sophy of life which may be right or wrong, and which certainly cannot be disposed of by being simply called savage,

A most essential difference between many so-called savages and ourselves is the little store they set on life. Perhaps we need not wonder at it.

There are few things that bind them to this life. To a woman or to a slave, in many parts of Africa or Australia, death must seem a happy escape, if only they could feel quite certain that the next life would not be a repetition of this. They are like children, to whom life and death are like travelling from one place to another; and as to the old people, who have more friends on the other side of the grave than on this, they are mostly quite ready to go, and consider it even an act of filial duty that their children should kill them, when life becomes a burden to them. Unless we take all this into account, we cannot form a right judgment of the religion of savage tribes.

At the time when De Brosses wrote the wonder was that black people should possess anything that could be called morality or religion, even a worship of stocks and stones.

We

have learnt to judge differently, thanks chiefly to the labours of missionaries who have spent their lives among savages, have learnt their languages and gained their confidence, and who, though they have certain prejudices of their own, have generally done full justice to the good points in their character. We may safely say that, in spite of all researches, no human beings have been found anywhere who do not possess something which to them is religion; or, to put it in the most general form, a belief in something beyond what they can see with their eyes.

As I cannot go into the whole evidence for this statement, I may be allowed to quote the conclusions which another student of the science of religion, Prof. Tiele, has arrived at on this subject, particularly as, on many points,

his views differ widely from my own. "The statement,” he says, “that there are nations or tribes which possess no religion rests either on inaccurate observations, or on a confusion of ideas. No tribe or nation has yet been met with destitute of belief in any higher beings; and travellers who asserted their existence have been afterwards refuted by facts. It is legitimate, therefore, to call religion, in its most general sense, an universal phenomenon of humanity."1

When, however, these old prejudices had been removed, and when it had been perceived that the different races of Africa, America, and Australia could not be lumped together under the common name of savages, the real difficulties of studying these races began to be felt, more particularly with regard to their religious opinions. It is difficult enough to give an accurate and scholar-like account of the religion of the Jews, the Greeks, the Romans, the Hindus and Persians; but the difficulty of understanding and explaining the creeds and ceremonials of those illiterate races is infinitely greater. Any one who has worked at the history of religion knows how hard it is to gain a clear insight into the views of Greeks and Romans, of Hindus and Persians on any of the great problems of life. Yet we have here a whole literature before us, both sacred and profane, we can confront witnesses, and hear what may be said on the one side and the other. If we were asked, however, to say, whether the Greeks in general, or one race of Greeks in particular, and that race again at any particular time, believed in a future life, in a system of rewards and punishments after death, in the supremacy of the personal gods or of an impersonal fate, in the necessity of prayer and sacrifice, in the sacred character of priests and temples, in the inspiration of prophets and lawgivers, we should find it often extremely hard to give a definite answer. There is a whole literature on the 1 Outlines, p. 6.

theology of Homer, but there is anything but unanimity between the best scholars who have treated on that subject during the last two hundred years.

Still more is this the case when we have to form our opinions of the religion of the Hindus and Persians. We have their sacred books, we have their own recognised commentaries: but who does not know that the decision whether the ancient Brahmans believed in the immortality of the soul depends sometimes on the right interpretation of a single word, while the question whether the Persians admitted an original dualism, an equality between the principle of Good and Evil, has to be settled in some cases on purely grammatical grounds?

When scholars differ from each other on such points, the mischief is not so serious; they have to give the reasons for and against their own view, and others may form their own opinion.

Yet it is strange to see what extraordinary misapprehensions arise when philosophers, who are not Oriental scholars by profession, attempt to utilise the statements of Sanskrit, Zend, Chinese, or Hebrew scholars. The same writers who in a few lines, often without any references to authorities, and without any attempt at determining the trustworthiness of their authorities, tell us what the Kaffers, the Bushmen, and Hottentots believe about the soul, about death, about God, and everything else, seldom make a statement about Chinese or Jews, about Hindus or Persians, which a scholar would not at once challenge. I shall give a few instances, not in a carping spirit, but simply to point out a very real danger.

There is no word more frequently used by the Brahmans than the word От. It may have meant originally Yes, but it soon assumed a solemn character, something like our Amen. It had to be used at the beginning, also at the end of every recitation, and there are few MSS. that do not begin

with it. It is even prescribed for certain salutations; 1 in fact, there was probably no word more frequently heard in ancient and modern India than Om. Yet we are told authoritatively that the Hindus avoid uttering the sacred name Om. It is quite possible that in a collective work, such as Dr. Muir's most excellent Sanskrit Texts, a passage may occur in support of such a statement. In the mystic philosophy of the Upanishads, Om became one of the principal names of the Brahman, and a knowledge of that Brahman was certainly forbidden to be divulged. But how different is that from stating that "by various semicivilised races the calling of deities by their

proper names has been interdicted or considered improper. It is so among the Hindus, who avoid uttering the sacred name Om; it was so with the Hebrews, whose pronunciation of the word Jehovah is not known for this reason; and Herodotus carefully avoids naming Osiris." The last statement will surprise those who remember how it is Herodotus who tells us that, though Egyptians do not all worship the same gods, they all worship Isis and Osiris, whom they identify with Dionysus.2

But this

Dr. Muir3 is no doubt perfectly right in saying that in some passages of the Veda "certain gods are looked upon as confessedly mere created beings," and that they, like men, were made immortal by drinking soma. only shows how dangerous even such careful compilations as Dr. Muir's Sanskrit Texts are apt to become. The gods in the Veda are called amartya, immortal, in opposition to men, who are martya, or mortal, and it is only in order to magnify the power of soma, that this beverage, like the Greek ἀμβροσία, is said to have conferred immortality on the gods. Nor did the Vedic poets think of their gods as what we mean by mere created beings," because they spoke of the Dawn as 1 Ápastamba-Sutras, i. 4, 13, 6, 2 Her. ii. 42; 144; 156. 3 Sanskrit Texts, v. p. 12.

66

the daughter of the Sky, or of Indra as springing from Heaven and Earth. At least we might say with much greater truth that the Greeks looked upon Zeus as a mere created thing, because he was the son of Kronos.

Again, what can be more misleading than, in order to prove that all gods were originally mortals, to quote Buddha's saying: "Gods and men, the rich and poor, alike must die." In Buddha's time, nay, even before Buddha's time, the old Devas, whom we choose to call Gods, had been used up. Buddha believed in no god or gods. He allowed the old Devas to subsist as mere fabulous beings1; and as fabulous beings of much greater consequence than the Devas shared in the common fate of all that exists, viz. an endless migration from birth to death, and from death to birth, the Devas could not be exempted from that common lot.

In forming an opinion of the mental capacities of people, an examination of their language is no doubt extremely useful. But such an examination requires considerable care and circumspection. An eminent psychologist says, "When we read of an existing South-American tribe, that the proposition 'I am an Abipone,' is expressible only in the vague way-'I Abipone, we cannot but infer that by such undeveloped grammatical structures only the simplest thoughts can be rightly conveyed." Would not some of the most perfect languages in the world fall under the same condemnation ?

If such misunderstandings happen where they might easily be avoided, what shall we think when we read broad statements as to the religious opinions of whole nations and tribes who possess no literature, whose very language is frequently but imperfectly understood, and who have been visited, it may be, by one or two travellers only for a few days, for a few weeks, or for a few years!

The word for God throughout Eastern Polynesia is Atua or Akua. 1 See M. M., Buddhistischer Nihilismus.

Now ata, in the language of those Polynesian islanders, means shadow, and what would seem to be more natural than to see in this name of God, meaning originally shadow, a confirmation of a favourite theory, that the idea of God sprang from the idea of spirit, and the idea of spirit from that of shadow? It would seem mere captiousness to object to such a theory, and to advise caution where all seems so clear. Fortunately the languages of Polynesia have in some instances been studied in a more scholarlike spirit, so that our theories must submit to being checked by facts. Thus Mr. Gill,1 who has lived twenty years at Mangaia, shows that atua cannot be derived from ata, shadow, but is connected with fatu in Tahitian and Samoan, and with aitu, and that it meant originally the core or pith of a tree. From meaning the core and kernel, ata came to mean the best part, the strength of a thing, and was used in the sense of lord and master. The final a in Atua is intensive in signification, so that Atua expresses to a native the idea of the very core and life. This was the beginning of that conception of the deity which they express by Atua.

When we have to deal with the evidence of a scholar like Mr. Gill, who has spent nearly all his life among one and the same tribe, a certain amount of confidence is excusable. Still even he cannot claim the same authority which belongs to Homer, when speaking of his own religion, or to St. Augustine, when giving us his interesting account of the beliefs of the ancient Romans. And yet, who does not know how much uncertainty is left in our minds after we have read all that such men have to say with regard to their own religion, or the religion of the community in which they passed the whole of their life!

The difficulties which beset travellers and missionaries in their description of the religious and intellectual life of 2 Myths and Songs from the South Pacific,

p. 33.

savage tribes are far more serious than is commonly supposed.

First of all, few men are quite proof against the fluctuations of public opinion. There was a time when many travellers were infected with Rousseau's ideas, so that in their eyes all savages became very much what the Germans were to Tacitus. Then came a reaction. Partly owing to the influence of American ethnologists, who wanted an excuse for slavery, partly owing, at a later time, to a desire of finding the missing link between men and monkeys, descriptions of savages began to abound which made us doubt whether the negro was not a lower creature than the gorilla, whether he really deserved the name of man.

When it became a question much agitated, whether religion was an inherent characteristic of man or not, some travellers were always meeting with tribes who had no idea and name for gods; 1 others discovered exalted notions of religion everywhere. My friend Mr. Tylor has made a very useful collection of contradictory accounts given by different observers of the religious capacities of one and the same tribe. Perhaps the most ancient instance on record is the account given of the religion of the Germans by Cæsar and Tacitus. Cæsar states that the Germans count those only as gods whom they can perceive, and by whose gifts they are clearly benefited, such as the Sun, the Fire, and the Moon.2 Tacitus declares "that they call by the names of gods that hidden thing which they do not perceive, except by reverence.' 113

And even if we find a traveller without any scientific bias, free from any wish to please the leaders of scien

1 M. M., History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, p. 538.

2 De Bello Gall, vi. 21. "Deorum numero eos solos ducunt quos cernunt, et quorum aperte opibus juvantur, Solem, et Vulcanum, et Lunam."

3 Tac. Germ. 9. "Deorumque nominibus appellant secretum illud quod sola reverentia vident."

tific schools, there remains, when he attempts to give a description of the religion of savage tribes, the immense difficulty that not one of these religions has any recognised standards, that religion among savage tribes is almost entirely a personal matter, that it may change from one generation to another, and that even in the same generation the greatest variety of individual opinion may prevail with regard to the gravest questions of religion. True, there are priests, there may be some sacred songs, and there always is some teaching from mothers to their children. But there is no Bible, no Prayer Book, no Catechism. Religion floats in the air, and each man takes as much or as little of it as he likes.

We shall thus understand why accounts given by different missionaries and travellers of the religion of one and the same tribe should sometimes differ from each other like black and white. There may be in the same tribe an angel of light and a vulgar ruffian, yet both would be considered by European travellers as authorities with regard to their religion. That there are differences in the religious convictions of the people is admitted by the negroes themselves.4

At Widah Des Marchais was distinctly told that the nobility only knew of the supreme God as omnipotent, omnipresent, rewarding the evil and the good, and that they approached him with prayers only when all other appeals had failed. There is, however, among all nations, savage as well as civilised, another nobility-the divine nobility of goodness and genius-which often places one man many centuries in advance of the common crowd.

Think only what the result would be if, in England, the criminal drunkard and the sister of mercy who comes to visit him in his miserable den were asked to give an account of their common Christianity, and you will be less surprised, I believe, at the discrepancies in the reports given by

4 Waitz, Anthropologie, ii. 129, 215.

different witnesses of the creed of one and the same African tribe.

It might be said that the priests, when consulted on the religious opinions of their people, ought to be unimpeachable authorities. But is that so! Is it so with us?

We have witnessed ourselves, not many years ago, how one of the most eminent theologians declared that one whose bust now stands with those of Keble and Kingsley in the same chapel of Westminster Abbey, did not believe in the same God as himself! Need we wonder, then, if priests among the Ashantis differ as to the true meaning of their fetishes, and if travellers who have listened to different teachers of religion differ in the accounts which they give to us? In some parts of Africa, particularly where the influence of Mohammedanism is felt, fetishes and sellers of fetishes are despised. The people who believe in them are called thiedos, or infidels. In other parts, fetishworship rules supreme, and priests who manufacture fetishes and live by the sale of them shout very loudly, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians.'

Lastly, let us consider that, in order to get at a real understanding of any religion, there must be a wish and a will on both sides. Many savages shrink from questions on religious topics, partly, it may be, from some 1 Waitz, ii. 200. On Different Classes of Priests, ii. 199.

superstitious fear-partly, it may be, from their helplessness in putting their own unfinished thoughts and sentiments into definite language. Some races are decidedly reticent. Speaking is an effort to them. After ten minutes conversation, they complain of headache. Others are extremely talkative, and have an answer to everything, little caring whether what they say is true or not.3 I mentioned in my first Lecture the account of some excellent Benedictine1 missionaries, who, after three years spent at their station in Australia, came to the conclusion that the natives did not adore any deity, whether true or false. Yet they found out afterwards that the natives believed in an omnipotent Being, who had created the world. Suppose they had left their station. before having made this discovery, who would have dared to contradict their statements?

De Brosses, when he gave his first and fatal account of fetishism, saw none of these difficulties. Whatever he found in the voyages of sailors and traders was welcome to him. He had a theory to defend, and whatever seemed to support it, was sure to be true.

F. MAX MÜLLER.

2 H. Spencer, Sociology, i. p. 94. 3 Mayer, Papua-sprachen, p. 19. 4 Journal of the Anthropological Institute, February, 1878.