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

225. The lowest tribes known to us regard the whole world of nature and the human dead as things to be feared and usually as things to be propitiated. In most cases they conceive of some anthropomorphic being as the creator or arranger of the world. But in all cases they regard animals, plants, and inanimate objects as capable of doing extraordinary things. All these beings they think of as akin to men; transformations from human to nonhuman and from nonhuman to human are believed to be possible and frequent.

226. From the point of view of the savage mind this theory of the world is inevitable. Ignorant of what we call natural law, they can see no reason why the phenomena of life should not be under the control of any of the powers known to them; and for sources of power they look to the things around them. All objects of nature are mysterious to the savage—stones, hills, waters, the sky, the heavenly bodies, trees, plants, fishes, birds, beasts, are full of movement, and seemingly display capacities that induce the savage to see in them the causes of things. Since their procedures seem to him to be in general similar to his own, he credits them with a nature like his own. As they are mysterious and powerful, he fears them and tries to make allies of them or to ward off their injurious influences.

227. But while he excludes nothing from his list of possible powers, he is vitally interested only in those objects with which he comes into contact, and he learns their powers by his own experience or through the wisdom inherited from his forefathers. His procedure is strictly scientific; he adopts only what observation has shown him and others to be true. Different tribes are interested in different things—some are indifferent to one thing, others to another, according to the topographical and economic milieu. The savage is not without discrimination. He is quite capable of distinguishing between the living and the dead. Not all stones are held by him to be alive in any important sense, and not all beasts to be powerful. He is a practical thinker and deals with each phenomenon as it presents itself, and particularly as it shows itself to be connected with his interests. He is constantly on the alert to distinguish between the profitable and the unprofitable, the helpful and the injurious. He himself is the center of his whole scientific and religious system, and the categories into which he divides all things are determined by his own sense of self-interest.428

228. It is often by accident that one object or another displays itself as helpful or harmful, just as, in a later and higher form of religious belief, a theophany is often, as to time and place, a matter of accident. Indeed, most manifestations of extrahuman power in the earliest times may be said to come to man incidentally, since he does not generally demand them from the gods or make experiments in order to discover them. But in the nature of the case many things meet him as to which he is obliged to use judgment, and of these a certain number appear to him to be powerful.

229. These objects are held by him to be in some sort akin to man. This seems to be his view of certain dead things in which a mysterious power is held to reside. When such objects are parts of animals (bones, feathers, claws, tails, feet, fat, etc.), or of vegetables that are used as charms, it may be supposed that they simply retain the power resident in the objects of which they are parts—objects originally living and sacred. In other cases an indwelling supernatural being is assumed, as, for example, in minerals whose shape and color are remarkable.

230. Fetish objects in West Africa are believed to be inhabited by spirits.429 The Australian sacred object called churinga—a thing of mysterious potency—is believed to be the abode of the soul of an ancestor endowed with extraordinary power. Many such fetish objects are found all over the world.

231. Further, the conception of a life-force, existing in many things (perhaps in all things), appears to have been prominent in savage religious systems. Life implies power; but while it is held to reside in all things, its manifestations vary according to the relations between things and human needs. The life-force in its higher manifestations has been isolated in thought by some more advanced savages, especially in North America and Polynesia, and has been given a definite name; in Polynesia and Melanesia it is called mana, and other names for it occur elsewhere.430

232. It shows itself in any object, nonhuman or human, that produces extraordinary effects. In the Pacific islands all great achievements of men are attributed to it—all great chiefs possess it in an eminent degree;431 it is then nearly equivalent to what we call capacity or genius. When it resides in an inanimate thing it may produce a physical effect: it comes up in the steam of the American sacred sweat lodge, and gives health to the body (and thus buoyancy to the mind);432 here it is identical with the soothing and stimulating power of the steam. It is, in a word, a term for the force residing in any object.433 Like sickness and other evils, blessings, and curses, it is conceived of as having physical form and may be transmitted from its possessor to another person or object. In some cases its name is given to the thing to which it is attached.434

233. How widely the conception exists is uncertain; further research may discover it in regions where up to now it has not been recognized. Scarcely a trace of it exists in the higher ancient religions. The Latin genius, the indwelling power of the man, bears a resemblance to it. The Old Testament "spirit of God" is said to "come on" a man or to be "poured out on" him, as if it were a physical thing—it gives courage and strength to the warrior and knowledge to the worshiper;435 the power or energy is here (in the earlier Hebrew writings) identified with the spirit or animus of the deity, which appears to be thought of as physical.

234. Mana is conceived of by the peoples mentioned above not as a vague influence diffused through the world, but as a power resident in certain definite persons or things. It is impersonal in the sense in which any quality, as courage, is impersonal, but it is not itself an object of worship; worship is directed toward the thing that possesses or imparts mana. It may reside in a natural object or in a supernatural being—the object will be used to secure it, the supernatural being will be asked to bestow it. In both cases the act will be religious.

235. Mana is itself, strictly speaking, a scientific biological conception, but it necessarily enters into alliance with religion. Belief in it exists along with belief in ghosts, spirits, and gods—it is not a rival of these, but an attachment to them. As a thing desirable, it is one of the good gifts that the great Powers can bestow, and it thus leads to worship. It is found in distinct form, as is pointed out above, only in superior tribes—it has not been discovered in very low communities, and appears not to belong to the earliest stratum of religious beliefs. But it rests on the view that all things are endowed with life, and this view may be taken to be universal. The doctrine of mana gradually vanishes before a better knowledge of the human constitution,436 a larger conception of the gods, and a greater trust in them.437

236. Things and persons endowed with peculiar power, whether as seats of mana or as abodes of spirits, are set apart by themselves, are regarded with feelings of awe, and thus become "sacred." In process of time the accumulated experience of generations builds up a mass of sacred objects which become a part of the religious possessions of the community. The quality of sacredness is sometimes attached to objects and customs when these are regarded as necessary to the well-being of the community, or highly convenient. A house, for example, represents the life of the family, and is therefore a thing to be revered; and in many tribes the walls, which guard the house against intrusion, and the door and the threshold, which offer entrance into it, are considered sacred; the hearth especially, the social center of the dwelling, becomes a sacred place.

237. The savage communities with which we are acquainted all possess their stock of such things—the beliefs concerning sacred objects are held by all the members of the tribe. The development of the idea of 'sacred' is a social communal one, but it is impossible for us to say precisely how all the individual sacred objects were selected, or what was the exact attitude of primeval man toward all the things that are now regarded as sacred.

238. The conception of power resident in certain things to control human life is represented by our term "luck." The formulation of "luck" systems goes on in savage and half-civilized communities up to a certain point, and is then checked by the rise of higher religious ideas and by the growth of the conception of natural law. But long after the grounds of belief in luck have ceased to be accepted by the advanced part of the community, many individual forms of good luck and bad luck maintain themselves in popular belief.438 Some of these beliefs may be traced back to their savage sources, especially those that are connected with animals; the origin of most of them is obscure. They coalesce to some extent with conceptions derived from magic, divination, and taboo. The persistence of such savage dogma into civilized times enables us to understand how natural this dogma was for early forms of society.

239. In the practices mentioned above there is no worship proper. Mana is not thought of as being in itself a personal power, and worship is paid only to objects regarded as having personality. The fetish derives its value from the spirit supposed to be resident in the fetish objects; these are commonly worn as charms, and the attitude of the man to such a charm, though he regards it as powerful, seems to be not exactly that of worship—he keeps it as a protection so long as it appears to be useful, but, as is remarked above, he acts as if he were its master. He believes that the efficient factor is the indwelling spirit, but he commonly distinguishes between this spirit and a god proper. When, however, the fetish is regarded as a tutelary divinity, it loses its lower character and takes its place among the gods.

240. We turn now to man's attitude toward other objects, similarly regarded as sacred, but invested with distinct personality, and supposed to act consciously on human life. These are all such things as men's experiences bring them into intimate relations with, this relationship forming the basis of the high regard in which they are held. They are animals, plants, mountains, rivers, heavenly bodies, living men, and ghosts. These are objects of cults, many of them in some cases being worshiped at the same time in a single community. A chronological order in the adoption of such cults it is not possible to determine. All objects stand together in man's consciousness in early cultural strata, and the data now at command do not enable us to say which of them first assumed for him a religious character; the chronological order of cults may have differed in different communities when the general social conditions were different. We may begin with the cult of animals without thereby assuming that it came first in order of time.