Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 14.djvu/330

* NATURE-WORSHIP. 2S6 NATURE- WORSHIP. (mysterious) power in an African 'godliut.' This sliaiwlcss elfigj- leads to (b) pure idol- worsliip; that is. where the ethgy is due to an attempt to shape the stone to a divine form human or beastly in attributes. Images of gods are recognized by Homer and seem to be referred to in the Rig-Vcda. but these works represent an advanced stage of culture. Idols are not found among the lowest races. Savages, such as the Bushmen, Patagonians. Es- kimo, Andamanese, have no idols. But theists like the Finns and Pol.vnesians are idohiters. as are still more advanced races, the -Me.vicans, Kgj'ptians, Babylonians, (ireeks, and Hindus. (3) The fetish', often a stone, is worshiped. .ecident. precedent, any peculiarity prompt- ing the fancy that the object will be benefi- cent is sufficient to make a fetish. When no longer regarded as useful the fetish is flung away or laid aside in a god-hut. The fetish-wor- shiper scarcely makes a distinction between the divine ])Ower in a fetish and the inherent divinity of a fetish. There are certain clans in Africa which believe that there is a divine power in. but separate from, the object; but most fetish- worshipers probably make no distinction between the power and the "thing. (See Feti.shism.) (4) A stone is often worshiped also either as a totem or as the result of totemism (q.v. ). The latter stage of worsliip is so far advanced beyond totemism as to be a new form of nature-worship. It arises in this way. When a totemist sacrifices to his totem he sheds blood near or on a stone which was originally the temporary habitat of the ancestral spirit'. The stone itself in the first stage is revered only incidentally ; but when successive generations have thus hallowed a stone, the divinity Incomes gradually extended to the stone itself, and the ])rimitive tomb-altar becomes itself a thing prayed to as a divinity. So the Australian Cliiiringa sticks are revered as homes of the ancestor spirits and the redskin totem-poles are themselves divinities. So bun-stones. symbols of the sun, such as the white sun-stone of the Scandinavians, become divinities, even when the synibol does not (as is often the ca.se) merely conceal an older form of worship. But many worshiped stones were originally only monuments. The long-famed .Tupiter Lapis or 'stone .Tupiter' is now known not to have been a 'stone god," a fact which indicates that other stone gods also may have been misinterpreted. As the huge stone is revered, so is a huge cliff or mountain, generally as a local tutelary divin- ity. Mountains are believed to have an in- dividual life and may beget offspring on rivers, being thus regarded as divine powers, though they usually take animal forms when acting as animate beings. Very old and widespread is the belief that a man's indiviilual life may be de- posited in a mountain or tree, and be destroyed only when the divine object is overthrown by a higher divinity. DENnROLATBY. Under this word mnyhe included the 'worship of trees.' in the strict sense, and the worship of plants, phytolatry, in the general sense of worship of objects of the vegetable world. The terms, however, are not quite coter- minous, since plants are revered only as totems or as useful objects, while trees are worshiped for a variety of reasons, either because they are totems, or because they arc useful, or beautiful, or fearsome, or as symbols. Tn this pliase of worship it is .sometimes difiioult to decide whether the divinity resides in the oliject or is the object. Both views were lield by dilfereiil members of some races. Thus this question became a sub- ject of debate between the Brahnians and the Buddhists. The former held what is undoubtedly the more primitive belief, that the tree itself was an animate person. The Buddhist held, as did the tireek, that there was a spirit (dryad) in the tree. The worship of some form of the vegetable creation was general in antiquity, and has existed almost to the present day in Europe. Only a few hundred years ago the Teutons, for example, worshiped plants and trees, as they did rocks, rivers, and mountains. Traces of this belief are still visible in popular rites and su- ])erstitions. Both men and gods were supposed to have sprung from trees. Thtis the .lgonquin Indians and the Teutons both regarded the ash as the divine progenitor of men. and the mother date-palm was worshiped by the Semites, as other mother trees are to-day worshiped by the Dra- vidians. There are four varieties of plant and tree worship. The vegetable god. tree, or plant is revered (a) for its peculiar virtues or quali- ties. Thus in India the snmn plant was regarded as divine because of its intoxicating qualities, as is the ciica plant in Peru : and the modern peyotr cult of Mexico has the same origin. Or (b) the vegetable is a totem, examples of which are found in the divine corn and cocoanut of America and Samoa, respectively. Thirdly (c), the tree or ])lant is worshiped as a spirit in the material, as is the case in dryad-worshi|i in Greece and India. Kinally (dl. the spirit revered is that of reproduction as sliown in the vegetable, of which class are the corn mother of the Teutons an<l the mother date-iialin of the Babylonians. To these must be added the sacred grove, as revered by Dravidians, Teutons. Greeks. Romans, etc. The trees of the grove are collectively sacred and may be individually divine: but the grove itself is really a temple of divinities, not a divinity prr fsc. Tree-marriages, still common among the wild tribes of India, are a sirvival of totemism. To avoid the ill hu'k of a third marriage, even civilized Hindus wed a tree as a third wife. TiiKKi<)i..TKYOR Zooi-.VTRY. Animal godsalready have human characteristics and are quite anthro- popathic. Love or fear, as in the ease of binnan gods, prompts that greater respect which with savages constitutes worship. This is especially easy in the case of animals, for savages establish no barrier of soul and reason as peculiar posses- sions of man between themselves and beasts. A very early belief in metempsychosis (q.v.) taught primitive man to believe that beast soul and human soul were interchangealde. Thus the tiger is worshiped not only from fear, but because a special tiger is often Itelieved to possess the soul of a de])arted chief. Some animals become divine as totems, liut not all. Ordinary pests are depre- cated by prayer and offerings. Some animals are wiirshipi'd merely becatise they are useful.. The best (leveloped systems of thiriolatry are found among the Egyptians. Babylonians, an(f American Indians. But some of the monstrous l>easta of Babylon are adored through symbolism rather than because of totemistie survivals. Reverence alone prompts man to make the image of god-hensts more powerful and mysterious than the natural boasts, and .some of the beast forms are clearly symbolic, as in the portrayal of the