Robert Marett - Anthropology

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It will be replied--and I fully realize the force of the
objection--that history, and therefore anthropology, has nothing to
do with truth or falsehood--in a word, with value. In strict theory,
this is so. Its business is to describe and generalize fact; and
religion from first to last might be pure illusion or even delusion,
and it would be fact none the less on that account.

At the same time, being men, we all find it hard, nay impossible, to
study mankind impartially. When we say that we are going to play the
historian, or the anthropologist, and to put aside for the time being
all consideration of the moral of the story we seek to unfold, we are
merely undertaking to be as fair all round as we can. Willy nilly,
however, we are sure to colour our history, to the extent, at any rate,
of taking a hopeful or a gloomy view of man's past achievements, as
bearing on his present condition and his future prospects.

In the same way, then, I do not believe that we can help thinking to
ourselves all the time, when we are tracing out the history of
world-religion, either that there is "nothing in it" at all, or that
there is "something in it," whatever form it assume, and whether it
hold itself to be revealed (as it almost always does) or not. On the
latter estimate of religion, however, it is still quite possible to
judge that one form of religion is infinitely higher and better than
another. Religion, regarded historically, is in evolution. The best
form of religion that we can attain to is inevitably the best for us;
but, as a worse form preceded it, so a better form, we must allow and
even desire, may follow. Now, frankly, I am one of those who take the
more sympathetic view of historical religion; an I say so at once,
in case my interpretation of the facts turn out to be coloured by this
sanguine assumption.

Moreover, I think that we may easily exaggerate the differences in
culture and, more especially, in religious insight and understanding
that exist between the ruder peoples and ourselves. In view of our
common hope, and our common want of knowledge, I would rather identify
religion with a general striving of humanity than with the exclusive
pretension of any one people or sect. Who knows, for instance, the
final truth about what happens to the soul at death? I am quite ready
to admit, indeed, that some of us can see a little farther into a brick
wall than, say, Neanderthal man. Yet when I find facts that appear
to prove that Neanderthal man buried his dead with ceremony, and to
the best of his means equipped them for a future life, I openly confess
that I would rather stretch out a hand across the ages and greet him
as my brother and fellow-pilgrim than throw in my lot with the
self-righteous folk who seem to imagine this world and the next to
have been created for their exclusive benefit.

Now the trouble with anthropologists is to find a working definition
of religion on which they can agree. Christianity is religion, all
would have to admit. Again, Mahomedanism is religion, for all
anthropological purposes. But, when a naked savage "dances" his
god--when the spoken part of the rite simply consists, as amongst the
south-eastern Australians, in shouting "Daramulun! Daramulun!" (the
god's name), so that we cannot be sure whether the dancers are indulging
in a prayer or in an incantation--is that religion? Or, worse still,
suppose that no sort of personal god can be discovered at the back
of the performance--which consists, let us say, as amongst the central
Australians, in solemnly rubbing a bull-roarer on the stomach, so that
its mystic virtues may cause the man to become "good" and "glad" and
"strong" (for that is his own way of describing the spiritual
effects)--is that religion, in any sense that can link it historically
with, say, the Christian type of religion?

No, say some, these low-class dealings with the unseen are magic, not
religion. The rude folk in question do not go the right way about
putting themselves into touch with the unseen. They try to put pressure
on the unseen, to control it. They ought to conciliate it, by bowing
to its will. Their methods may be earnest, but they are not propitiatory.
There is too much "My will be done" about it all.

Unfortunately, two can play at this game of _ex-parte_ definition.
The more unsympathetic type of historian, relentlessly pursuing the
clue afforded by this distinction between control and conciliation,
professes himself able to discover plenty of magic even in the higher
forms of religion. The rite as such--say, churchgoing as such--appears
to be reckoned by some of the devout as not without a certain intrinsic
efficacy. "Very well," says this school, "then a good deal of average
Christianity is magic."

My own view, then, is that this distinction will only lead us into
trouble. And, to my mind, it adds to the confusion if it be further
laid down, as some would do, that this sort of dealing with the unseen
which, on the face of it, and according to our notions, seems rather
mechanical (being, as it were, an effort to get a hold on some hidden
force) is so far from being akin to religion that its true affinity
is with natural science. The natural science of to-day, I quite admit,
has in part evolved out of experiments with the occult; just as law,
fine art, and almost every other one of our higher interests have
likewise done. But just so long and so far as it was occult science,
I would maintain, it was not natural science at all, but, as it were,
rather supernatural science. Besides, much of our natural science has
grown up out of straightforward attempts to carry out mechanical work
on industrial lines--to smelt iron, let us say; but since then, as
now, there were numerous trade-secrets, an atmosphere of mystery was
apt to surround the undertaking, which helped to give it the air of
a trafficking with the uncanny. But because science then, as even now
sometimes, was thought by the ignorant to be somehow closely associated
with all the powers of evil, it does not follow that then or now the
true affinity of science must be with the devil.

Magic and religion, according to the view I would support, belong to
the same department of human experience--one of the two great
departments, the two worlds, one might almost call them, into which
human experience, throughout its whole history, has been divided.
Together they belong to the supernormal world, the _x_-region of
experience, the region of mental twilight.

Magic I take to include all bad ways, and religion all good ways, of
dealing with the supernormal--bad and good, of course, not as we may
happen to judge them, but as the society concerned judges them.
Sometimes, indeed, the people themselves hardly know where to draw
the line between the two; and, in that case, the anthropologist cannot
well do it for them. But every primitive society thinks witchcraft
bad. Witchcraft consists in leaguing oneself with supernormal powers
of evil in order to effect selfish and anti-social ends. Witchcraft,
then, is genuine magic--black magic of the devil's colour. On the other
hand, every primitive society also distinguishes certain salutary ways
of dealing with supernormal powers. All these ways taken together
constitute religion. For the rest, there will always be a mass of more
or less evaporated beliefs, going with practices that have more or
less lost their hold on the community. These belong to the folklore
which every people has. Under this or some closely related head must
also be set down the mass of mere wonder-tales, due to the play of
fancy, and without direct bearing on the serious pursuits of life.

The world to which neither magic nor religion belongs, but to which
physical science, the knowledge of how to deal mechanically with
material things, does belong wholly, is the workaday world, the region
of normal, commonplace, calculable happenings. With our telescopes
and microscopes we see farther and deeper into things than does the
savage. Yet the savage has excellent eyes. What he sees he sees.
Consequently, we must duly allow for the fact that there is for him,
as well as for us, a "natural," that is to say, normal and workaday
world; even though it be far narrower in extent than ours. The savage
is not perpetually spook-haunted. On the contrary, when he is engaged
on the daily round, and all is going well, he is as careless and happy
as a child.

But savage life has few safeguards. Crisis is a frequent, if
intermittent, element in it. Hunger, sickness and war are examples
of crisis. Birth and death are crises. Marriage is usually regarded
by humanity as a crisis. So is initiation--the turning-point in one's
career, when one steps out into the world of men. Now what, in terms
of mind, does crisis mean? It means that one is at one's wits' end;
that the ordinary and expected has been replaced by the extraordinary
and unexpected; that we are projected into the world of the unknown.
And in that world of the unknown we must miserably abide until, somehow,
confidence is restored.

Psychologically regarded, then, the function of religion is to restore
men's confidence when it is shaken by crisis. Men do not seek crisis;
they would always run away from it, if they could. Crisis seeks them;
and, whereas the feebler folk are ready to succumb, the bolder spirits
face it. Religion is the facing of the unknown. It is the courage in
it that brings comfort.[6]

[Footnote 6: The courage involved in all live religion normally
coexists with a certain modesty or humility. I have tried to work out
this point elsewhere in a short study entitled _The Birth of
Humility_.]

We must go on, however, to consider religion sociologically. A religion
is the effort to face crisis, so far as that effort is organized by
society in some particular way. A religion is congregational--that
is to say, serves the ends of a number of persons simultaneously. It
is traditional--that is to say, has served the ends of successive
generations of persons. Therefore inevitably it has standardized a
method. It involves a routine, a ritual. Also it involves some sort
of conventional doctrine, which is, as it were, the inner side of the
ritual--its lining.

Now in what follows I shall insist, in the first instance, on this
sociological side of religion. For anthropological purposes it is the
sounder plan. We must altogether eschew that "Robinson Crusoe method"
which consists in reconstructing the creed of a solitary savage, who
is supposed to evolve his religion out of his inner consciousness:
"The mountain frowns, therefore it is alive"; "I move about in my dreams
whilst my body lies still, therefore I have a soul," and so on. No
doubt somebody had to think these things, for they are thoughts. But
he did not think them, at any rate did not think them out, alone. Men
thought them out together; nay, whole ages of living and thinking
together have gone to make them what they are. So a social method is
needed to explain them.

The religion of a savage is part of his custom; nay, rather, it is
his whole custom so far as it appears sacred--so far as it coerces
him by way of his imagination. Between him and the unknown stands
nothing but his custom. It is his all-in-all, his stand-by, his faith
and his hope. Being thus the sole source of his confidence, his custom,
so far as his imagination plays about it, becomes his "luck." We may
say that any and every custom, in so far as it is regarded as lucky,
is a religious rite.

Hence the conservatism inherent in religion. "Nothing," says Robertson
Smith, "appeals so strongly as religion to the conservative
instincts." "The history of religion," once exclaimed Dr. Frazer, "is
a long attempt to reconcile old custom with new reason, to find a sound
theory for absurd practice." At first sight one is apt to see nothing
but the absurdities in savage custom and religion. After all, these
are what strike us most, being the curiosity-hunters that we all are.
But savage custom and religion must be taken as a whole, the bad side
with the good. Of course, if we have to do with a primitive society
on the down-grade--and very few that have been "civilizaded," as John
Stuart Mill terms it, at the hands of the white man are not on the
down-grade--its disorganized and debased custom no longer serves a
vital function. But a healthy society is bound, in a wholesale way,
to have a healthy custom. Though it may go about the business in a
queer and roundabout fashion, it must hit off the general requirements
of the situation. Therefore I shall not waste time, as I might easily
do, in piling up instances of outlandish "superstitions," whether
horrible and disgusting, from our more advanced point of view, or
merely droll and silly. On the contrary, I would rather make it my
working assumption that, with all its apparent drawbacks, the religion
of a human society, if the latter be a going concern, is always
something to be respected.

In considering, however, the relation of religion to custom, we are
met by the apparent difficulty that, whereas custom implies "Do," the
prevailing note of primitive religion would seem rather to consist
in "Do not." But there is really no antagonism between them on this
account. As the old Greek proverb has it, "There is only one way of
going right, but there are infinite ways of going wrong." Hence, a
nice observance of custom of itself involves endless taboos. Since
a given line of conduct is lucky, then this or that alternative course
of behaviour must be unlucky. There is just this difference between
positive customs or rites, which cause something to be done, and
negative customs or rites, which cause something to be left undone,
that the latter appeal more exclusively to the imagination for their
sanction, and are therefore more conspicuously and directly a part
of religion. "Why should I do this?" is answered well-nigh sufficiently
by saying, "Because it is the custom, because it is right." It seems
hardly necessary to add, "Because it will bring luck." But "Why should
I not do something else instead?" meets, in the primitive society,
with the invariable answer, "Because, if you do, something awful will
happen to us all." What precise shape the ill-luck will take need not
be specified. The suggestion rather gains than loses by the
indefiniteness of its appeal to the imagination.

* * * * *

To understand more clearly the difference between negative and
positive types of custom as associated with religion, let us examine
in some detail an example of each. It will be well to select our cases
from amongst those that show the custom and the religion to be quite
inseparable--to be, in short, but two aspects of one and the same fact.
Now nothing could be more commonplace and secular a custom than that
of providing for one's dinner. Yet for primitive society this custom
tends to be likewise a rite--a rite which may, however, be mainly
negative and precautionary, or mainly positive and practical in
character, as we shall now see.

The Todas, so well described by Dr. Rivers, are a small community,
less than a thousand all told, who have retired out of the stress of
the world into the fastnesses of the Nilgiri Hills, in southern India,
where they spend a safe but decidedly listless life. They are in a
backwater, and are likely to remain there. At any rate, their religion
is not such as to make them more enterprising. Gods they may be said
to have none. The bare names of certain deities of the hill-tops are
retained, but whether these were once the honoured gods of the Todas
or, as some think, those of a former race, certain it is that there
is more shadow than substance about them now. The real religion of
the people centres round a dairy-ritual. From a practical and economic
point of view, the work of the dairy consists in converting the milk
of their buffaloes into the butter and buttermilk which constitute
their staple diet. From a religious point of view, it consists in
converting something they dare not eat into something they can eat.

Many, though not all, of their buffaloes are sacred, and their milk
may not be drunk. The reason why it may not be drunk anthropologists
may cast about to discover, but the Todas themselves do not know. All
that they know, and are concerned to know, is that things would somehow
all go wrong, if any one were foolish enough to commit such a sin.
So in the Toda temple, which is a dairy, the Toda priest, who is the
dairyman, sets about rendering the sacred products harmless. The dairy
has two compartments--one sacred, the other profane. In the first are
stored the sacred vessels, into which the milk is placed when it comes
from the buffaloes, and in which it is turned into butter and buttermilk
with the help of some of the previous brew, this having meanwhile been
put by in an especially sacred vessel. In the second compartment are
profane vessels, destined to receive the butter and buttermilk, after
they have been carefully transferred from the sacred vessels with the
help of an intermediary vessel, which stands exactly on the line
between the two compartments. This transference, being carried out
to the accompaniment of all sorts of reverential gestures and
utterances, secures such a profanation of the sacred substance as is
without the evil consequences that would otherwise be entailed. Thus
the ritual is essentially precautionary. A taboo is the hinge of the
whole affair.

And the tendency of such a negative type of religion is to pile
precautions on precautions. Thus the dairyman, in order to be equal
to his sacred office, must observe taboos without end. He must be
celibate. He must avoid all contact with the dead. He is limited to
certain kinds of food; which, moreover, must be prepared in a certain
way, and consumed in a certain place. His drink, again, is a special
milk, which must be poured out with prescribed formulas. He is
inaccessible to ordinary folk save on certain days and in certain ways,
their mode of approach, their salutations, his greeting in reply, being
all regulated with the utmost nicety. He can only wear a special garb.
He must never cut his hair. His nails must be suffered to grow long.
And so on and so forth. Such disabilities, indeed, are wont to
circumscribe the life of all sacred persons, and can be matched from
every part of the world. But they may fairly be cited here, as helping
to fill in the picture of what I have called the precautionary or
negative type of religious ritual.

Further, there is something rotten in the state of Toda religion. The
dairymen struck Dr. Rivers as very slovenly in the performance of their
duties, as well as vague and inaccurate in their accounts of what ought
to be done. Indeed, it was hard to find persons willing to undertake
the office. Ritual duties involving uncomfortable taboos were apt to
be thrust on youngsters. The youngsters, being youngsters, would
probably violate the taboos; but anyway that was their look-out. From
evasions to fictions is but a step. Hence when an unclean person
approached the dairyman, the latter would simply pretend not to see
him. Or the rule that he must not enter a hut, if women were within,
would be circumvented by simply removing from the dwelling the three
emblems of womanhood, the pounder, the sieve, and the sweeper;
whereupon his "face was saved." Now wherefore all this lack of
earnestness? Dr. Rivers thinks that too much ritual was the reason.
I agree; but would venture to add, "too much negative ritual." A
religion that is all dodging must produce a sneaking kind of
worshipper.

Now let us turn another type of primitive religion that is equally
identified with the food-quest, but allied to its positive and active
functions, which it seeks to help out. Messrs. Spencer and Gillen have
given us a most minute account of certain ceremonies of the Arunta,
a people of central Australia. These ceremonies they have named
_Intichiuma_, and the name will probably stick, though there is reason
to believe that the native word for them is really something different.
Their purpose is to make the food-animals and food-plants multiply
and prosper. Each animal or plant is attended to by the group that
has it for a totem. (Totemism amongst this very remarkable people has
nothing to do either with exogamy or with lineage; but that is a subject
into which it is impossible to go here.) The rites vary considerably
from totem to totem, but a typical case or two may be cited.

The witchetty-grub men, for instance, want the grubs to multiply, that
there may be plenty for their fellows to eat. So they wend their way
along a certain path which tradition declares to have been traversed
by the great leader of the witchetty-grubs of the days of long ago.
(These were grubs transformed into men, who became by reincarnation
ancestors of the present totemites.) The path brings them to a place
in the hills where there is a big stone surrounded by many small stones.
The big stone is the adult animal, the little stones are its eggs.
So first they tap the big stone, chanting an invitation to it to lay
eggs. Then the master of the ceremonies rubs the stomach of each
totemite with the little stones, and says, "You have eaten much food."

Or, again, the Kangaroo men repair to a place called Undiara. It is
a picturesque spot. By the side of a water-hole that is sheltered by
a tall gum-tree rises a curiously gnarled and weather-beaten face of
quartzite rock. About twenty feet from the base a ledge juts out. When
the totemites hold their ceremony, they repair to this ledge. For here
in the days of long ago the ancestors who are now reincarnated in them
cooked and ate kangaroo food; and here, moreover, the kangaroo animals
of that time deposited their spirit-parts. First the face of the rock
below the ledge is decorated with long stripes of red ochre and white
gypsum, to represent the red fur and white bones of the kangaroo. It
is, in fact, one of those rock-paintings such as the palaeolithic men
of Europe made in their caves. Then a number of men, say, seven or
eight, mount upon the ledge, and, whilst the rest sing solemn chants
about the prospective increase of the kangaroos, these men open veins
in their arms, so that the blood flows down freely upon the ceremonial
stone. This is the first part of the rite. The second part is no less
interesting. After the blood-letting, they hunt until they kill a
kangaroo. Thereupon the old men of the totem eat a little of the meat;
then they smear some of the fat on the bodies of all the party; finally,
they divide the flesh amongst them. Afterwards, the totemites paint
their bodies with stripes in imitation of the design upon the rock.
A second hunt, followed by a second sacramental meal, concludes the
whole ceremony. That their meal is sacramental, a sort of communion
service, is proved by the fact that henceforth in an ordinary way they
allow themselves to partake of kangaroo meat at most but very sparingly,
and of certain portions of the flesh not at all.

One more example of these rites may be cited, in order to bring out
the earnestness of this type of religion, which is concerned with doing,
instead of mere not-doing. There is none of the Toda perfunctoriness
here. It will be enough to glance at the commencement of the ritual
of the honey-ant totemites. The master of the ceremonies places his
hand as if he were shading his eyes, and gazes intently in the direction
of the sacred place to which they are about to repair. As he does so,
the rest kneel, forming a straight line behind him. In this position
they remain for some time, whilst the leader chants in a subdued tone.
Then all stand up. The company must now start. The leader, who has
fallen to the rear, that he may marshal the column in perfect line,
gives the signal. Then they move off in single file, taking a direct
course to the holy ground, marching in perfect silence, and with
measured step, as if something of the profoundest import were about
to take place.

I make no apology for describing these proceedings at some length.
It is necessary to my argument to convey the impression that the
essentials of religion are present in these apparently godless
observances of the ruder peoples. They arise directly out of custom--in
this case the hunting custom. Their immediate design is to provide
these people with their daily bread. Yet their appeal to the
imagination--which in religion, as in science, art, and philosophy,
is the impulse that presides over all progress, all creative
evolution--is such that the food-quest is charged with new and deeper
meaning. Not bread alone, but something even more sustaining to the
life of man, is suggested by these tangled and obscure solemnities.
They are penetrated by quickenings of sacrifice, prayer, and communion.
They bring to bear on the need of the hour all the promise of that
miraculous past, which not only cradled the race, but still yields
it the stock of reincarnated soul-force that enables it to survive.
If, then, these rites are part and parcel of mere magic, most, or all,
of what the world knows as religion must be mere magic. But it is better
for anthropology to call things by the names that they are known by
in the world of men--that is, in the wider world, not in some corner
or coterie of it.

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