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

968. In all the religious systems so far considered the existence of human suffering is assumed. The sole object of religious practices, in all cults except the highest, has been to secure extrahuman or superhuman aid and comfort in the ills of life. There has been the conviction, for the most part implicit, that man is not in harmony with his surroundings. We have now to consider those systems of religious thought in which the existence of this disharmony is more or less distinctly announced and the effort is made to discover its source.

The conception of two sets of Powers in the world, one helpful and the other harmful, is suggested by human experience and by the larger observation of natural phenomena, and it is found all over the world, among low communities as well as high, perhaps in all tribes of men.1763 Possibly there are some low groups, such as the Fuegians and the African Pygmies in which the conception does not exist; but as the religious ideas of these low groups are yet imperfectly understood, we cannot say what their position on this point is. In general, for the lower tribes the world is peopled by spirits, which are the ghosts of the departed or the embodiment of natural forces, and the feeling has been that these are sometimes friendly, sometimes unfriendly.1764 In some cases the hurtful spirits stand in contrast with a god who may be a strict ruler and somewhat indifferent to men, but not hostile; in other cases there is a simple division of spirits into two classes, the friendly and the unfriendly,1765 and in the higher forms of savage life there may be two such classes of deities.1766 The double feeling of man respecting the attitude of ghosts toward living human beings is referred to above.1767

969. In certain higher forms of savage and half-civilized life we find the conception of a definite contrast between the two sets of Powers. The Hottentots are said to believe in two opposed supernatural beings, the struggle between them ending to the advantage of the one who is beneficent toward men.1768 The Masai have two powerful beings, one accounted good, the other bad; the difference between them is not ethical, but represents only the relation of their acts to man's well-being.1769 The Malays have a very elaborate system of good and evil spirits, but the system is colored by foreign influences.1770 For the Ainu snakes are an embodiment of merely physical evil, and other Powers are the dispensers of physical well-being.1771 The Arab jinn represent the unwholesome and antagonistic conditions of nature, stand opposed to the gods, and are without ethical motives.1772 Even the Andamanese, one of the lowest of human communities, have a division of Powers into one who is friendly and two who are unfriendly.1773 In all these cases we have to recognize simply the expression of the perception of two sets of physical agencies in the world. It is easy to exaggerate the nature of these contrasts and to represent certain low tribes as possessing general divine embodiments of good and evil.

970. Such a conception has been attributed to the American Redmen,1774 but on insufficient grounds. The most careful recent investigations of the religious ideas of the Creeks, the Lenâpé, the Pawnees, and the Californian Shasta (four typical communities) fail to discover anything that can be called a real dualistic conception.1775 Dorsey mentions a Pawnee myth of the introduction of death into the world by a member of the heavenly council of gods who felt himself slighted; but this isolated story does not prove the existence of a general dualistic scheme—the act in question has parallels in savage systems that recognize various unfriendly Powers.1776 The reports we have of two definite morally antagonistic deities in Redmen tribes resolve themselves on examination into misconceptions or exaggerations on the part of the reporters; or, so far as the antagonism really exists, it is due to Christian influence.

The Iroquois dualistic system as described by Chief Cusic (in 1825)—two brothers, Good Mind and Bad Mind, the former the creator of all things good, the latter the creator of all things bad—appears in the version of Brébeuf (in 1636) as a simple nature myth, the two deities in question being somewhat more definite forms of the friendly and unfriendly spirits met with in all lower communities.1777 In like manner Winslow's two opposed Powers of the New England Algonkins turn out not to be morally antagonistic to each other, in fact, according to Brinton, not antagonistic at all.1778 These facts warn us to treat with caution the vague statements of early travelers respecting dualistic views supposed to be held by tribes in North America and South America.1779

971. In West Africa the Ashanti embody the sources of physical misfortune in several deities, who are malignant but do not stand in opposition to the friendly gods. A preliminary step to the conception of a god of misfortunes is the assignment of a sort of headship to one of a mass of unfriendly or hurtful spirits—such a crude organization is natural in a community in which there is a fairly developed form of social organization, and the head spirit easily grows into a god. A simple headship over hurtful spirits appears to be found in the Ainu system, though this latter is in general not well developed.1780

972. A definite antagonism of good and bad Powers is found in the religion of the non-Aryan Khonds of Orissa: the earth-goddess Tari, the creature but the opponent of the sun-god Bella Pennu, introduced sin and death into the world and contested (and, according to one native account, still contests) with her creator the control of life. This explanation of the origin of death is a higher form of stories that occur abundantly in savage lore, with the important difference that in these death comes by accident, but here by malicious purpose. It is not clear whether or not the characters of Tari and Bella Pennu are conceived of ethically. The weapons (comets, winds, mountains) employed by the two deities indicate that the basis of the representation is a nature myth. Advanced eschatological thought appears in the opinion, held by some natives, that the good god was victorious in the contest.1781

973. In the great ancient religions, with the exception of Zoroastrianism, no dualistic scheme appears. An Egyptian god may be angry, as, for example, Ra, who in a fit of resentment causes men to be slain but soon repents; and Set, the enemy of Osiris, a nature god, seemed at one time to be on the way to become an embodiment of evil, but the Egyptian cult rejected this idea and Set gradually disappeared.1782 The Babylonian cosmogonic myth, in which Tiamat is the enemy of the gods of order, has no cultic significance; the great mass of demonic beings was not organized into a kingdom of evil, and the Underworld deities, nature gods, while subject to ordinary human passions, are not hostile to the gods of heaven and earth. The Hebrews adopted the Babylonian cosmogonic myth,1783 but it became a mere literary attachment to the conception of the supreme god Yahweh, and was otherwise ineffective.

974. The same thing is true of certain cosmogonic myths of the Greeks, such as the war of the Titans against Zeus and similar episodes. Ate and the Erinyes are embodiments of man's own evil nature or represent the punishment that overtakes guilt, but they do not represent a formal opposition to goodness nor are they organized into a definite body.1784 The Roman Furies are practically identical in function with the Erinyes. In the old Teutonic religion the only figure who approaches essential badness is Loki; but he, though at times malignant and treacherous (as a human chieftain might be), remains a recognized member of the assembly of gods. As a nature god he may represent the elements of darkness and unhappiness in life, just as the various evil spirits in the world do, but he never approaches the position of an independent creator of evil.1785 The Celtic deities Llew and Dylan are said to stand over against each other and to represent good and bad tendencies and elements of life; but they are not very distinct and are probably nothing more than somewhat developed local deities.1786 In the Chinese and Japanese cults there is no indication of a conflict; evil spirits there are in abundance, but no cosmic antagonism.

975. In India the cosmogonic myths are to be interpreted in the same way as those mentioned above. Soma and Indra, as slayers of the demon Vritya, represent order as against disorder, but Vritya never had cultic significance; he appears only as a bodily demonstration of the power of the great gods. The asuras are not essentially different from the harmful spirits of savages, though it is true that they come into conflict with the friendly gods. Rahu, who causes eclipses by swallowing the sun, is only a nature deity of great might. In the Mahabharata there are powerful demons, and the Çivaite cult includes the worship of dread beings, but such worship only reflects the fear of the unfriendly elements of physical nature.1787 Nor do we find in the persons of Durga, Kali, and the Yakshas, unpleasantly savage as these are, a conception of evil as an organized force directed against the good gods; they are rather the embodiment of evil human dispositions. The underground demons are punishers of sin, but not themselves morally evil. There is, it is true, in the Hindu religious scheme the general antithesis of light and darkness, which are connected with right and wrong—an antithesis that appears abundantly in other religious systems;1788 but the powers of darkness are not organized against the powers of light, and there is no complete dualism, though we have here, perhaps, the starting-point for such a conception.

976. While thus a vague sense of duality has existed all over the world, and in certain cases, as it seems, there were vague attempts at organization, it is only in Zoroastrianism that the decisive step has been taken. We have to recognize in this system a distinct movement towards a unitary conception of the world; but the sense of difference in human experiences was so great in the mind of the creators of the system that they were led to a unification in two divisions.1789 The origin of the movement lies far back at a time when there were no records of thought and social movements, and it is impossible now to say definitely what were the original elements of the cult. We may surmise that there was an Indo-Iranian conception of a general contrast between light and darkness, and that this was the starting-point or the basis of the developed Iranian theological system. The old Indic and the old Iranian religions seem to have been independent developments from a common original mass of material; but we do not know what determined the differences in the two developments. The constructions were the work, doubtless, of successions of reformers, but the details of these long-continued efforts have not come down to us.1790 The essential point is that the evil mass in the world was conceived of as a unity by the Iranians and assigned a head, Angro Mainyu. This name does not occur in the Achæmenian inscriptions, but it is mentioned in the Gathas and by Aristotle,1791 so that it appears to belong to an early stratum of the Iranian religion.

The present state of the world is regarded as the result of a constant series of antagonisms between the two creators, Spenta Mainyu (Ahura Mazda) and Angro Mainyu, these being attended each by a circle of helpers. A polytheistic interpretation of the helpers is avoided by making them abstractions (though with a tendency toward personification), the representatives of various features or elements in the government of the world or in the experiences of men.1792

977. A strictly dualistic system recognizes only two Powers in the world. The Avestan religion, however, admits other deities besides Ahura Mazda and Angro Mainyu; Mitra, Anahita, and others are objects of worship. The ancient national faiths, that is, were not content with a simple division of things between two divine beings. An approach to such a view was made by Judaism, which, partly under Persian influence, produced the figure of the Satan, a quasi-independent being hostile to the Supreme Deity.1793 Christianity, adopting this conception from Judaism, elaborated it into the person of the Devil, the veritable head of a kingdom of evil, called in the New Testament "the god of this age."1794 Though doomed to final defeat, as Ahriman in the Avesta is doomed, the Devil in the orthodox Christian system is practically omnipresent and is powerful enough to defeat the plans of God in many cases. In modern enlightened Christian feeling, however, he has become little more than a name. Though he is credited in theory with suggesting evil and alluring men to sin, this dogma has small force in the better minds against the strong conviction of individual freedom and responsibility. Current Christianity, in its highest forms, is theoretically, but not really, dualistic.

The Satan is taken more seriously by Islam, which has adopted the conception from Christianity and Judaism.1795 For the ordinary Moslem he belongs in the category of evil spirits and is as real as one of the jinn; he may be cursed and stoned and driven away,1796 but he does not affect the Moslem belief in the oneness of God.

978. From the conquest of Persia by Alexander to the fall of the Parthian dynasty (a period of over five hundred years) little is known of the history of Mazdaism beyond the fact that it seems to have been adopted by the Parthians in a debased form; but about the time of the Persian revival under the Sassanians (226 A.D.) it passed the bounds of its native land and made its way into the Roman Empire in the shape of Manichæism, a mixture of dualistic and Christian Gnostic conceptions. That Manichæism had a certain force is shown by the fact that it attracted such a man as Augustine, and its survival for several centuries in spite of persecutions attests its vitality. It may be doubted whether its attractiveness lay so much in its dualism as in its gnosticism, though the former element maintained itself in some minor Christian sects. However this may be, it gradually faded away, leaving no lasting impression; it was a form of faith not suited to the peoples who professed Christianity.1797

979. The modern philosophic proposals to recognize two deities instead of one are as yet too vague to call for discussion. Dualism, though it accounts in some fashion for the twofold character of human experiences, raises as many problems as it solves; in particular it finds itself confronted apparently by a physical and psychological unity in the world which it is hard to explain on the hypothesis of conflicting supernatural Powers.1798 On the moral side the record of dualistic schemes is in general good. The ethical standard of Mazdaism is high, and the ethical practice of Mazdean communities hardly differs from that of other prominent modern religious bodies. Though the Manichæans were accused of immoral practices, it does not appear that Mani himself or any prominent disciple of his announced or favored or permitted such practices.