Robert Marett - Anthropology

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In order to bring out more fully the second point that I have been
trying to make, namely, the close interdependence between religion
and custom in primitive society, let me be allowed to quote one more
example of the ritual of a rude people. And again let us resort to
native Australia, though this time to the south-eastern corner of it;
since in Australia we have a cultural development on the whole very
low, having been as it were arrested through isolation, yet one that
turns out to be not incompatible with high religion in the making.

Initiation in native Australia is the equivalent of what is known
amongst ourselves as the higher education. The only difference is that,
with them, every one who is not judged utterly unfit is duly initiated;
whereas, with us, the higher education is offered to some who are unfit,
whilst many who are fit never have the luck to get it. The
initiation-custom is intended to tide the boys over the difficult time
of puberty, and turn them into responsible men. The whole of the adult
males assist in the ceremonies. Special men, however, are told off
to tutor the youth--a lengthy business, since it entails a retirement,
perhaps for six months, into the bush with their charges; who are there
taught the tribal traditions, and are generally admonished, sometimes
forcibly, for their good. Further, this is rather like a retirement
into a monastery for the young men, seeing that during all the time
they are strictly taboo, or in other words in a holy state that involves
much fasting and mortification of the flesh. At last comes the time
when their actual passage across the threshold of manhood has to be
celebrated. The rites may be described in one word as impressive.
Society wishes to set a stamp on their characters, and believes in
stamping hard. Physically, then, the lads feel the force of society.
A tooth is knocked out, they are tossed in the air to make them grow
tall, and so on--rites that, whilst they may have separate occult ends
in view, are completely at one in being highly unpleasant.

Spiritual means of education, however, are always more effective than
physical, if designed and applied with sufficient wisdom. The
bull-roarer, of which something has been already said, furnishes the
ceremonies with a background of awe. It fills the woods, that surround
the secret spot where the rites are held, with the rise and fall of
its weird music, suggestive of a mighty rushing wind, of spirits in
the air. Not until the boys graduate as men do they learn how the sound
is produced. Even when they do learn this, the mystery of the voice
speaking through the chip of wood merely wings the imagination for
loftier flights. Whatever else the high god of these mysteries,
Daramulun, may be for these people--and undoubtedly all sorts of trains
of confused thinking meet in the notion of him--he is at any rate the
god of the bull-roarer, who has put his voice into the sacred instrument.
But Daramulun is likewise endowed with a human form; for they set up
an image of him rudely shaped in wood, and round about it dance and
shout his name. Daramulun instituted these rites, as well as all the
other immemorial rites of the assembled tribe or tribes. So when over
the heads of the boys, prostrated on the ground, are recited solemnly
what Mr. Lang calls "the ten commandments," that bid them honour the
elders, respect the marriage law, and so on, there looms up before
their minds the figure of the ultimate law-giver; whilst his unearthly
voice becomes for them the voice of the law. Thus is custom exalted,
and its coercive force amplified, by the suggestion of a power--in
this case a definitely personal power--that "makes for righteousness,"
and, whilst beneficent, is full of terror for offenders.

* * * * *

And now it may seem high time to pass on from the sociological and
external view that has hitherto been taken of primitive religion to
a psychological view of it--one that should endeavour to disclose the
hidden motives, the spiritual sources, of the beliefs that underlie
and sustain the customary practices. But precisely at this point the
anthropological treatment of religion is apt to prove unsatisfactory.
History can record that such and such is done with far more certainty
than that such and such a state of mind accompanies and inspires the
doing. Besides, the savage is no authority on the why and wherefore
of his customs. "However else would a reasonable being think of
acting?" is his sufficient reason, as we have already seen. Not but
what the higher minds amongst savages reflect in their own way upon
the meaning of their customs and rites. But most of this reflection
is no more than an elaborate "justification after the event." The mind
invents what Mr. Kipling would call a "Just-so story" to account for
something already there. How it might have come about, not how it did
come about, is all that the professed explanation amounts to. And when
it comes to choosing amongst mere possibilities, the anthropologist,
instead of consulting the savage, may just as well endeavour to do
it for himself.

Now anthropological theories of the origin of religion seem to me to
go wrong mainly because they seek to simplify too much. Having got
down to what they take to be a root-idea, they straightway proclaim
it _the_ root-idea. I believe that religion has just as few, or as
many, roots as human life and mind.

The theory of the origin of religion that may be said to hold the field,
because it is the view of the greatest of living anthropologists, is
Dr. Tylor's theory of animism. The term animism is derived from the
Latin _anima_, which--like the corresponding word _spiritus_, whence
our "spirit"--signifies the breath, and hence the soul, which
primitive folk tend to identify with the breath. Dr. Tylor's theory
of animism, then, as set forth in his great work, _Primitive Culture_,
is that "the belief in spiritual beings" will do as a definition of
religion taken at its least; which for him means the same thing as
taken at its earliest. Now what is a "spiritual being"? Clearly
everything turns on that. Dr. Tylor's general treatment of the subject
seems to lay most of the emphasis on the phantasm. A phantasm (as the
etymology of the word shows) is essentially an appearance. In a dream
or hallucination one sees figures, more or less dim, but still having
"vaporous materiality." So, too, the shadow is something without body
that one can see; though the breath, except on a frosty day, shows
its subtle but yet sensible nature rather by being felt than by being
seen. Now there can be no doubt that the phantasm plays a considerable
part in primitive religion (as well as in those fancies of the primitive
mind that have never found their way into religion, at all events into
religion as identified with organized cult). Savages see ghosts,
though probably not more frequently than we do; they have vivid dreams,
and are much impressed by their dream-experiences; and so on. Besides,
the phantasm forms a very convenient half-way house between the seen
and the unseen; and there can be no doubt that the savage often says
breath, shadow, and so forth, when he is trying to think and mean
something immaterial altogether.

But animism would seem sometimes to be used by Dr. Tylor in a wider
sense, namely, as "a doctrine of universal vitality." In dealing with
the myths of the ruder peoples, as, for example, those about the sun,
moon, and stars, he shows how "a general animation of nature" is implied.
The primitive man reads himself into these things, which, according
to our science, are without life or personality. He thinks that they
have a different kind of body, but the same kind of feelings and motives.
But this is not necessarily to think that they are capable of giving
off a phantasm, as a man does when his soul temporarily leaves him,
or when after death his soul becomes a ghost. There need be nothing
ghost-like about the sun, whether it is imagined as a shining orb,
or as a shining being of human shape to whom the orb belongs. There
is not anything in the least phantasmal about the Greek god Apollo.
I think, then, that we had better distinguish this wider sense of
animism by a different name, calling it "animatism," since that will
serve at once to disconnect and to connect the two conceptions.

I am not sure, however, how far we ought to press this "doctrine of
universal vitality." Does a savage, for instance, when he is hammering
at a piece of flint think of it as other than a "thing," any more than
we should? I doubt it. He may say "Confound you!" if it suddenly snaps
in two, just as we might do. But though the language may seem to imply
a "you," he would mean, I believe, to impute to the flint just as much,
or as little, of personality as we should mean to do when using similar
language. In other words, I believe that, within the world of his
ordinary work-a-day experience, he recognizes both things and persons;
without giving a thought, in either case, to the hidden principles
that make them be what they are, and act as they do.

When, on the other hand, the thing, or the person, falls within the
world of supernormal experience, when they strike the imagination as
wonderful and wonder-working, then there is much more reason why he
should seek to account to himself for the mystery in, or behind, the
strange appearance. Howitt, who knew his Australian natives intimately,
cites the following as "a good example of how the native mind works."
To the black-fellow his club or his spear are part and parcel of his
ordinary life. There is no, "medicine," no "devil," in them. If they
are to be made supernaturally potent, they must be specially charmed.
But it is quite otherwise with his spear-thrower or his bull-roarer.
The former for no obvious reason enables him to throw his spear
extraordinarily far. (I have myself seen an Australian spear, with
the help of the spear-thrower, fly a hundred and fifty yards, and strike
true and deep at the end of its flight.) The latter emits the noise
of thunder, though a mere chip of wood on the end of a string. These,
then, are in themselves "medicine." There is "virtue" in, or behind,
them.

Is, then, to attribute "virtue" the same thing, necessarily, as to
attribute vitality? Are the spear-thrower and the bull-roarer
inevitably thought of as alive? Or are they, as a matter of course,
endowed with soul or spirit? Or may there be also an impersonal kind
of "virtue," "medicine," or whatever the wonder-working power in the
wonder-working thing is to be called? Now there is evidence that the
savage himself, in speaking about these matters, sometimes says power,
sometimes vitality, sometimes spirit. But the simplest way of
disposing of these questions is to remember that such fine distinctions
as these, which theorists may seek to draw, do not appeal at all to
the savage himself. For him the only fact that matters is that, whereas
some things in the world are ordinary, and can be reckoned on, other
things cannot be reckoned on, but are wonder-working.

Moreover, of wonder-working things, some are good and some are bad.
To get all the good kind of wonder-workers on to his side, so as to
confound the bad kind--that is what his religion is there to do for
him. "May blessings come, may mischiefs go!" is the import of his
religious striving, whether anthropologists class it as spell or as
prayer.

Now the function of religion, it has been assumed, is to restore
confidence, when man is mazed, and out of his depth, fearful of the
mysteries that obtrude on his life, yet compelled, if not exactly
wishful, to face them and wrest from them whatever help is in them.
This function religion fulfils by what may be described in one word
as "suggestion." How the suggestion works psychologically--how, for
instance, association of ideas, the so-called "sympathetic magic,"
predominates at the lower levels of religious experience--is a
difficult and technical question which cannot be discussed here.
Religion stands by when there is something to be done, and suggests
that it can be done well and successfully; nay, that it is being so
done. And, when the religion is of the effective sort, the believers
respond to the suggestion, and put the thing through. As the Latin
poet says, "they can because they think they can."

What, from the anthropological point of view, is the effective sort
of religion, the sort that survives because, on the whole, those whom
it helps survive? It is dangerous to make sweeping generalizations,
but there is at any rate a good deal to be said for classing the world's
religions either as mechanical and ineffective, or as spiritual and
effective. The mechanical kind offers its consolations in the shape
of a set of implements. The "virtue" resides in certain rites and
formularies. These, as we have seen, are especially liable to harden
into mere mechanism when they are of the negative and precautionary
type. The spiritual kind of religion, on the other hand, which is
especially associated with the positive and active functions of life,
tends to read will and personality into the wonder-working powers that
it summons to man's aid. The will and personality in the worshippers
are in need not so much of implements as of more will and personality.
They get this from a spiritual kind of religion; which in one way or
another always suggests a society, a communion, as at once the means
and the end of vital betterment.

To say that religion works by suggestion is only to say that it works
through the imagination. There is good make-believe as well as bad;
and one must necessarily imagine and make-believe in order to will.
The more or less inarticulate and intuitional forces of the mind,
however, need to be supplemented by the power of articulate reasoning,
if the will is to make good its twofold character of a faculty of ends
that is likewise a faculty of the means to those ends. Suggestion,
in short, must be purged by criticism before it can serve as the guide
of the higher life. To bring this point out will be the object of the
following chapter.

CHAPTER IX
MORALITY

Space is running out fast, and it is quite impossible to grapple with
the details of so vast a subject as primitive morality. For these the
reader must consult Dr. Westermarck's monumental treatise, _The Origin
and Development of the Moral Ideas_, which brings together an immense
quantity of facts, under a clear and comprehensive scheme of headings.
He will discover, by the way, that, whereas customs differ immensely,
the emotions, one may even say the sentiments, that form the raw
material of morality are much the same everywhere.

Here it will be of most use to sketch the psychological groundwork
of primitive morality, as contrasted with morality of the more advanced
type. In pursuance of the plan hitherto followed, let us try to move
yet another step on from the purely exterior view of human life towards
our goal; which is to appreciate the true inwardness of human life--so
far at least as this is matter for anthropology, which reaches no
farther than the historic method can take it.

It is, of course, open to question whether either primitive or advanced
morality is sufficiently of one piece to allow, as it were, a composite
photograph to be framed of either. For our present purposes, however,
this expedient is so serviceable as to be worth risking. Let us assume,
then, that there are two main stages in the historical evolution of
society, as considered from the standpoint of the psychology of conduct.
I propose to term them the synnomic and the syntelic phases of society.
"Synnomic" (from the Greek _nomos_, custom) means that customs are
shared. "Syntelic" (from the Greek _telos_, end) means that ends are
shared.

The synnomic phase is, from the psychological point of view, a kingdom
of habit; the syntelic phase is a kingdom of reflection. The former
is governed by a subconscious selection of its standards of good and
bad; the latter by a conscious selection of its standards. It remains
to show very briefly how such a difference comes about.

The outstanding fact about the synnomic life of the ruder peoples is
perhaps this--that there is hardly any privacy. Of course, many other
drawbacks must be taken into account also--no wide-thrown
communications, no analytic language, no writing, no books, and so
on; but perhaps being in a crowd all the time is the worst drawback
of all. For, as Disraeli says in _Sybil_, gregariousness is not
association. Constant herding and huddling together hinders the
development of personality. That independence of character which is
the prime condition of syntelic society cannot mature, even though
the germs be there. No one has a chance of withdrawing into his own
soul. Therefore the individual does not experience that silent
conversation with self which is reflection. Instead of turning inwards,
he turns outwards. In short, he imitates.

But how, it may be objected, does evolution take place, if every one
imitates every one else? Certainly, it looks at first sight like a
vicious circle. Nevertheless, there is room for a certain progress,
or at any rate for a certain process of change. To analyse its
psychological springs would take us too long. If a phrase will do
instead of an explanation, we may sum them up, with the brilliant French
psychologist, Tarde, as "a cross-fertilization of imitations." We need
not, however, go far to get an impression of how this process of change
works. It is going on every day in our midst under the name of "change
of fashion." When one purchases the latest thing in ties or straw hats,
one is not aiming at a rational form of dress. If there is progress
in this direction, it is subconscious. The underlying spiritual
condition is not inaptly described by Dr. Lloyd Morgan as "a
sheep-through-the-gapishness."

From a moral point of view, this lack of capacity for private judgment
is equivalent to a want of moral freedom. We have seen how relatively
external are the sanctions of savage life. This does not mean, of course,
that there is no answering judgment in the mind of the individual when
he follows his customs. He says, "It is the custom; therefore it is
right." But this judgment can scarcely be said to proceed from a truly
judging, that is to say, critical, self. The man watches his neighbours,
taking his cue from them. His judgment is a judgment of sense. He does
not look inwards to principle. A moral principle is a standard that
can, by means of thought, be transferred from one sensible situation
to another sensible situation. The general law, and its application
to the situation present now to the senses, are considered apart,
before being put together. Consequently, a possible application,
however strongly suggested by custom, fashion, the action of one's
neighbours, one's own impulse or prejudice, or what not, can be
resisted, if it appear on reflection not to be really suited to the
circumstances. In short, in order to be rational and "put two and two
together," one must be able to entertain two and two as distinct
conceptions. Perceptions, on the contrary, can only be compared in
the lump. Just as in the chapter on language we saw how man began by
talking in holophrases, and only gradually attained to analytic, that
is, separable, elements of speech, so in this chapter we have to note
the strictly parallel development from confusion to distinction on
the side of thought.

Savage morality, then, is not rational in the sense of analysed, but
is, so to speak, impressionistic. We might, perhaps, describe it as
the expression of a collective impression. It is best understood in
the light of that branch of social psychology which usually goes by
the name of "mob-psychology." Perhaps mob and mobbish are rather
unfortunate terms. They are apt to make us think of the wilder
explosions of collective feeling--panics, blood-mania,
dancing-epidemics, and so on. But, though a savage society is by no
means a mob in the sense of a weltering mass of humanity that has for
the time being lost its head, the psychological considerations
applying to the latter apply also to the former, when due allowance
has been made for the fact that savage society is organized on a
permanent basis. The difference between the two comes, in short, to
this, that the mob as represented in the savage society is a mob
consisting of many successive generations of men. Its tradition
constitutes, as it were, a prolonged and abiding impression, which
its conduct thereupon expresses.

Savage thought, then, is not able, because it does not try, to break
up custom into separate pieces. Rather it plays round the edges of
custom; religion especially, with its suggestion of the general
sacredness of custom, helping it to do so. There is found in primitive
society plenty of vague speculation that seeks to justify the existing.
But to take the machine to bits in order to put it together differently
is out of the reach of a type of intelligence which, though competent
to grapple with details, takes its principles for granted. When
progress comes, it comes by stealth, through imitating the letter,
but refusing to imitate the spirit; until by means of legal fictions,
ritual substitutions, and so on, the new takes the place of the old
without any one noticing the fact.

Freedom, in the sense of intellectual freedom, may perhaps be said
to have been born in one place and at one time--namely, in Greece in
the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.[7] Of course, minglings and
clashings of peoples had prepared the way. Ideas begin to count as
soon as they break away from their local context. But Greece, in
teaching the world the meaning of intellectual freedom, paved a way
towards that most comprehensive form of freedom which is termed moral.
Moral freedom is the will to give out more than you take in; to repay
with interest the cost of your social education. It is the will to
take thought about the meaning and end of human life, and by so doing
to assist in creative evolution.

[Footnote 7: Political freedom, which is rather a different matter,
is perhaps pre-eminently the discovery of England.]

CHAPTER X
MAN THE INDIVIDUAL

By way of epilogue, a word about individuality, as displayed amongst
peoples of the ruder type, will not be out of place. There is a real
danger lest the anthropologist should think that a scientific view
of man is to be obtained by leaving out the human nature in him. This
comes from the over-anxiety of evolutionary history to arrive at
general principles. It is too ready to rule out the so-called
"accident," forgetful of the fact that the whole theory of biological
evolution may with some justice be described as "the happy accident
theory." The man of high individuality, then, the exceptional man,
the man of genius, be he man of thought, man of feeling, or man of
action, is no accident that can be overlooked by history. On the
contrary, he is in no small part the history-maker; and, as such, should
be treated with due respect by the history-compiler. The "dry bones"
of history, its statistical averages, and so on, are all very well
in their way; but they correspond to the superficial truth that history
repeats itself, rather than to the deeper truth that history is an
evolution. Anthropology, then, should not disdain what might be termed
the method of the historical novel. To study the plot without studying
the characters will never make sense of the drama of human life.

It may seem a truism, but is perhaps worth recollecting at the start,
that no man or woman lacks individuality altogether, even if it cannot
be regarded in a particular case as a high individuality. No one is
a mere item. That useful figment of the statistician has no real
existence under the sun. We need to supplement the books of abstract
theory with much sympathetic insight directed towards men and women
in their concrete selfhood. Said a Vedda cave-dweller to Dr. Seligmann
(it is the first instance I light on in the first book I happen to
take up): "It is pleasant for us to feel the rain beating on our
shoulders, and good to go out and dig yams, and come home wet, and
see the fire burning in the cave, and sit round it." That sort of remark,
to my mind, throws more light on the anthropology of cave-life than
all the bones and stones that I have helped to dig out of our Mousterian
caves in Jersey. As the stock phrase has it, it is, as far as it goes,
a "human document." The individuality, in the sense of the intimate
self-existence, of the speaker and his group--for, characteristically
enough, he uses the first person plural--is disclosed sufficiently
for our souls to get into touch. We are the nearer to appreciating
human history from the inside.

Some of those students of mankind, therefore, who have been privileged
to live amongst the ruder peoples, and to learn their language well,
and really to be friends with some of them (which is hard, since
friendship implies a certain sense of equality on both sides), should
try their hands at anthropological biography. Anthropology, so far
as it relates to savages, can never rise to the height of the most
illuminating kind of history until this is done.

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