Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 4.djvu/767

 DEITY

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DEITY

(Iip supreme Being. In other cases — e. g. Finnish .\uin, Zulu Unkulunkulu, and Algonquin Atahocan — this being is quite neglected in favour of spirits who rrpeive sacrifices of meat and grease. In north-west criitral Queensland Roth describes Mulkari as "a l)(nevolent omnipresent supernatural being, whose liome is in the skies". In Australia the supreme Be- ing cannot have been evolved out of ghost-worship, for the natives do not worship ancestral spirits. Sir \ B. Ellis has repudiated his theory of borrowing a ^"d in the case of the Tshi-speaking races. Waitz also denies that the higher religious beliefs of the Australians were borrowed from Christianity. His position is sustained by Howitt, Palmer, Dawson, Ridley, Ginither, and Greenway, who studied the na- tives on the spot. The esoteric and hidden nature of the beliefs, the usual though not universal absence of prayer, show their indigenous and ancient .source.

In "The Golden Bough" (2d ed.), Fraserhas raised the question, whether magic has not every%vhere pre- ceded religion. Yet among the blacks of Australia, the most backward race known, we find abundant testi- mony of a belief speculative, moral, emotional, but not practical. These deities are not propitiated by sacrifice and very seldom by prayer, yet they are makers, friends, and judges. In the conception of them the ethical element predominates. An all-knowing Be- ing obseri-es and rewards the conduct of men ; He is named with reverence if named at all ; His abode is in the heavens; He is Maker and Lord of all things; His lessons soften the heart. Mariner says concerning the Tongan deity Ta-li-y-Tooboo: "Of his origin they had no idea, rather supposing him to be eternal". In Guinea the natives worship "The Ancient One", "The Ancient One in Skyland", "Our Maker", "Our Father", "Our Great Father". Wilson writes that their belief in one supreme Being who made and upholds all things is univereal. In .\merica the same truth obtains. To the Indians God is "The Great Spirit". With some the idea of the Deity is very lofty; again it is found in cruder and lower expression. Darwin's description of the Patagonians as having very low religious beliefs is refuted by Giacomo Bove. The Pawnees worship A-ti-us ta-kaw-a, i. e. our Father in all places, or Ti-ra-wa, i. e. the Spirit-Father, with whom they expect to live after death. The Zunis speak of the deity as Awonawilona, i. e. the All-Father. The Indians of Missouri worship "Old Man Immortal", "the Great Spirit", "the Great Mystery". The Tinne of British America have the term Nayeweri, i. e. " He- who-creates-by-thought". The Algonquin speaks of KUche-Manclo who created the world "by an act of his will". If the supreme Being in barbarous tribes is regarded as otiose and inactive, so as to become a mere name and a by-word, it is due to the fact that He has been thrust into the background by the com- petition either of ancestral spirits — e. g. Unkulunkulu of the Zulus — or of friendly and helpful spirits — as, e. g., the Australian Baiame and Mungau-ngaur. Thus in W&st Africa the natives believe in Motogon, who created by breathing; he is long since dead and they pay him no worship. From a study of savage tribes Mr. Lang holds that first in order of evolution came belief in a supreme Being by some way only to be guessed at (to him St. Paul's explanation is the most probable); that this belief was subsefjuently obscured and overlaid by belief in ghosts and in a pan- theon of lesser deities; that in many c:tses the savage creative Being has a deputy, often a demiurge, who exercises aiithority; that when this is the ca.se, where ancestor-worship is the working religion, the deputy e.Tsily comes to be envis.aged as the first man. If to this we add the tradition, universal both among civ- ilizefl — e. g. Hindus, Greeks, Romans — and savage nations, that formerly heaven was nearer to man than it now is, that the Creator Himself gave lessons of wisdom to human beings, but afterwards withdrew

from them to heaven, where He now dwells, the line of reasoning will be even more cogent.

Therefore we can consider as conclusions well estab- lished: (1) That the farther back we go in the history of any religion, the purer becomes the conception of the deity, hence the fact of primitive purity; (2) That everywhere e\'ident traces are found of the corruption of the primitive belief, hence the fact of degeneracy; (.3) That all nations point in tradition to the time when the Deity was nearer to man, hence traces of primitive revelation. Tylor concedes that "the de- generation-theory, no doubt in some instances with fairness, may claim these beliefs as mutilated and per- verted remains of a higher religion" (Primitive Cul- ture, ed. 1871, p. 305).

III. The modern science of anthropology proposes an explanation of its own for the origin and existence of the Deity. It is called the anthropological theory. Its principal advocates are Tylor and Spencer. In purpose they agree, i. e. to show that the Deity has no real existence outside the mind of men; in method only they differ. With Tylor the method is biological, and we have Animism ; with Spencer it is psychologi- cal, and we have what is termed the ghost-theory. According to Spencer, primitive man derived the con- ception of spirit from reflections on phenomena of sleep, dreams, shadow, trance, and hallucination. In these experiences the ghosts of the departed came to him, he grew to dread them, and so worshipped them. From the departed souls of his kindred, first wor- shipped, the idea was gradually extemled; they then became gods; finally, one of these deities in imagina- tion became supreme and was regarded as the one only God.

It is a fact that ancestor-worship is found in various nations ; in China, India, ancient Greece and Rome it is, or was, an organized system. Here it formed the basis of family religion and of civil law. The Romans had their dii manes, i. e. divine ancestral spirits ("Eos leto datos divos habento " — Laws of the Twelve Tables as cited by Cicero in " De Leg.", II, ii, 22). As lar farniliaris, the first ancestor was considered the protector and genius of the house. In Greece the an- cestral spirits of families became 6eol Trarpipoi, i. e. paternal gods. How the ancestor watches over the race is shown in the "Antigone". In India we find the pitris, the companions of the devas, and later above the devas. In ancient Persia the fravashis helped Ahura Mazda in all his works. The songs of the Shih- King describe the ancestral festivals of China. With the Slavs was deeply rooted the belief in vampires, the souls of dead people, who suck the blood from the living. Among some savage nations the malignant character of ghosts prevails and gives rise to magic. On these facts Spencer constructs a theory to ex- plain the origin and development of the deity among all nations. The theory is purely materialistic and unscientific.

(1) Superior or supreme beings are found among races who do not worship ancestral spirits. It is not shown, it is denied by Waitz, it Ls not even al- leged by Spencer, that the Australians steadily propi- tiate or sacrifice at all to any ghosts of dead men. The Dieri of Central Australia pray for rain to the Mura Mura, a good spirit, not a set of remote ancestral spirits. Thus the .\ustralians and Andaraanese wor- ship a relatively supreme Being and Maker, and do not worship ghosts.

(2) The Zulus are ancestor- worshippers ; yet the recent dead parent, i. e. the father of the family act\ially worshipping, is far above all others. Thus the supreme ancestral-spirit changes with each genera- tion. If, therefore, ancestors are forgotten in pro- portion as they recede from their living descen<Iants, how can we on Spencer's hypothesis m.aintain that, as they gradually recede into the p;ust, they develop

iato the conception of a supreme Deity and Creator?