Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 4.djvu/768

 DEITY

DEITY

And how can we explain that savages can forget the very names of their great grandfathers and yet re- member traditional persons from generation to genera- tion? The Blacks of Australia will often, by peculiar de\aces, avoid mentioning the names of the dead, a practice hostile to the development of ancestor-wor- ship ; yet these same people have a belief in a deity and in a future state of some kind. The Wathi-Wathi call this being Tha-tlui-pali; the Ta-ta-thi call him Tidong.

(3) The otiose, imworshipped supreme Being, often credited with the charge of future rewards and punish- ments among ancestor-worshipping peoples, cannot be explained in Spencer's theory. On the contrary, it shows the corruption of Theism by Animism. " Among the negroes of Central Africa", writes de la Saussaye, "we find belief in a Highest God, the Creator of the world ; but of course this God is not worshipped, since as a general rule negroes worship cruel dreaded gods much more than friendly gods. Worship of ancestors is also general. In Dahomey and Ashantee huge human hecatombs are offered to deceased rulers". The Kaf- firs acknowledge a deity, Molunga, but neither adore nor pray to him. Tlie Zulu religion, now almost ex- clusively ancestor-worship, seems to contain a broken and almost obliterated element of belief in a liigh, un- worshipped Deity presiding over a future life. The Zulu Unkidunkulu made things, as the Australian Baiame. Unlike them, he is subject to the competi- tion of ancestral ghosts, the more recent the more pow- erfvd, in receipt of pr.ayer and sacrifice. Hence he is neglected, by many believed to be dead or the mere shadow of a children's tale. Or this being exists in repose, remote from men with whom he acts through a deputy or deputies.

(4) Spencer, to support his theory, appeals to the crude languages of savages; he says they are unable to say, "I dreamed that I saw", instead of "I saw". Now, in many savage speculations are found ideas as metaphysical as in Hegel. Again, the Australian languages have the noun skep and the verb to see. They make an essential distinc- tion between waking hallucinations and the hallucina- tions of sleep; anyone can have the latter, only a wizard the former. Furthermore, Spencer contra- dicts himself; he credits these low savages with great ingenuity and strong powers of abstract reasoning — an admission fatal to his premises. Again Spencer holds that the idea of the Deity was formed after the analogy of human rulers. But whence comes the great God in tribes which have neither chief nor king nor distinction of rank, e. g. the Fuegians, Bushmen, .Australians? The Deity cannot be a reflection from human kings where there are no kings. Furthermore, Spencer's as- sumption is false, viz. that deities improve morally and otherwise according to the rising grades in the evolu- tion of culture and civilization. Usually, the reverse is the case. " In its highest aspect", writes A. Lang, "that simplest theology of Australia is free from the faults of the popular theology in Greece. The God discourages sin. He does not set the e.xample of sin- ning. He is almost too sacred to be named (except in mythology) and far too sacred to be represented by idols. It would scarcely be a paradox to say that the popular Zeus or Ares is degenerate from Darumulum or the Fuegian being who forbids the slaying of an enemy".

(5) The real difficulty in Spencer's theory is to accoimt for the evolution from ghosts of the eternal creative moral Deity found in the belief of the lowest savages. The Bushmen, Fuegians, Australians be- lieve in moral, practically omniscient, deities, makers of things, fathers in heaven, friends, guardians of morality, seeing what is good or b.ad in the hearts of men. So widely is this belief diffused that it cannot be ignored. The only recourse is to account for these deities as "loan-gods". This explanation is refuted

by A. Lang. Waitz writes, " Among branches where foreign influence is least to be suspected we discover behind their more conspicuous fetishisms and super- stitions something which we cannot strictly call mono- theism, but which tends in that direction." In the belief of the savages morality and religion are united. The savage, who lives in terror of the souls of the dead, might worship a devil, not a deity who is moral and benevolent. The Andamanese have Pulusha, "Like- fire", but invisible, never born, and so immortal, who knows the thoughts of the heart, is angered by wrong- doing, pitiful to the distressed, sometimes deigning to grant relief, the judge of souls. Huxley's contention, in "Science and Hebrew Tradition", that the Austra- lians had merely a non-moral belief in ghost-like enti- ties, usually malignant, and that in this state theology is wholly independent of ethics, is refuted by an exact study of these very beliefs. He claims that the re- ligion of Israel arose from ghost-worship. But how does he explain the silence of the prophets or the Hebrew apparent indifference to the departed soul? Elohim differs from a ghost; in Hebrew belief He is ethical, immortal, and without beginnings. "In all ancient primitive peoples", writes Wellhausen, "re- ligion furnished a motive for law and morals ; in case of none did it become so with such purity and power as in that of the Israelites ' '. The problem which Spencer's theory cannot solve is, how the Australians could bridge the gulf between theghost of a soon-forgotten fighting man and that conception of a Father in Heaven, omni- scient, moral, which under various names is found all over a continent. The distmction between the creative supreme Deity of the savage, unpropitiated by sacrifice, and the waning, easily-forgotten, cheaply propitiated ghost of a tribesman is vital and essential.

(6) Finally, the two conceptions (i.e. ghost and god) have different sources. According to de la Saussaye, "The sentiments which men entertain towards spirits and gods are different. Fear and egoistic calculation, which prevail in Animism, have been replaced by more exalted sentiments and a less selfish interest. ThLs by itself would speak against a derivation of the whole belief in go<ls from Animism." Spencer speaks of medicine men adored as gods after death ; but this supposes the idea of the Deity. In Rome, Greece, and India ancestor-worship supposes the worship of the great gods. The departed, the fathers, the an- cestors, the heroes are admitted to the society of the gods; they are often called "half-gods"; laut the gods are always there before them. Again the Deity of savage faith as a rule never died at all; yet the very idea of ghost implies the previous death ; a ghost is a phantom of a dead man. Now anthropologists tell us that the idea of death as a universal ordinance is umiatural to the savage (A. Lang; de la Saussaye). Diseases and death once did not exist and normally ought not to exist, the savage thinks. The Supreme Deity of the savage is minus death ; he was active be- fore death entered the world, and was not affected by the entry of death. The essential characteristic of Darumulum, of Baiame, of Cogn, of Bunjil is that they never died at all. They belong to the period before death entered the world. Hence between the high deities of savages and the apotheosized first ancestors exists a great gulf, i. e. death.

It is interesting to compare this savage belief with the dii immortales of the Romans, the 8eol adivarot. of the Greeks, the Amartija of the Hindus, the deathless gods of Babylonia, and the Egyptian deities, kings over death and the dead. The Banks Islanders have two orders of intelligent beings different from living men: ghosts of the dead and beings who are not, nor ever have been, human. The beings who never were human and who never died are called vui; the ghosts are named tamatc. A vui is not a spirit who has been a ghost. This is the usual savage doctrine. The distinction, therefore, between eternal being and