology is largely cosmogonic or cosmologic, not without shrewd portraitures and attractive episodes, but never reaching the point of artistic roundness and grace.1759 The adventures of Odin, Thor, Loki, and other divine persons reflect for the most part the daring and savagery of the viking age, though there are kindly features and an occasional touch of humor.1760 Loki in some stories is a genuine villain, and the death of Balder is a real tragedy. The great cosmogonic and eschatological myths are conceived in grandiose style. The struggle between gods and giants is in its basis the widespread nature myth of the conflict of seasons. The overthrow of the old divine government (the Twilight of the Gods) and the rise of a new order appear to have a Christian coloring, but the belief that the world is to be destroyed may be old Teutonic.1761

The history of theistic movements in civilized peoples shows that the effectiveness of a polytheistic system as a framework of religious life is in proportion to the extent of its anthropomorphization of deities, that is, it is in proportion to their humanization that gods enter into intimate association with human experiences. On the other hand, it is true that the tendency toward a unitary conception of the divine government of the world is in inverse proportion to such humanization; the more definitely aloof from men the gods have stood (as among the Hebrews and the Persians), the easier it has been for the people to attach themselves to a single deity as all-sufficient. The Romans form no exception to this general rule, for though, while they did not create great anthropomorphic deities, there was yet no native Roman movement toward monolatry, the place of such deities in worship was taken by a multitude of minor divine patrons who presided over all the details of private and public life and satisfied the demand for divine guidance.

965. General rôle of polytheism. Polytheism has played a great rôle in the religious history of the world. Representing in general a thoughtful protest against the earlier shapeless mass of spirits, it expressed more definitely the belief in the intellectual and moral divine control of all things. It flourished at a time when there was no general demand in human thought for coöperation in supernatural Powers. The sense of variety in the world was predominant, corresponding to the absence of coöperation among the tribes and nations of the world; the apparently isolated character of natural phenomena and the independence of the nations, each of the others, seemed to men to demand a number of separate divine agencies. These were all made to accord with the external and internal condition of their worshipers and met the demands of life in that they represented redemption, salvation, and, in general, all blessings. They were not offensive ethically to the people for the reason that they embodied the ethical conceptions and usages of their time. Thus they furnished the framework for religious feeling—they secured the union of divine and human in life, brought the divine, indeed, into most intimate contact with the human, and so supplied the material for the expression of pious feeling. When the gods were represented by idols, these tended to become merely the symbols and reminders of their divine originals.

The elastic character of this theistic system permitted the widest variety of cults, with the possibility of bringing any new social tendency or idea into immediate connection with a divine patron, so that human life became religious with a degree of intelligence and intensity that has perhaps not existed under any other system.

966. The great civilizations of the ancient world arose and were developed under polytheism—many noble human characters and customs and institutions were created under the dominance of this system in Babylonia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, and elsewhere—that is to say, human instincts and aspirations developed freely under a theistic organization that satisfied in general the intellectual and moral needs of the time. The different polytheistic cults of the world differed considerably in intellectual and moral value. These differences pertain to the diversity of characteristics among the nations of the world and are to be studied in connection with the histories of the various peoples. Here it is sufficient to note the general position which polytheism has occupied in the whole religious development of the world.1762

967. At a relatively early time, however, dissatisfaction arose with the discordances of the polytheistic conception. It raised many problems and failed to account for many phenomena, and efforts were made to systematize and simplify the conceptions of the divine government of the world. These efforts took the shape of dualism, monotheism, pantheism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and later tended to regard the supernatural in the world as Ultimate Force or as Moral Ideal. These tendencies may be examined in the order just given.