PREFACE.
Much of the material for this volume was collected during the
time that I was preparing for the press the Evolution of Woman,
or while searching for data bearing on the subject of
sex-specialization. While preparing that book for publication, it
was my intention to include within it this branch of my
investigation, but wishing to obtain certain facts relative to
the foundations of religious belief and worship which were not
accessible at that time, and knowing that considerable labor and
patience would be required in securing these facts, I decided to
publish the first part of the work, withholding for the time
being that portion of it pertaining especially to the development
of the God-idea.
As mankind construct their own gods, or as the prevailing
ideas of the unknowable reflect the inner consciousness of human
beings, a trustworthy history of the growth of religions must
correspond to the processes involved in the mental, moral, and
social development of the individual and the nation.
By means of data brought forward in these later times relative
to the growth of the God-idea, it is observed that an independent
chain of evidence has been produced in support of the facts
recently set forth bearing upon the development of the two
diverging lines of sexual demarcation. In other words, it has
been found that sex is the fundamental fact not only in the
operations of Nature but in the construction of a god.
In the Evolution of Woman it has been shown that the peculiar
inheritance of the two sexes, female and male, is the result of
the bias given to these separate lines of development during the
earliest periods of sex-differentiation; and, as this division of
labor was a necessary step in the evolutionary processes, the
rate of progress depended largely on the subsequent adjustment of
these two primary elements or forces. A comprehensive study of
prehistoric records shows that in an earlier age of existence
upon the earth, at a time when woman's influence was in the
ascendancy over that of man, human energy was directed by the
altruistic characters which originated in and have been
transmitted through the female; but after the decline of woman's
power, all human institutions, customs, forms, and habits of
thought are seen to reflect the egoistic qualities acquired by
the male.
Nowhere is the influence of sex more plainly manifested than
in the formulation of religious conceptions and creeds. With the
rise of male power and dominion, and the corresponding repression
of the natural female instincts, the principles which originally
constituted the God-idea gradually gave place to a Deity better
suited to the peculiar bias which had been given to the male
organism. An anthropomorphic god like that of the Jews--a god
whose chief attributes are power and virile might--could have had
its origin only under a system of masculine rule.
Religion is especially liable to reflect the vagaries and
weaknesses of human nature; and, as the forms and habits of
thought connected with worship take a firmer hold on the mental
constitution than do those belonging to any other department of
human experience, religious conceptions should be subjected to
frequent and careful examination in order to perceive, if
possible, the extent to which we are holding on to ideas which
are unsuited to existing conditions.
In an age when every branch of inquiry is being subjected to
reasonable criticism, it would seem that the origin and growth of
religion should be investigated from beneath the surface, and
that all the facts bearing upon it should be brought forward as a
contribution to our fund of general information. As well might we
hope to gain a complete knowledge of human history by studying
only the present aspect of society, as to expect to reach
reasonable conclusions respecting the prevailing God-idea by
investigating the various creeds and dogmas of existing
faiths.
The object of this volume is not only to furnish a brief
outline of religious growth, but to show the effect which each of
the two forces, female and male, has had on the development of
our present God- idea, which investigation serves to accentuate
the conclusions arrived at in the Evolution of Woman relative to
the inheritance of each of the two lines of sexual
demarcation.
E.B.G.
INTRODUCTION.
Through a study of the primitive god-idea as manifested in
monumental records in various parts of the world; through
scientific investigation into the early religious conceptions of
mankind as expressed by symbols which appear in the architecture
and decorations of sacred edifices and shrines; by means of a
careful examination of ancient holy objects and places still
extant in every quarter of the globe, and through the study of
antique art, it is not unlikely that a line of investigation has
been marked out whereby a tolerably correct knowledge of the
processes involved in our present religious systems may be
obtained. The numberless figures and sacred emblems which appear
carved in imperishable stone in the earliest cave temples; the
huge towers, monoliths, and rocking stones found in nearly every
country of the globe, and which are known to be closely connected
with primitive belief and worship, and the records found on
tablets which are being unearthed in various parts of the world,
are, with the unravelling of extinct tongues, proving an almost
inexhaustible source for obtaining information bearing upon the
early history of the human race, and, together, furnish
indisputable evidence of the origin, development, and unity of
religious faiths.
By comparing the languages used by the earlier races to
express their religious conceptions; by observing the similarity
in the mythoses and sacred appellations among all tribe and
nations, an through the discovery of the fact that the legends
extant in the various countries of the globe are identical, or
have the same foundation, it is probable that a clue has already
been obtained whereby an outline of the religious history of the
human family from a period even as remote as the "first
dispersion," or from a time when one race comprehended the entire
population of the globe, maybe traced. Humboldt in his Researches
observes: "In every part of the globe, on the ridge of the
Cordilleras as well as in the Isle of Samothrace, in the Aegean
Sea, fragments of primitive languages are preserved in religious
rites."
Regarding the identity of the fundamental ideas contained in
the various systems of religion, both past and present, Hargrave
Jennings, in referring to a parallel drawn by Sir William Jones,
between the deities of Meru and Olympus, observes:
"All our speculations tend to the same conclusions. One day it
is a discovery of cinerary vases, the next, it is etymological
research; yet again it is ethnological investigation, and the day
after, it is the publication of unsuspected tales from the Norse;
but all go to heap up proof of our consanguinity with the peoples
of history--and of an original general belief, we might add."
That the religious systems of India and Egypt were originally
the same, there can be at the present time no reasonable doubt.
The fact noted by various writers, of the British Sepoys, who, on
their overland route from India, upon beholding the ruins of
Dendera, prostrated themselves before the remains of the ancient
temples and offered adoration to them, proves the identity of
Indian and Egyptian deities. These foreign devotees, being asked
to explain the reason of their strange conduct declared that they
"saw sculptured before them the gods of their country."
Upon the subject of the identity of Eastern religions, Wilford
remarks that one and the same code both of theology and of
fabulous history, has been received through a range or belt about
forty degrees broad across the old continent, in a southeast and
northwest direction from the eastern shores of the Malaga
peninsula to the western extremity of the British Isles, that,
through this immense range the same religious notions reappear in
various places under various modifications, as might be expected;
and that there is not a greater difference between the tenets and
worship of the Hindoos and the Greeks than exists between the
churches of Home and Geneva.
Concerning the universality of certain religious beliefs and
opinions, Faber, commenting upon the above statement of Wilford,
observes that, immense as is this territorial range, it is by far
too limited to include the entire phenomenon, that the
observation "applies with equal propriety to the entire habitable
globe; for the arbitrary rites and opinions of every pagan nation
bear so close a resemblance to each other, that such a
coincidence can only have been produced by their having had a
common origin. Barbarism itself has not been able to efface the
strong primeval impression. Vestiges of the ancient general
system may be traced in the recently discovered islands in the
Pacific Ocean; and, when the American world was first opened to
the hardy adventurers of Europe, its inhabitants from north to
south venerated, with kindred ceremonies and kindred notions, the
gods of Egypt and Hindostan, of Greece and Italy, of Phoenicia
and Britain."[1]
[1] Pagan Idolatry, book i., ch. i.
"Though each religion has its own peculiar growth, the seed
from which they spring is everywhere the same."[2]
[2] Max Muller, Origin and Growth of Religion, p. 48.
The question as to whether the identity of conception and the
similarity in detail observed in religious rites, ceremonies, and
symbols in the various countries of the globe are due to the
universal law of unity which governs human development, or
whether, through the dispersion of one original people, the early
conceptions of a Deity were spread broadcast over the entire
earth, is perhaps not settled; yet, from the facts which have
been brought forward during the last century, the latter theory
seems altogether probable, such divergence in religious ideas as
is observed among the various peoples of the earth being
attributable to variations in temperament caused by changed
conditions of life. In other words, the divergence in the course
of religious development has doubtless been due to
environment.
In an attempt to understand the history of the growth of the
god-idea, the fact should be borne in mind that, from the
earliest conception of a creative force in the animal and
vegetable world to the latest development in theological
speculation, there has never been what might consistently be
termed a new religion. On the contrary, religion like everything
else is subject to the law of growth; therefore the faiths of
to-day are the legitimate result, or outcome, of the primary idea
of a Deity developed in accordance with the laws governing the
peculiar instincts which have been in the ascendancy during the
life of mankind on the earth.
The erroneous impression which under a belief in the unknown
has come to prevail, namely, that the moral law is the result of
religion; or, in other words, that the human conscience is in
some manner dependent on supernaturalism for its origin and
maintenance, is, with a better and clearer understanding of the
past history of the development of the human race, being
gradually dispelled. On one point we may reasonably rest assured
that the knowledge of right and wrong and our sense of justice
and right-living have been developed quite independently of all
religious beliefs. The moral law embodied in the golden rule is
not an outgrowth of mysticism, or of man's notions of the
unknowable; but, on the contrary, is the result of experience,
and was formulated in response to a recognized law of human
necessity,--a law which involves the fundamental principle of
progress. The history of human development shows conclusively
that mankind GREW into the recognition of the moral law, that
through sympathy, or a desire for the welfare of others,--a
character which had its root in maternal affection,--conscience
and the moral sense were evolved.
While the moral law and the conscience may not be accounted as
in any sense the result of man's ideas concerning the unknowable,
neither can the errors and weaknesses developed in human nature
be regarded as the result of religion. Although the sexual
excesses which during three or four thousand years were practiced
as sacred rites, and treated as part and parcel of religion in
various parts of the world, have had the effect to stimulate and
strengthen the animal nature in man, yet these rites may not be
accounted as the primary cause of the supremacy of the lower
nature over the higher faculties. On the contrary, the impulse
which has been termed religion, with all the vagaries which its
history presents, is to be regarded more as an effect than as a
cause. The stage of a nation's development regulates its
religion. Man creates his own gods; they are powerless to change
him.
As written history records only those events in human
experience which belong to a comparatively recent period of man's
existence, and as the primitive conceptions of a Deity lie buried
beneath ages of corruption, glimpses of the earlier faiths of
mankind, as has already been stated, must be looked for in the
traditions, monuments, and languages of extinct races.
In reviewing this matter we shall doubtless observe the fact
that if the stage of a nation's growth is indicated by its
religious conceptions, and if remnants of religious beliefs are
everywhere present in the languages, traditions, and monuments of
the past through a careful study of these subjects we may expect
to gain a tolerably correct understanding not alone of the growth
of the god-idea but of the stage of development reached by the
nations which existed prior to the beginning of the historic age.
We shall be enabled also to perceive whether or not the course of
human development during the intervening ages has been
continuous, or whether, for some cause hitherto unexplained, true
progress throughout a portion of this time has been arrested,
thus producing a backward movement, or degeneracy.
If we would unravel the mysteries involved in present
religious faiths, we should begin not by attempting to analyze or
explain any existing system or systems of belief and worship.
Such a course is likely to end not only in confusion and in a
subsequent denial of the existence of the religious nature in
mankind, but is liable, also, to create an aversion for and a
distrust of the entire subject of religious experience. In view
of this fact it would appear to be not only useless but
exceedingly unwise to spend one's time in attempting to gain a
knowledge of this subject simply by studying the later
developments in its history.
If we are really desirous of obtaining information regarding
present religious phenomena, it is plain that we should adopt the
scientific method and turn our attention to the remote past,
where, by careful and systematic investigation, we are enabled to
perceive the earliest conception of a creative force and the
fundamental basis of all religious systems, from which may be
traced the gradual development of the god-idea.