ARYAN FETICH WORSHIP. 53 CHAPTER II. THE EARLY GROWTH OF BELIEF. HAVING now dealt with and done with (for the rest of the present volume) a preliminary psychological investigation into the nature of belief, we may turn-all argument and discussion being for the future laid aside-to the actual phases of it selected for study; that is to say, to an enquiry which is of a strictly historical kind. In the last chapter we saw that human thought in this matter of belief might be considered as passing through three important stages. The first is the fetich-worshipping stage, when man's thoughts are concentrated purely upon visible concrete substances. The second we called the nature-worshipping stage. In it the objects of belief are still external and sensible, but they are also, in a certain degree, generalised, and are not often tangible. The third is the anthropomorphic or ethical stage, when the divinity is conceived as a being like mankind, and the ethical qualities of that being have to be taken fully into account. This third condition of belief lies quite beyond the sphere of the present enquiry. The first condition-that of fetichism-might likewise be thought outside our studies, seeing that none of the Indo-European creeds, of which we have any cognisance, are found in that primitive condition. But yet we know, not by theory only but by a hundred proofs, that our forefathers have been in the fetich-worshipping phase; and, therefore, the traces of fetich worship among the IndoEuropean races cannot be altogether left out of account. The proofs of that pre-existing state are still visible, and it is not to be supposed that the later forms of Aryan creeds have been uninfluenced by these foregone expeperiences. We have, therefore, in this chapter to note some of the traces of fetichism in the Aryan creeds; and, having glanced at these, to mark, where we can, the processes by which that fetich worship developed into the worship of nature in her less material shapes. I need not revive the discussion raised in the last chapter over the various uses of the word fetichism, nor repeat the distinction which was there drawn between that fetichism which is a distinct phase of belief and fetichism which is thaumaturgic merely, and which may coexist with widely different creeds. Fetichism which is really primitive chooses for worship only the greater and more imposing objects of sight and sense. The gods of the early world are the rock and the mountain, the tree, the river, the sea.1 Lesser fetiches get their sacredness from the greater a stone from the mountain; a stump, or block, or stick, from the tree. Tennent, we noticed, after assuring us that the Veddahs had no religion, no knowledge of a god or of a future state, yet went on to describe the dance of the medicine man, which was certainly of a ritualistic character. The charmer seemed to invoke some kind of inspiration in order to drive out disease. During the performance of his dance he was girt, we were told, with branches about the head and loins. This is almost the only part of the ritual observance which is given in detail. Is it too much to assume that these leaves and branches were fragments from the Veddah's fetich tree, and that the medicine man deemed that they helped him to gain his inspiration? The use of these fragments was, in that case, certainly thaumaturgic; but it points directly to a belief which lay behind. 1 In fact, the sea, as was said in the first chapter, is at first thought of only as a mighty river. Wherefore we get, as the three great fetichisms of the world, tree, river, and mountain worship. As the home of man must first be found in the caves, or beneath the shelter of a mountain, or under the branches of a tree, I can imagine the tree and mountain fetiches to have been the most primitive of all. In the last chapter I said that the original man might be credited with any goodliness of outward form, but that his intelligence must be supposed the most limited conceivable. In reality we know that man's body is stunted and deformed when his mind and spirit are so; and that we must think of our earliest ancestors as being not very far (at least) removed from the brutes, herding together in woods and caves, gleaning a precarious subsistence from roots and berries and wild fruits, and what of game they could kill with their rude weapons; in constant dread of the fiercer beasts of the forest, and always at war with them; never stirring far from the common home, ignorant of all things beyond that narrow bound, fearful always, and, through fear, credulous especially concerning things remote. When man became first conscious of himself he knew himself a social being. Marriage was not, but there was a tribal life; and we can picture this first small embryo of future commonwealths forming itself under a tree. Its branches are the resting-place at night; and, when the members of the tribe have separated during the day in search of food, the tree is the rendezvous for their evening return. Their first approach toward housebuilding is to pull down some branches as a screen against wind and rain; these they fasten into the earth, wattling other dead branches through them, and a kind of hut is made.1 Certain it is that, among people who live in woody lands, we find long continuing the habit of using a tree trunk for the main pillar of the house, of building circular walls round that tree, and sloping the roof down The picture with which M. Violet-le-Duc begins his Habitations of Men in all Ages, though fanciful, is surely not pure imagination. Some such beginning of the tree house must have occurred. 1 to them from it. Of such kind was the house of our northern ancestors. Those who have read the saga of Völsung will remember how, when that king was entertaining the Goths in his palace, came in the god Odhinn, likened to an old man, and how he left sticking in the branstock, the tree which supported the roof of the palace, the famous sword Gram, so fruitful a source of sorrow in after years. In the elder Edda, Brynhild hales Sigurd with the title 'brynpings apaldr,' literally apple tree of war, using the term as synonymous with pillar of war-a chance phrase which shows how universal was the use of trees in the way I have described. Nor was that use confined to the German races, though it was most conspicuous among them. There must certainly be an allusion to the same habit of building-grown old-fashioned and misunderstood in Homer's day-in that description of the wonderful chamber and bed of Odysseus, whose secret he and Penelope only knew. We remember how, when the hero had come to his house, and his wife still hesitated to recognise him, he bade her try him by questions, and Penelope spoke concerning a certain room and a certain bed in the well-wrought chamber which Odysseus himself had made. Then the hero said, 'No living mortal among men, strong in youth though he were, could well remove it, for a wonder bides in that well-made bed. There was a thick-leaved olive tree in the court, vigorous, flourishing. It was thick as the pillar of a house. And round this I built a chamber, finishing it with closefitting stones, and roofing it above. . . . And I made smooth the trunk with brass, right well and masterly, and planed it with a plane, working it into a bed-post. And from this I made a bed, polishing it all brightly with gold and ivory. This is the description of a tree-built 2 1 Sigrdrîfumál, 5. It does not take away from the significance of this phrase that apple trees were new things to the Norsemen when the above Eddaic song was written. Od. xxiii. 187 sqq. house. But in this case the ancient forms of building had become overlaid with other uses: the tree trunk no longer stood simple and bare; it was hidden in brass, and polished smooth like a pillar. All this is mere prosaic fact; but soon we pass on to the region of belief and mythology. The Norseman on the image of his own house fashioned his picture of the entire world. The earth, with the heaven for a roof, was, to him, but a mighty chamber, and likewise had its great supporting tree, passing through the midst and branching far upward among the clouds. This was the mythical ash called Yggdrasill, Odhinn's ash. It is of all trees the greatest and the best. Its branches spread over all this world of ours and over heaven. Three roots sustain it, and wide apart they stand; for one is among the Æsir (the gods), and another among the Hrimthursar (frost giants), where once lay the chasm of chasms; the third is above Nifl-hel (Mist-hell).' So speaks the younger Edda; and 1 the elder in still more beautiful language, but to the same effect: I know an ash standing Yggdrasill hight, A lofty tree laved with limpid water; Thence come the dews into the dales that fall; Deep down are the roots of Yggdrasill in gloomy Nifl-hel, the Northern Tartarus; and yet from under these roots wells up the fountain of life. In obedience, no doubt, to the same original belief in an earth-supporting tree do we read in classical mythology of the mystical oak (pnyós) of Dodona, which had its roots in Tartarus,3 while 1 Edda Snorra, D. 15. On the worship of trees by the Scandinavians see the passage quoted from Adam of Bremen in Ch. VII. And compare with that (for other heathen people) what is said in Zonoras, Annal. 3; Leon Isaur, 82. 2 Völuspá, 19. On the Teutonic earth tree see Kuhn, Herabk. des Feuers, 118-137; Windischmann, Zor. St. 165-177; Mannhardt, Germ. Myth. 541-671; and Kuhn's Zeitschr. f. verg. Sp. xv. 93 sqq. Schol. ad Virg. Georg. ii. 291. |