LECTURE FOURIF progress is to be made neither with the view that originally there was no truth at all intended to be understood in mythology, nor with the one which does admit an original truth in it, but not in mythology as such, that is to say specifically in so far as it is theology and history of gods, then with the elimination of these two views the third is established of its own accord and is now even necessary: mythology was, as it stands, intended to be understood as truth; but this of itself amounts to the same as the assertion that mythology was originally understood as theology and history of the gods, that it has originally religious meaning, and this very meaning, now, is also what the earlier explanations exclude; for they all tried to bring out the idea that the religious meaning which they had to concede to mythology, in so far as it undeniably counted as religious doctrine, was foreign to its original emergence, and came to it only later. Certainly the purely poetical interpretation, in so far as it denies only the intentionally introduced sense, can admit originally religious overtones, but for the same reason opposes any religious origin, and that which might appear to be a religious aspect in mythology, must, for this view, amount to something just as accidental and unintentional as any other seemingly doctrinal sense. It is quite different, though, with the non-poetical, more philosophical explanations. Here the religious is not admitted even as an originally accidental aspect. According to Heyne, the original authors were, on the contrary, well aware that the characters they thought up were not real beings, and thus, for that same reason, [68] that they were no gods; for the very minimum in the concept of gods is that they are beings which are feared, but only real beings or those taken to be real are feared. In the most consistent working-out, as it is found, admittedly, only in the case of Hermann, the religious significance even has to become the one which is intentionally excluded.
If we now wished, accordingly, to apply the common name “irreligious” (understood without any denigrating connotation) to all the theories considered up to now, then they would still perhaps reject the name, because from their point of view they do still assume, at least to some extent, that there existed really religious ideas at least prior to mythology, and thus they do not entirely exclude the religious element. And certainly someone who supported for example Euhemerus would have to imagine genuine gods prior to the mythological ones, which are for him simply false. In the same way Hermann speaks of a preliminary stage of mythology, a crudely physical superstition, which did indeed imagine actual beings believed to be associated with natural phenomena, and Heyne too, were it possible to question him about it, would not hesitate to accept this view; for he too has to assume genuine prior gods, so that his personalities, who are not genuine gods, might be taken to be gods. So even these explanations require genuine gods, from their point of view, and thus something really religious, at least as a background. Accordingly it would seem that no category of irreligious viewpoints could, in general, be introduced.
But in respect to what has just been discussed, at least, it would in fact first have to be decided whether we shall concede that the beings which it presupposes before the genuinely mythological ones were beings of really religious significance. For at first sight they are indeed real beings which men fancy to be hidden behind natural effects, be it due to ignorance of the true causes, or from pure unthinking animal terror, or in consequence of a positive tendency which is ascribed to man to presuppose, wherever he perceives an effect, will and freedom as well, if only because he creates the concept of existence, under which he understands the things outside himself, only [69] from himself, and only gradually generalizes it and learns to separate from it what is associated with this concept in human consciousness.34 XCIV As all-powerful, and in general superior to human forces, these beings associated with the processes of Nature are feared (primus in orbe Deos fecit timorXCV); and because they appear, as the mood takes them, now obstructive and now encouraging to human endeavours, demonstrations of subservience are used in an attempt to dispose them favourably. So the belief in such beings, it is said, was the first religion.
This explanation was propounded in recent times principally by David Hume, although he is less inclined to derive the initial ideas of invisible beings from reflections about natural phenomena; these, he thinks, must rather have led to one single being, by reason of their consistency and symmetry; the idea of many gods would be more likely to have first emerged out of observations and experiences of the contradictions and change in human life. Since, however, the life of the unsophisticated man is itself only a life of Nature, and the variety of his encounters depends principally on variations in Nature, this distinction is meaningless. According to D. Hume this first real polytheism only becomes mythological when human individuals, who in their time acted authoritatively or beneficially towards others, are accepted among those beings revered in a religious way.
Johann Heinrich Voss XCVI had another approach. He too considered the initial ideas, out of which mythology was later to emerge, to have been still especially crude and to have grown out of a condition of partially or wholly animal obtuseness. He will have no doctrinal meaning in mythology, and especially not an originally religious one, nor can he accept that it is simple poetry: thus he is obliged to seek another antithesis to the doctrinal besides the poetical, and he finds it in what is completely meaningless; the more meaningless the original [70] representations are, the better; for with that he has at the same time the radical remedy against every attempt to see a meaning in mythology and to go beyond his treatment of it, which is willing only to consider the lifeless raw letters. So in this initial profoundly obtuse condition, stimulated by natural events, man suspects that, associated with these, there are beings like himself, that is to say equally crude, who are his first gods. But poets, whom Voss calls in, have to serve for the transition to mythology; these are there to gradually flesh out the misty forms and indeterminate beings for him, equip them with endearing human qualities, and finally promote them to ideal personalities. In the end these poets even invent a history for these beings, by way of which what was originally meaningless is disguised in a pleasant and attractive way. That is how mythology came into existence, in Voss‟s view.
Anyone who has some feeling for Hellenic mythology recognizes in it something meaningful, rich in references, and organic. It could only have been possible for that hideous ignorance of Nature which prevailed among many circles of earlier philologists to think that anything organic could ever have emerged out of such wholly random and completely unsystematic ideas as the ones proposed. Incidentally it might be asked at this point how, in Germany, people could have been so ready, over a considerable length of time, to see poets emerging immediately out of the crudest condition of life, in which effectively nothing of any human quality remains. Was it passages from the ancients, such as the one from Horace, for instance, which refers to Orpheus, and how he weaned men living in the wild away from animal coarseness by the sweet tones of his song, and guided them to a more human life:
Sylvestres homines sacer interpresque Deorum
Cædibus et victu foedo deterruit Orpheus,
Dictus ob hoc lenire tigres rabidosque leones.35 XCVII
These words, though, refer clearly enough to the particular Orphic dogma which enjoins sparing the lives of animals; [71] but this dogma has as little in common with the theology which demands bloody sacrifices, as has the Orphic way of life with the ample appetite for flesh of Homeric heroes. No ancient writer assigns Orpheus a place in mythology; and Voss at least would certainly not have had Orpheus in mind; his view of pre-mythological poets probably stems from nothing more remote than the good old Göttingen days, when Heyne, of whom Voss is accustomed to speak never otherwise than disdainfully, without therefore being able to repudiate his school, as far as questions of this kind are concerned, taught the following, taken from the Englishman Wood‟s book “On the Original Genius of Homer”XCVIII : that for the appreciation of Homer most might be learnt from travellers‟ descriptions of the customs of savages, or, as he adds naively enough, of other societies, who live still within an unstructured community and system of government; 36 and when Heynean pupils compared Homer with OssianXCIX and also with the Old German bards, by whom, it was believed, the sons of Teut, still clothed in animal skins, were not merely urged on to valour in battle, but were also guided towards a more human life in general, although the picture which the Homeric poems themselves sketch of the gay and cultivated conviviality of their time permits us to imagine that those who listened to the bards of that time were nothing less than savages or semi-savages, as the speech set even in the mouth of Odysseus proves:
Truly, though, it is bliss to listen together to the bard,
To those like him, with a voice like the immortals!
For I myself know of nothing more pleasant,
Than when a festival of joy spreads throughout the people,
And, in the dwellings all around, the feasters are listening to the bard.
Such, methinks, is the most heavenly bliss in life.C
Beings of the type described, then, are supposed to have been the first, the genuine gods, which preceded the mythological ones, and so the question is, whether we can accept these as beings of really religious significance. [72] However we very much doubt whether ideas such as those just mentioned could be called religion; since for example even to the savages who roam around the wide plains of the Rio de la Plata the unthinking dread of anything uncanny and invisible in Nature, a dread, indeed, which we believe we detect even in many animals, will not be unknown; they too will not lack for dark ideas of ghostly beings stirring in phenomena of Nature; and yet Azara assures us that they are devoid of any religion. It is true that objections have been made to this statement,37 CI but a man like Azara is not to be refuted by commonplaces, among which may be reckoned even the famous remark of CiceroCII to the effect that no society would be encountered which was so crude and inhuman as to lack any ideas of gods. This proposition we can certainly accept, for we have already noted that those bands devoid of unity are not worthy of the name “society.” It is always found difficult to relinquish a view long held; it is well known that the testimonies cited by Robertson, CIII saying the very same thing about many American communities, were earlier exposed to the same objections; but the question of whether a number of men, who live before our eyes, and enact and perform in front of us without inhibition everything pertaining to their customs and their nature, might evince a kind of cult of some visible or invisible being, is of the kind that is capable of being decided wholly unambiguously by way of simple observation; acts of adoration are visible acts. The brilliant Azara cannot be set on a par with common travellers. If it was the spirit of all-embracing natural science which accompanied our own renowned Alexander von HumboldtCIV thither, then it was the mind of the independent unprejudiced thinker, of the philosopher, which Azara brought to those regions, whence he returned with problems for natural science and for the study of the history of man which are still awaiting a solution, and indeed, for the most part, consideration, even given the scientific competence of our time especially among our natural scientists. [73] He could not have been mistaken about the fact that those natives evinced no sign, in any of their activities, of a religious veneration towards any object. The conclusion drawn from this, that they are devoid of all religion, is equally incontestable.38 CV
If invisible beings, imagined to be associated with natural processes, amounted to gods, then the mountain and water spirits of the Celtic peoples, the kobolds of the Germanic ones, and the fairies of lands East and West would also have to be gods, which they have never been held to be. The Greek imagination, too, knows oreads, dryads, and nymphs, who are indeed to some extent revered as handmaidens of deities, but are never regarded as deities themselves. The awe which is certainly felt before such beings too, even offerings in an attempt to gain their good will and dispose them favourably and amicably, are still no proof of beings worshipped as gods, possessing, that is to say, religious significance. These attempts to evoke gods without God CVI seem thus not to have attained to the true force and strength of the concept. Yet gods of this kind would simply be improperly named. Hume himself admits [74] this and states it. “To anyone who considers justly of the matter,” he writes, “. . . these pretended religionists are really a kind of superstitious atheists, and acknowledge no being, that corresponds to our idea of a deity.”39 CVII In another passage he says that if God and the angels (for these, as tools of the deity, without a will of their own, could not be imagined without him) were excluded from the ancient European belief and only the fairies and sprites retained, then a belief similar to that apparent polytheism would result.40 CVIII
According to this explanation given by D. Hume, which admits of no contradiction, we are now also justified in bringing together under the common head of “irreligious” all the explanations previously attempted, and in setting them entirely aside in this way; and it is equally clear that we are only now turning to the religious explanations as the subject of a completely new analysis. The analysis hitherto applied only to the question of which explanations could be called “religious,” and which not. Common sense says “But polytheism cannot be atheism, real polytheism cannot be something in which there is no trace of theism at all. Only those gods at whose basis God lies, be it by way of however many intermediate links, and in whatever way, but at least in some way, can be called genuine gods.”—Nothing in this is changed by deciding to say that mythology is false religion. For false religion is not therefore irreligion, just as error (at least that which is worthy of the nameCIX) is not complete lack of truth, but only the inverted truth itself.
But while, with that, we state what we require of a really religious viewpoint, there at once also appears the difficulty [75] which it encounters in practice, and which only now points to the reasons the earlier exegetists had for retreating so uncompromisingly from the religious meaning, and for sacrificing everything, indeed even making do with what is unbelievable, rather than admitting there to be something genuinely religious in mythology, or even in the supposedly premythological ideas, of which Hume himself says that they contain no trace of God. For it is human nature to take fright before seemingly insuperable difficulties and to look for ways out, and to resign oneself to the inevitable and irresistible only when it is seen that all these false palliatives afford no succour.
Supposing the really religious meaning of mythology to have been the original one, the difficulty which has to be explained is how God could originally have been at the basis of polytheism. Here too various possibilities will become apparent, and to expound them will be our next task. For now that no other viewpoint is left to us but the religious, we shall wholly confine ourselves to that and see what may be made of it, and here too we shall again take pains to start out from the first possible presupposition which allows an originally religious meaning to be comprehended.
But the first possible is in every case the one which assumes least, so here indisputably that one which presupposes least of an actual knowledge of God, but only the potential or the embryo of that. The obvious choice for this, though, is: the notitia Dei insita,CX already found in ancient writers and at one time widely taught in schools, with which in fact no concept may be associated other than that of a consciousness merely potentia of God, a consciousness which would however contain in itself the necessity of turning into actus, of raising itself to actual consciousness of God. This may be the point where the instinctlike emergence touched on earlier could attain a distinct concept: it would be a religious instinct which produced mythology; for what else is one to understand in a merely general and [76] vague notion of God like that? Every instinct is associated with a search for the object to which it relates. By way of such a grasping and groping for the God obscurely called for, a polytheism which actually exists might, it seems, be understood without great effort. However here too there is no shortage of hierarchies.
The immediate object of human knowledge remains Nature or the world of the senses; God is only the obscure goal, towards which we strive, and which is first sought in Nature. The popular explanation by way of deification of Nature would not find its place until this point, since at least an inborn obscure notion of God would always have to come first. So this explanation could not have been discussed earlier. By presupposing a religious instinct it would be possible to understand how man believes himself to have found the God, whom he seeks, at first in the all-pervading elements or in the heavenly bodies which exercise the strongest or most beneficial influence on him, gradually, so as to come nearer to him, descends to the earth, imagines God even in inorganic forms, soon to a greater degree in organic beings, for a time even among animal forms, and finally fancies he can represent him in pure human shape. Here would be the place, then, for those interpretations for which the mythological deities are deified natural objects, or in particular only one of those, the sun, which in each of its different positions during the course of a year becomes a different deity: specifically the explanations due to Volney,41 CXI Dupuis,42 CXII etc.
Worthy of more philosophical regard would be the explanation derived from the notitia insita, allowing Nature no part at all, and making the origin of the external world independent and wholly inward, by presupposing that perhaps that instinct possesses a law inherent in itself (the same one by which the hierarchy in Nature is also determined), that by means of this law it passes through the whole of Nature, possessing God and losing him again at every stage, until it [77] attains to the God towering above all phases, establishing them as his own past, thus as mere phases of Nature, and accordingly himself transcending Nature. Since God is the goal (terminus ad quem) in this ascending movement, God would be believed in at each level, and the final content of the polytheism coming into existence in this way would thus in fact actually be God.
This explanation would be the first to have mythology coming into existence through a purely inner and at the same time necessary movement, which would thus have freed itself from all external and merely accidental preconditions, and this might certainly be regarded as a model, at least, of the highest point to which we might have to ascend. For it could not count as the last or highest itself, simply because it too has a precondition as yet uncomprehended; that same instinct, which, if it is powerful enough to maintain humanity in this movement towards the true god, must itself be something real, an actual potence,CXIII for the explanation of which the mere idea of God could not be expected to suffice, unless one believed one was dealing here with a mere logical contrivance, with which an impoverished philosophy might perhaps readily come to the aid of this investigation too, in order first to reduce that indigent—the idea of God—to the most impoverished form, so as then to allow it once again to attain perfection artificially in thought. It is not a question of the relationship into which the material side of mythology may certainly be brought with the mere idea also (mythology would countenance this, just as Nature too countenances it); but as little as would Nature be explained by such a contrivance would mythology be explained by a similar one, yet explanation is precisely the point here, not the mere ideal possibility, but the actual coming into existence, of mythology. The presupposition of a religious instinct, an instinct which in its own way is no less actual than any other, could be the first step towards the insight that mythology is not to be explained by a merely ideal relationship which consciousness bears to some object.
In any case, there would be more difficulty in having polytheism preceded by a [78] formal doctrine than by a merely inborn notion of God. Also repellent, in the presupposition of a prior doctrine, is the assumption of a corruption, which is necessarily associated with a doctrine if it is to become polytheism. David Hume‟s triumphant thought opposes both the possibility that such a doctrine could have arisen, and also the possibility of its corruption. He did not consider the notitia insita at all. Hume belongs in general among those who wish to hear as little of an instinct as of inborn concepts. On the basis that, as he asserts, no two societies, indeed no two men, concur on the point of religion,CXIV he draws the conclusion that the religious sensibility could not, like self-love or the mutual attraction of the sexes, be based on a natural urge,CXV and is willing to acknowledge at most a susceptibility, which we all have, to believe in a vague way in the existence of some invisible and intelligent power, a susceptibility whose foundation in an original instinct still seems to him highly doubtful.43 CXVI
Hume‟s intention is to deny that the really religious meaning of mythology is an original one; in this respect he would primarily have had to oppose the notitia insita, had he not found it unnecessary for the reason already indicated; for in his day that doctrine of a congenital notion was completely outmoded and had lost all validity. So all he believes it necessary to deny is the possibility of supposing there to have been, prior to polytheism and mythology, a religious doctrine which might have been corrupted into the two of them. Once a doctrine is assumed, then Hume will hear of none but a scientifically founded one, of no other theism but one based on rational proofs (théisme raisonné). But an explanation which might have presupposed such a thing has never really existed. Hume simply puts this explanation forward in order to reject it, and with that, since he knows no better, an originally theistic meaning in general. [79] For then it is quite easy for him to show that such a theism—raisonné—could not have come into being in the times before mythology, and if it could have come into being, could not have been corrupted into polytheism.
Something worth noting is that Hume, here in his Natural History of Religion, presupposes as possible what he is known to be very reluctant to admit in his more general philosophical investigations: that it would be possible for reason, by way of conclusions starting out from visible Nature, to reach the concept and the persuasion of an intelligent creator of the world, of a supremely perfect being and so on, in short to reach that which he understands by “theism,” something in fact so lacking in content that it is far better assigned to an era spent or just coming to an end, than to one still fresh and powerful; so lacking in content that Hume could reasonably have foregone his whole proof.
“It seems certain, that, according to the natural progress of human thought, the ignorant multitude must first entertain some groveling and familiar notion of superior powers, before they stretch their conception to that perfect being, who bestowed order on the whole frame of nature. We may as reasonably imagine, that men inhabited palaces before huts and cottages, or studied geometry before agriculture; as assert that the deity appeared to them a pure spirit, omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, before he was apprehended to be a powerful, tho‟ limited being, with human passions and appetites, limbs and organs.”44 CXVII
“But farther, if men were at first led into the belief of one supreme being, by reasoning from the frame of nature, they could never possibly leave that belief, in order to embrace idolatry; but the same principles of reasoning, which at first produced, and diffused over mankind, so magnificent an opinion, must [80] be able, with greater facility, to preserve it. The first invention and proof of any doctrine is infinitely more difficult than the supporting and retaining it.”CXVIII “But with regard to speculative opinions, the case is far otherwise. If these opinions be founded in arguments so clear and obvious as to carry conviction with the generality of mankind, the same arguments, which at first diffused the opinions, will still preserve them in their original purity. If the arguments be more abstruse, and more remote from vulgar apprehensions, the opinions will always be confined to a few persons; and as soon as men leave the contemplation of the arguments, the opinions will immediately be lost and be buried in oblivion. Which ever side of this dilemma we take, it must appear impossible, that theism could, from reasoning, have been the primary religion of humanCXIX race, and have afterwards, by its corruption, given birth to idolatry and to all the various superstitions of the heathen world. Reason, when very obvious, prevents these corruptions: When abstruse, it keeps the principles entirely from the knowledge of the vulgar, who are alone liable to corrupt any principles, or opinions.”45 CXX
For Hume then, we may observe in passing, genuine theism, that is to say that to which he gives the name, cannot exist in humanity prior to the age when reason was already practised and fully formed. In the time to which the origin of polytheism goes back, there is thus no question of such a theism, and anything similar which might come to light in prehistory, only appears to be like that and is explained simply in the following way: “It may readily happen, in an idolatrous nation, that, tho‟ men admit the existence of several limited deities, yet may there be some one god, whom, in a particular manner, they make the object of their worship and adoration. They may either suppose, that, in the distribution of power and territory among the gods, their nation was subjected to the jurisdiction of that particular deity; or reducing heavenly objects to the model of things below, they may represent one god as the prince or supreme magistrate of the rest, who, tho‟ of the same nature, rules them with an authority, like that which an earthly sovereign exercises over his subjects and vassals. Whether this god, therefore, be considered as their peculiar patron, or as the general sovereign of heaven, his votaries will endeavour, by every act, to insinuate themselves into his favour; and supposing him to be pleased, like themselves, with praise and flattery, there is no eulogy or exaggeration, which will be spared in their [81] addresses to him,” as indeed also happens in the case of earthly monarchs, who are not merely mandatorily referred to as supreme and all-bountiful, but are, even among Christians, voluntarily referred to as venerated monarchs. Once such a contest of flattery has begun, “in proportion as men‟s fears or distresses become more urgent, they still invent new strains of adulation; and even he who out-does his predecessors, in swelling up the titles of his divinity, is sure to be out-done by his successors, in newer and more pompous epithets of praise. Thus they proceed; till at last they arrive at infinity itself, beyond which there is no farther progress”; the one being is now called the highest being, the infinite being, the being which has no equal, which is lord and preserver of the world.46 Thus there emerges the idea of a being which looks superficially similar to that which we call God; for Hume himself, who in this way really brings out the paradoxical, indeed bizarre-sounding proposition that polytheism preceded theism, is too shrewd not to be fully aware that a theism like that is really only atheism.
But were we now to accept that, for whatever reason, it was thought to be unavoidable to assume a doctrine prior to polytheism, then both its content and the way it came into existence would have to be ascertained. In the first respect, the material one, one should on no account rest content with a doctrine as empty and abstract as the one taught in today‟s schools, for only a doctrine itself full of meaning, systematic, and richly developed could serve the purpose; but thereby would an invention become still less credible, and one would see oneself thus, in what concerns the formal side, forced to assume a religious doctrine as having existed in humanity independently of human invention, and such a doctrine could only be a divinely revealed one. With that in itself, then, a whole new sphere of explanation would have been entered, for a divine revelation is a real relationship of God to human consciousness. The actus of revelation itself is a real event. At the same time, that which is the opposite of [82]all human invention would seem to have been reached with this, that which was called for earlier but not found; in any case in a divine revelation we would have a more solid precondition than in those suggested earlier, in the dream state, clairvoyance, and so on. Hume in the circumstances of his own time was able to judge it unnecessary even to mention this possibility. Hermann wishes, as he says, to begrudge no one this pious view.47 And yet he would perhaps have some reason to speak of it rather less disparagingly, partly because it coincides with his own theory on one main point, the assumption of a corruption, and partly because he himself could still have been forced into accepting the pious interpretation, had he been correct in respect of the dilemma he makes use of, according to which no third option is conceivable apart from independent invention and divine revelation. Hermann‟s theory would certainly be quite splendid if mythology had never existed elsewhere but on paper, or had been a mere school exercise. What would it have to say, though, if reminded of the unnatural sacrifices which societies have made to their mythological images? Tantum, one could well ask of him, quod sumis potuit suadere malorum? Could, from that which you assume—from such innocent presuppositions—so much that is bad have arisen? Confess, one could call to all those who concur with him in opposing the originally religious meaning, that consequences like that are not derivable from such causes; acknowledge, that an inexorable authority is required just as much to demand these sacrifices as to carry them out, for example to burn one‟s most beloved children alive for the sake of some god! If cosmogonic philosophers alone were in the background, and no memory of a real event, which lent such ideas an irresistible power over consciousness, would not Nature then at once have to reassert its rights? From the natural sensibility which confronts such unnatural demands, only [83] a supernatural fact, whose impress persists permanently through every kind of confusion, could have commanded silence.
If, however, mythology is regarded as a corruption of revealed truth, then it is simply no longer adequate to assume mere theism to have preceded it, for in this there is only the idea that God in general was thought of. But in revelation it is not merely God in general, it is the specific God, the God which there is, the true God, who reveals himself, and he reveals himself also as the true God.CXXI So here a qualification must be added: it is not theism, it is monotheism which precedes polytheism, for thereby is signified, universally and in every circumstance, not merely religion in general, but the true religion. And this view then (that monotheism preceded polytheism) was, throughout the Christian era until recently, quite definitely until D. Hume, in undisturbed enjoyment of a complete and universal consent. It was held to be tantamount to impossible that polytheism could have come into being in any way other than through the decay of a purer religion, and that the latter was derived from a divine revelation was a thought again more or less inseparable from every premise.
But there is more to it than the mere word “monotheism.” What is its content? Is it of a kind such that the material for a later polytheism is present in it? Certainly not when the content of monotheism is taken to consist in the mere concept of the singularity of God. For what does this singularity of God contain? It is just the pure negation of another god beyond the one, mere fending off of all multiplicity; how, now, out of this, is its direct opposite to emerge? What substance, what possibility of a multiplicity is left over by the abstract singularity, once it has been stated? This difficulty was also experienced by LessingCXXII when, in The Education of Mankind, he wrote the following: “Even if the first man was at once equipped with the concept of a single god, still it was impossible for this concept, imparted and not acquired, to have continued to exist in its purity for long. As soon as reason, left to itself, [84] began to work on it, it dismantled what was single and immensurable into several mensurable parts, and gave each of these a particular feature; thus arose, in a natural way, polytheism and idolatry.”48 The words are of value to us as a proof that the eminent man did once apply himself to this question too, even if only in passing; for one may certainly assume, incidentally, that in a treatise with a much more ambitious aim, and in which he intended in general to express himself succinctly, Lessing tried to get the difficult point out of the way as quickly as possible. 49 There is nothing but truth in his statement that a concept not actively acquired, for as long as it has not become an acquired one, is exposed to decay. In addition, polytheism is said to come into being when the imparted concept (for the later expression explains the earlier one very well: man is said to be equipped with this concept) is operated on by reason; yet with this a rational genesis would be given to polytheism: not it itself, only the concept assumed to have preceded it, is independent of human reason. Lessing presumably found the means for the assumed disintegration of the one in the fact that the oneness is nonetheless considered at the same time to be the pattern of all God‟s relations [85] with Nature and the world; to every aspect of them the deity turns as it were a different face, without thereby becoming multifarious himself. Naturally the deity seen from each of these possible viewpoints is designated by a particular name; examples of such names, expressing different aspects, are found even in the Old Testament. Subsequently these names, of which there may well be a great many, turn into just as many names of particular deities. The oneness above the multiplicity is forgotten, and as this or that society, indeed within the one society this or that tribe, within the one tribe this or that individual, turns, according to their needs or inclinations, to one of those aspects in particular, multitheismCXXIII arises. Cudworth, at least, considered the transition to have been as easy and as unremarkable as that. This purely nominal disintegration served, though, as the prelude to a real one which was postulated subsequently.
Now here we would do well to remember that mythological polytheism is not merely theology, but history of gods. To the extent that revelation brings also the true god into a historical relationship with humanity, it may, now, be thought that precisely this divine history given with revelation had become the substance of polytheism, that its phases had decayed into mythological ones. An evolution of mythology out of revelation in this sense might have offered much of interest. However, among the explanations which actually are proposed, we do not find an evolution of this kind; in part the difficulties encountered in carrying it through may have been too great, and in part it may have been considered, in some other respect, too daring. Instead, people eagerly turned to the human side of the history of revelation, and tried first of all to use the merely historical content of principally the Mosaic scriptures for euhemeristic interpretations. Thus the Greek Cronus, who sinned against his father Uranus, was taken to be Ham, deified by the heathens, who sinned against his father Noah. The Hamitic nations are in fact mainly worshippers of Cronus. The contrary explanation, that [86] legends about gods from other societies are euhemerised in the Old Testament, and related in the form of human events, was unthinkable in those days.
The chief architect of this euhemeristic use of the Old Testament was Gerhard Voss, CXXIV whose work De Origine et Progressu Idololatriæ has, what is more, for its time the merit of a thorough and comprehensive scholarship. It was put to use, with an often unfortunate wit, by Samuel Bochart,CXXV and carried entirely into the realm of the fatuous by the well-known French bishop Daniel Huet,CXXVI in whose Demonstratio Evangelica may be read a proof that the Taaut of the Phoenicians, the Adonis of the Syrians, the Osiris of the Egyptians, the Zoroaster of the Persians, the Cadmus and Danaus of the Greeks, in short that all divine and human personalities in the various mythologies are just one individual— Moses. These interpretations can be mentioned at best as sententiæ dudum explosæCXXVII in case somebody might take it into his head to resurrect them, as did recently happen in regard to another matter.
In this way it was, in the end, no longer revelation itself, it was the Old Testament scriptures, and also principally just the historical ones among these, in which generally speaking the explanation of the most ancient myths was sought. In the more dogmatic part of the books of Moses (assuming one were permitted to suppose their contents too to have been present already earlier in the tradition) one could find correspondingly less material in favour of the coming into existence of mythological ideas, the easier it was to perceive, even in the initial statements of the book of Genesis, for example in the creation story, clear references to pre-existing doctrines of a false religion. In the way that the account of the creation has light coming into existence at divine behest, and only with that an antithesis between light and darkness, and in the way that God calls the light good, without calling the darkness bad, coupled with the repeated assurance that everything was good, it can appear to be trying to deny the doctrines which see light and darkness as two principles which, instead of being created, engender the world, as good principle and bad, in contention with and contradiction of each other. [87] In stating this to be a possible view, I reject all the more categorically the notion that these chapters themselves contain philosophemes and myths from non-Hebraic societies. At least that conjecture will not be extended to the Greek myths, and yet it would be easy to show that the story of the Fall, for example, has far more in common with the Persephone myths of the Hellenes than with anything else which anyone has been capable of furnishing from Persian or Indian sources.
So the attempt to bring mythology into a relationship with revelation remained within these limits until the end of the last century; but since that time, as our knowledge of the various mythologies, and especially of the religious systems of the East, has expanded to such a considerable extent, it has been possible for a viewpoint to become accepted which is freer and, in particular, less dependent on the scriptural documentation of revelation.
Through the correspondences which exist between the Egyptian, Indian, and Greek mythologies, a common corpus of ideas in the explanation of mythology was finally revealed, in which the various theologies were at one. This unity lying at the basis of all theologies then served as the consequence in a hypothesis. Such a unity can in fact no longer be thought of as being in the consciousness of a single society (every society becomes aware of itself as such only as it departs from this unity), nor in that of a primordial society; the concept of a primordial society is known to have been put into circulation by BaillyCXXVIII with his History of Astronomy and his Letters on the Origin of the Sciences, but really it is one which cancels itself out. For either it is conceived of as possessing the distinguishing characteristics of an actual society, when it can no longer contain the unity which we seek, and it presupposes other societies already existing apart from itself; or it is conceived of without particular character and without any kind of individual consciousness, and then it is not a society but original mankind itself, prior to the society. Thus, starting from the initial perception of those correspondences, [88] little by little the point was finally reached of presupposing, in the primal era, prompted or imparted by a primal revelation, which was not bestowed on a single society but on the entire human race, a system going far beyond the literal content of the Mosaic scriptures, a system of which the teaching of Moses himself would give no complete conception, but would contain no more than as it were an excerpt; set up in contradiction to polytheism, and with the object of suppressing it, this doctrine would have removed, with wise foresight, all the elements out of the misunderstanding of which polytheism emerged, and confined itself more to the negative aspect alone—the rejection of multitheism. So if one wished to obtain a conception of that original system, then the Mosaic scriptures would not be adequate for that purpose, and one would in fact have to search out the missing links in foreign theologies, in the fragments of Eastern religions and in the various mythologies.50 CXXIX
The first person to be led to such conclusions (and what is more, to have led others to them), by the correspondence of Oriental theologies with Greek ideas on the one hand, and with Old Testament doctrines on the other, was the founder and first president of the Asiatic Society in Calcutta, William Jones,CXXX to whom the history of Eastern poetry and the study of Asiatic religions will remain indebted in perpetuity. Although he may have been carried away too passionately by his first astonishment at the newly discovered world, and may in some respects have gone further than cold reason and the calm reflection of a later era could endorse, yet the beauty and nobility of his spirit will always, in the estimation of all who are capable of recognizing it, raise him far above [89] the censure of the common herd of crude scholars fit merely for donkeywork.
If William Jones‟ comparisons and conclusions too often lacked precise substantiation and execution, then Friedrich Creuzer, on the other hand, through the power of an all-embracing and triumphant induction, brought the originally religious significance of mythology to a historical evidentness no longer admitting of contradiction. But the services of his renowned work51 CXXXI are not confined to this general aspect; the profound philosophical insight, with which the author reveals the most obscure associations between the various theologies, and the analogous ideas in them, has evoked particularly vividly the idea of an original whole, of an edifice of primordial human science, which gradually decayed or experienced a sudden annihilation, and covered the whole Earth with its fragments, which no single society, but only all of them together, possess in full; and at least since then there has been no going back to the earlier explanations which assemble mythology atomistically.52 CXXXII
In more detail Creuzer‟s whole view may perhaps be stated as follows. Since revelation itself is not directly susceptible of alteration, but only the result left in consciousness, [90] then certainly a doctrine must have intervened here, but one of a kind in which God was portrayed not only theistically, simply as God, in his dissociation from the world, but at the same time as a unity embracing Nature and the World, whether in a way which was analogous to those systems of which all, without discrimination, are labelled as pantheism, particularly by a certain shallow theism, or whether that system might be thought of more in the way of ancient Oriental doctrines of emanation, where the deity, in itself free of all multiplicity, descending, fashions itself into a multiplicity of finite images,CXXXIII which are only just as many manifestations, or to use a current vogue-word, incarnations, of its infinite essence. Taken either way the doctrine would be monotheism, not an abstract monotheism, absolutely excluding multiplicity, but a real one, establishing multiplicity within itself.
As long as the multiplicity of the elements is governed and subdued by the oneness, the oneness of God remains unsupplanted in consciousness; then as the doctrine progresses from society to society, indeed within the one society over the course of time and tradition, it takes on an ever more polytheistic colouring as the elements escape from organic subordination to the governing idea and gradually acquire a more independent form, until finally the whole system falls apart, and the oneness retreats completely, while multiplicity emerges. Thus W. Jones, already, found in the Indian Vedas, which in his opinion we would have to consider as having been written a considerable time before the legation of Moses in the epoch immediately subsequent to the Flood, a system still, far removed from the later Indian popular belief, and closer to the primal religion.CXXXIV The later polytheism of India does not descend directly from the most ancient religion, but only by way of successive misrepresentation of the traditions better preserved in Holy Scripture. In general, close attention will clearly show in the various theologies a slow retreat of oneness, almost one step at a time. To the extent that the oneness still predominates, the representations of Indian and Egyptian [91] theology still appear to possess a much more doctrinal content, but are correspondingly more repulsive, more excessive, in part even monstrous; on the other hand, to the extent that the oneness in it has been further relinquished, Greek mythology does indeed manifest slighter doctrinal content, but a content all the more poetical; the error in it has so to speak purged itself of the truth, and to that extent really ceases to be error, and becomes a truth of a characteristic kind, a poetical truth, forswearing all reality (which in fact resides in the oneness), and if despite that one wished to describe its content as error, at least an error more attractive, more beautiful, and, in comparison with the more real error in the Oriental religions, almost meriting the name “innocent.”
In this way, then, mythology would be a disintegrated monotheism. And this would thus be the final peak to which the viewpoints relating to mythology have led us, one step at a time. No one will deny that this viewpoint is more splendid than the earlier ones, simply because it is not derived from the indefinite multitude of objects fortuitously extracted from Nature, but from the central point of a oneness governing the multiplicity. It is not partial beings of a highly accidental and ambiguous nature, but the thought of the necessary and general being, to which alone the human spirit defers—it is that thought which holds sway throughout mythology and raises it to a true system of coordinated phases, a system which in the midst of the disintegration still sets its stamp on every individual idea, and which therefore, in addition, can end not in a mere indefinite multiplicity, but only in polytheism—in a multiplicity of gods.
Now with this last analysis it is—I ask you to note this carefully, since in order to understand a course of lectures like the current one in its full significance, one should always pre-eminently be aware of the points of transition—here it is no longer asserted merely philosophically that the polytheism which actually exists presupposes monotheism, here monotheism has become a historical presupposition of mythology, it is itself in turn derived from a historical fact (a primal revelation); through these [92] historical presuppositions the explanation becomes a hypothesis, and thus at the same time susceptible of a historical evaluation.
It undeniably has its strongest historical support in the fact that it offers the simplest means of explaining the kinship between the ideas in otherwise quite distinct theologies, and in this respect one can only wonder why Creuzer pays less attention to this advantage, and gives more weight to a historical relationship between societies, which is difficult to prove, indeed in the principal cases unprovable, and from which, in part, he intends to derive those correspondences. But our earlier arguments have already led us to formulations which make even the monotheistic hypothesis, as we shall call it, still appear very vague in its present form. We were earlier led to the conclusion that the mythology of every society can come into existence only at the same time as that society itself. Thus the various mythologies, and polytheism in general, since mythology exists nowhere in abstracto, can also only have come into existence at the same time as the societies, and accordingly there would be no room for the monotheism postulated, except in the era before the rise of societies. Creuzer too seems to have had something similar in mind, when he stated that the monotheism which still predominated in the most ancient doctrine could have lasted only for as long as the tribes stayed together, and that with their separation multitheism must have come into existence.53
We have, it is true, no way of telling what Creuzer meant by the “separation of the tribes,” but if we replace that with “separation of the societies,” then it is clear that a double causal relationship may be understood between this and the emerging polytheism. It could on the one hand be said, that is, in agreement with Creuzer, that after humanity had split up into societies, monotheism could no longer have endured, as the doctrine which until then had held sway grew obscure in proportion to its increasing distance from the source, and [93] more and more fell apart. But it could equally well be said that the polytheism coming into existence was the cause of the separation of societies. And we must decide between these two possibilities, if everything is not to remain in a state of suspension and incertitude.
But the decision will depend on the following question. If polytheism only comes as a result of the separation of the societies, then it must be possible to find another cause, by reason of which humanity was divided into societies, so we have to investigate whether such a cause exists; this means, though, that we have to investigate in general, and answer, the question towards which we have long been heading: What is the reason for this separation of humanity into societies? The earlier explanations all assumed the prior existence of societies. But how did societies come into existence? Is it possible to believe that such a great and universal phenomenon as mythology and polytheism, or—for here for the first time does this expression find its rightful place—as heathenism CXXXV —is it credible, I say, that such a potent phenomenon can be understood outside the general context of the great events which have befallen humanity as a whole? The question of how societies came into existence is thus not one raised arbitrarily, it is one which is introduced by way of our analysis itself and is therefore necessary and inescapable, and we may indeed rejoice to find ourselves translated, with this question, out of the confined space of the earlier investigations and into a field of research which is wider and more universal, and which for that very reason also promises universal results on a higher plane.
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Notes:34 Compare the article on existence in the French Encyclopædia, from which a great deal in later popular explanations of the initial origin of ideas about gods seems to have been borrowed. The article is by Turgot.
35 A. P. 391 ss.
36 See the review of the above-mentioned work, reprinted in the Götting. gel. Anzeigen, prior to its translation into German.
37 Compare the remarks of the French translator, among others.
38 Since the fact is important for what is to follow, the relevant passages might be reproduced here. One, in which the author expresses himself in a quite general way, is the following:
Les ecclésiastiques y en ont ajouté une autre fausseté positive en disant, que ces peuples avaient une religion. Persuadés qu‟il était impossible aux hommes de vivre sans en avoir une bonne ou mauvaise, et voyant quelques figures dessinées ou gravées sur les pipes, les arcs, les bâtons et les poteries des indiens, ils se figurèrent à l‟instant que c‟etaient leurs idoles, et les brûlèrent. Ces peuples emploient encore aujourd‟hui les mêmes figures; mais ils ne le font que par amusement, car ils n’ont aucune religion. Voyages T. II, p. 3.
Of the Payaguas, among others, he relates the same thing on page 137:
Quand la tempête ou le vent renverse leurs huttes ou cases, ils prennent quelques tisons de leur feu; ils courent à quelque distance contre le vent, en le menaçant avec leurs tisons. D‟autres, pour épouvanter la tempête, donnent force coups de poing en l ‟air. Ils en font quelquefois autant, quand ils aperçoivent la nouvelle lune; mais, disent-ils, ce n‟est que pour marquer leur joie: ce qui a donné lieu à quelques personnes de croire qu‟ils l‟adoraient; mais le fait positif est qu‟ils ne rendent ni adoration ni culte à rien au monde, et qu’ils n’ont aucune religion
39 Natural History of Religion p. 38.
40 ibid. p. 45.
41 Les Ruines.
42 Origine de tous les Cultes.
43 Natural History of Religion, p. 93.
44 ibid. p. 27.
45 ibid. p. 29.
46 ibid. pp. 51-2.
47 On the Nature and Treatment of Mythology, p. 25.
48 §. 6 and §. 7.
49 Lessing himself, in a letter to his brother (Collected Works XXX, p. 523), speaks of the Education of Mankind in such a way as to indicate that it did not satisfy him: “I have,” it reads, “sent him (the pu bli she r Voss) the E. o. M., which he is going to pad out to a half dozen signatures for me. I can certainly send the whole thing out into the world, for I would never acknowledge it to be my own work, and yet several people have shown an interest in the comple te plan.”—While one may be inclined to conclude from the italicized words that Lessing was not the author at all, in fact it may, rather, be the opposite which they imply. When he says that he would never acknowledge it to be his own work, he is in fact thereby confessing that it is his work. Yet even a great author, and especially one such as Le ssing, is certainly capable of publishing a work which does not satisfy him (and could the E. o. M. have satisfied a spirit like Lessing in general, also, that is, in a larger context, would he not have been obliged to regard its content as something which was put forward only in a preliminary way, whose place would have to be taken at some future time by something quite di fferent, which even now cannot be carried out?)—but an author like Lessing can indeed, as I say, publish a work like that too, specifically as a transition and stepping-stone towards something higher.
50 Compare the passage in my dissertation On the Samothracian Deities, p. 30, which, moreover, as the context shows, is not intended to contain any assertion, but only to put forward, in contrast to the view described there, which keeps merely to the letter of the Mosaic documents, another, as equally possible. At that time, what is more, the author was certainly more concerned with the material side of mythology, and still shunned the formal questions, which have been taken up for the first time in the current lectures.
51 Symbolism and Mythology of the Ancient Societies, Particularly of the Greeks, 3rd. edition in four volumes. The second edition is used for the preparation of the current lectures.—Moser’s abstract of the work (put out by the same publisher), which contains everything essential in one volume, without omissions, might be recommended for students; also of great interest is the French translation by Guigniaut (Religions de l’Antiquité, Ouvrage traduit de l’Allemand du Dr. F. Creuzer refondu en partie completé et developpé. Paris 1825. III Volumes), which has added much that is valuable and new.
52 Mythology could perhaps also be compared to a great piece of music, which a number of people who had lost all sense of its musical structure, of its rhythm and tempo, went on playing as it were mechanically, so that then it could give the impression only of an inextricable mass of discords, while the same piece, performed in a way appropriate to a work of art, would at once again reveal its harmony, its structure and original intelligence.
53 Correspondence Relating to Homer and Hesiod, p. 100 f.