Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted
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comparative mythology by John Fiske >> Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted
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[156] Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of
Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Art, and Custom By Edward B.
Tylor. 2 vols. 8vo. London. 1871.
It is when Mr. Tylor merges the study of mythology into the
wider inquiry into the characteristic features of the mode of
thinking in which myths originated, that we can best
appreciate the practical value of that union of speculative
boldness and critical sobriety which everywhere distinguishes
him. It is pleasant to meet with a writer who can treat of
primitive religious ideas without losing his head over
allegory and symbolism, and who duly realizes the fact that a
savage is not a rabbinical commentator, or a cabalist, or a
Rosicrucian, but a plain man who draws conclusions like
ourselves, though with feeble intelligence and scanty
knowledge. The mystic allegory with which such modern writers
as Lord Bacon have invested the myths of antiquity is no part
of their original clothing, but is rather the late product of
a style of reasoning from analogy quite similar to that which
we shall perceive to have guided the myth-makers in their
primitive constructions. The myths and customs and beliefs
which, in an advanced stage of culture, seem meaningless save
when characterized by some quaintly wrought device of symbolic
explanation, did not seem meaningless in the lower culture
which gave birth to them. Myths, like words, survive their
primitive meanings. In the early stage the myth is part and
parcel of the current mode of philosophizing; the explanation
which it offers is, for the time, the natural one, the one
which would most readily occur to any one thinking on the
theme with which the myth is concerned. But by and by the mode
of philosophizing has changed; explanations which formerly
seemed quite obvious no longer occur to any one, but the myth
has acquired an independent substantive existence, and
continues to be handed down from parents to children as
something true, though no one can tell why it is true: Lastly,
the myth itself gradually fades from remembrance, often
leaving behind it some utterly unintelligible custom or
seemingly absurd superstitious notion. For example,--to recur
to an illustration already cited in a previous paper,--it is
still believed here and there by some venerable granny that it
is wicked to kill robins; but he who should attribute the
belief to the old granny's refined sympathy with all sentient
existence, would be making one of the blunders which are
always committed by those who reason a priori about historical
matters without following the historical method. At an earlier
date the superstition existed in the shape of a belief that
the killing of a robin portends some calamity; in a still
earlier form the calamity is specified as death; and again,
still earlier, as death by lightning. Another step backward
reveals that the dread sanctity of the robin is owing to the
fact that he is the bird of Thor, the lightning god; and
finally we reach that primitive stage of philosophizing in
which the lightning is explained as a red bird dropping from
its beak a worm which cleaveth the rocks. Again, the belief
that some harm is sure to come to him who saves the life of a
drowning man, is unintelligible until it is regarded as a case
of survival in culture. In the older form of the superstition
it is held that the rescuer will sooner or later be drowned
himself; and thus we pass to the fetichistic interpretation of
drowning as the seizing of the unfortunate person by the
water-spirit or nixy, who is naturally angry at being deprived
of his victim, and henceforth bears a special grudge against
the bold mortal who has thus dared to frustrate him.
The interpretation of the lightning as a red bird, and of
drowning as the work of a smiling but treacherous fiend, are
parts of that primitive philosophy of nature in which all
forces objectively existing are conceived as identical with
the force subjectively known as volition. It is this
philosophy, currently known as fetichism, but treated by Mr.
Tylor under the somewhat more comprehensive name of "animism,"
which we must now consider in a few of its most conspicuous
exemplifications. When we have properly characterized some of
the processes which the untrained mind habitually goes
through, we shall have incidentally arrived at a fair solution
of the genesis of mythology.
Let us first note the ease with which the barbaric or
uncultivated mind reaches all manner of apparently fanciful
conclusions through reckless reasoning from analogy. It is
through the operation of certain laws of ideal association
that all human thinking, that of the highest as well as that
of the lowest minds, is conducted: the discovery of the law
of gravitation, as well as the invention of such a
superstition as the Hand of Glory, is at bottom but a case of
association of ideas. The difference between the scientific
and the mythologic inference consists solely in the number of
checks which in the former case combine to prevent any other
than the true conclusion from being framed into a proposition
to which the mind assents. Countless accumulated experiences
have taught the modern that there are many associations of
ideas which do not correspond to any actual connection of
cause and effect in the world of phenomena; and he has learned
accordingly to apply to his newly framed notions the rigid
test of verification. Besides which the same accumulation of
experiences has built up an organized structure of ideal
associations into which only the less extravagant newly framed
notions have any chance of fitting. The primitive man, or the
modern savage who is to some extent his counterpart, must
reason without the aid of these multifarious checks. That
immense mass of associations which answer to what are called
physical laws, and which in the mind of the civilized modern
have become almost organic, have not been formed in the mind
of the savage; nor has he learned the necessity of
experimentally testing any of his newly framed notions, save
perhaps a few of the commonest. Consequently there is nothing
but superficial analogy to guide the course of his thought
hither or thither, and the conclusions at which he arrives
will be determined by associations of ideas occurring
apparently at haphazard. Hence the quaint or grotesque fancies
with which European and barbaric folk-lore is filled, in the
framing of which the myth-maker was but reasoning according to
the best methods at his command. To this simplest class, in
which the association of ideas is determined by mere analogy,
belong such cases as that of the Zulu, who chews a piece of
wood in order to soften the heart of the man with whom he is
about to trade for cows, or the Hessian lad who "thinks he may
escape the conscription by carrying a baby-girl's cap in his
pocket,--a symbolic way of repudiating manhood."[157] A
similar style of thinking underlies the mediaeval
necromancer's practice of making a waxen image of his enemy
and shooting at it with arrows, in order to bring about the
enemy's death; as also the case of the magic rod, mentioned in
a previous paper, by means of which a sound thrashing can be
administered to an absent foe through the medium of an old
coat which is imagined to cover him. The principle involved
here is one which is doubtless familiar to most children, and
is closely akin to that which Irving so amusingly illustrates
in his doughty general who struts through a field of cabbages
or corn-stalks, smiting them to earth with his cane, and
imagining himself a hero of chivalry conquering single-handed
a host of caitiff ruffians. Of like origin are the fancies
that the breaking of a mirror heralds a death in the family,--
probably because of the destruction of the reflected human
image; that the "hair of the dog that bit you" will prevent
hydrophobia if laid upon the wound; or that the tears shed by
human victims, sacrificed to mother earth, will bring down
showers upon the land. Mr. Tylor cites Lord Chesterfield's
remark, "that the king had been ill, and that people generally
expected the illness to be fatal, because the oldest lion in
the Tower, about the king's age, had just died. 'So wild and
capricious is the human mind,' " observes the elegant
letter-writer. But indeed, as Mr. Tylor justly remarks, "the
thought was neither wild nor capricious; it was simply such an
argument from analogy as the educated world has at length
painfully learned to be worthless, but which, it is not too
much to declare, would to this day carry considerable weight
to the minds of four fifths of the human race." Upon such
symbolism are based most of the practices of divination and
the great pseudo-science of astrology. "It is an old story,
that when two brothers were once taken ill together,
Hippokrates, the physician, concluded from the coincidence
that they were twins, but Poseidonios, the astrologer,
considered rather that they were born under the same
constellation; we may add that either argument would be
thought reasonable by a savage." So when a Maori fortress is
attacked, the besiegers and besieged look to see if Venus is
near the moon. The moon represents the fortress; and if it
appears below the companion planet, the besiegers will carry
the day, otherwise they will be repulsed. Equally primitive
and childlike was Rousseau's train of thought on the memorable
day at Les Charmettes when, being distressed with doubts as to
the safety of his soul, he sought to determine the point by
throwing a stone at a tree. "Hit, sign of salvation; miss,
sign of damnation!" The tree being a large one and very near
at hand, the result of the experiment was reassuring, and the
young philosopher walked away without further misgivings
concerning this momentous question.[158]
[157] Tylor, op. cit. I. 107.
[158] Rousseau, Confessions, I. vi. For further illustration,
see especially the note on the "doctrine of signatures,"
supra, p. 55.
When the savage, whose highest intellectual efforts result
only in speculations of this childlike character, is
confronted with the phenomena of dreams, it is easy to see
what he will make of them. His practical knowledge of
psychology is too limited to admit of his distinguishing
between the solidity of waking experience and what we may call
the unsubstantialness of the dream. He may, indeed, have
learned that the dream is not to be relied on for telling the
truth; the Zulu, for example, has even reached the perverse
triumph of critical logic achieved by our own Aryan ancestors
in the saying that "dreams go by contraries." But the Zulu has
not learned, nor had the primeval Aryan learned, to disregard
the utterances of the dream as being purely subjective
phenomena. To the mind as yet untouched by modern culture, the
visions seen and the voices heard in sleep possess as much
objective reality as the gestures and shouts of waking hours.
When the savage relates his dream, he tells how he SAW certain
dogs, dead warriors, or demons last night, the implication
being that the things seen were objects external to himself.
As Mr. Spencer observes, "his rude language fails to state the
difference between seeing and dreaming that he saw, doing and
dreaming that he did. From this inadequacy of his language it
not only results that he cannot truly represent this
difference to others, but also that he cannot truly represent
it to himself. Hence in the absence of an alternative
interpretation, his belief, and that of those to whom he tells
his adventures, is that his OTHER SELF has been away and came
back when he awoke. And this belief, which we find among
various existing savage tribes, we equally find in the
traditions of the early civilized races."[159]
[159] Spencer, Recent Discussions in Science, etc., p. 36,
"The Origin of Animal Worship."
Let us consider, for a moment, this assumption of the OTHER
SELF, for upon this is based the great mass of crude inference
which constitutes the primitive man's philosophy of nature.
The hypothesis of the OTHER SELF, which serves to account for
the savage's wanderings during sleep in strange lands and
among strange people, serves also to account for the presence
in his dreams of parents, comrades, or enemies, known to be
dead and buried. The other self of the dreamer meets and
converses with the other selves of his dead brethren, joins
with them in the hunt, or sits down with them to the wild
cannibal banquet. Thus arises the belief in an ever-present
world of souls or ghosts, a belief which the entire experience
of uncivilized man goes to strengthen and expand. The
existence of some tribe or tribes of savages wholly destitute
of religious belief has often been hastily asserted and as
often called in question. But there is no question that, while
many savages are unable to frame a conception so general as
that of godhood, on the other hand no tribe has ever been
found so low in the scale of intelligence as not to have
framed the conception of ghosts or spiritual personalities,
capable of being angered, propitiated, or conjured with.
Indeed it is not improbable a priori that the original
inference involved in the notion of the other self may be
sufficiently simple and obvious to fall within the capacity of
animals even less intelligent than uncivilized man. An
authentic case is on record of a Skye terrier who, being
accustomed to obtain favours from his master by sitting on his
haunches, will also sit before his pet india-rubber ball
placed on the chimney-piece, evidently beseeching it to jump
down and play with him.[160] Such a fact as this is quite in
harmony with Auguste Comte's suggestion that such intelligent
animals as dogs, apes, and elephants may be capable of forming
a few fetichistic notions. The behaviour of the terrier here
rests upon the assumption that the ball is open to the same
sort of entreaty which prevails with the master; which
implies, not that the wistful brute accredits the ball with a
soul, but that in his mind the distinction between life and
inanimate existence has never been thoroughly established.
Just this confusion between things living and things not
living is present throughout the whole philosophy of
fetichism; and the confusion between things seen and things
dreamed, which suggests the notion of another self, belongs to
this same twilight stage of intelligence in which primeval man
has not yet clearly demonstrated his immeasurable superiority
to the brutes.[161]
[160] See Nature, Vol. VI. p. 262, August 1, 1872. The
circumstances narrated are such as to exclude the supposition
that the sitting up is intended to attract the master's
attention. The dog has frequently been seen trying to soften
the heart of the ball, while observed unawares by his master.
[161] "We would, however, commend to Mr. Fiske's attention Mr.
Mark Twain's dog, who 'couldn't be depended on for a special
providence,' as being nearer to the actual dog of every-day
life than is the Skye terrier mentioned by a certain
correspondent of Nature, to whose letter Mr. Fiske refers. The
terrier is held to have had 'a few fetichistic notions,'
because he was found standing up on his hind legs in front of
a mantel-piece, upon which lay an india-rubber ball with which
he wished to play, but which he could not reach, and which,
says the letter-writer, he was evidently beseeching to come
down and play with him. We consider it more reasonable to
suppose that a dog who had been drilled into a belief that
standing upon his hind legs was very pleasing to his master,
and who, therefore, had accustomed himself to stand on his
hind legs whenever he desired anything, and whose usual way of
getting what he desired was to induce somebody to get it for
him, may have stood up in front of the mantel-piece rather
from force of habit and eagerness of desire than because he
had any fetichistic notions, or expected the india-rubber ball
to listen to his supplications. We admit, however, to avoid
polemical controversy, that in matter of religion the dog is
capable of anything." The Nation, Vol. XV. p. 284, October 1,
1872. To be sure, I do not know for certain what was going on
in the dog's mind; and so, letting both explanations stand, I
will only add another fact of similar import. "The tendency in
savages to imagine that natural objects and agencies are
animated by spiritual or living essences is perhaps
illustrated by a little fact which I once noticed: my dog, a
full-grown and very sensible animal, was lying on the lawn
during a hot and still day; but at a little distance a slight
breeze occasionally moved an open parasol, which would have
been wholly disregarded by the dog, had any one stood near it.
As it was, every time that the parasol slightly moved, the dog
growled fiercely and barked. He must, I think, have reasoned
to himself, in a rapid and unconscious manner, that movement
without any apparent cause indicated the presence of some
strange living agent, and no stranger had a right to be on his
territory." Darwin, Descent of Man, Vol. 1. p. 64. Without
insisting upon all the details of this explanation, one may
readily grant, I think, that in the dog, as in the savage,
there is an undisturbed association between motion and a
living motor agency; and that out of a multitude of just such
associations common to both, the savage, with his greater
generalizing power, frames a truly fetichistic conception.
The conception of a soul or other self, capable of going away
from the body and returning to it, receives decisive
confirmation from the phenomena of fainting, trance,
catalepsy, and ecstasy,[162] which occur less rarely among
savages, owing to their irregular mode of life, than among
civilized men. "Further verification," observes Mr. Spencer,
"is afforded by every epileptic subject, into whose body,
during the absence of the other self, some enemy has entered;
for how else does it happen that the other self on returning
denies all knowledge of what his body has been doing? And this
supposition, that the body has been 'possessed' by some other
being, is confirmed by the phenomena of somnambulism and
insanity." Still further, as Mr. Spencer points out, when we
recollect that savages are very generally unwilling to have
their portraits taken, lest a portion of themselves should get
carried off and be exposed to foul play,[163] we must readily
admit that the weird reflection of the person and imitation of
the gestures in rivers or still woodland pools will go far to
intensify the belief in the other self. Less frequent but
uniform confirmation is to be found in echoes, which in Europe
within two centuries have been commonly interpreted as the
voices of mocking fiends or wood-nymphs, and which the savage
might well regard as the utterances of his other self.
[162] Note the fetichism wrapped up in the etymologies of
these Greek words. Catalepsy, katalhyis, a seizing of the body
by some spirit or demon, who holds it rigid. Ecstasy,
ekstasis, a displacement or removal of the soul from the body,
into which the demon enters and causes strange laughing,
crying, or contortions. It is not metaphor, but the literal
belief ill a ghost-world, which has given rise to such words
as these, and to such expressions as "a man beside himself or
transported."
[163] Something akin to the savage's belief in the animation
of pictures may be seen in young children. I have often been
asked by my three-year-old boy, whether the dog in a certain
picture would bite him if he were to go near it; and I can
remember that, in my own childhood, when reading a book about
insects, which had the formidable likeness of a spider stamped
on the centre of the cover, I was always uneasy lest my finger
should come in contact with the dreaded thing as I held the
book.
With the savage's unwillingness to have his portrait taken,
lest it fall into the hands of some enemy who may injure him
by conjuring with it, may be compared the reluctance which he
often shows toward telling his name, or mentioning the name of
his friend, or king, or tutelar ghost-deity. In fetichistic
thought, the name is an entity mysteriously associated with
its owner, and it is not well to run the risk of its getting
into hostile hands. Along with this caution goes the similarly
originated fear that the person whose name is spoken may
resent such meddling with his personality. For the latter
reason the Dayak will not allude by name to the small pox, but
will call it "the chief" or "jungle-leaves"; the Laplander
speaks of the bear as the "old man with the fur coat"; in
Annam the tiger is called "grandfather" or "Lord"; while in
more civilized communities such sayings are current as "talk
of the Devil, and he will appear," with which we may also
compare such expressions as "Eumenides" or "gracious ones" for
the Furies, and other like euphemisms. Indeed, the maxim nil
mortuis nisi bonum had most likely at one time a fetichistic
flavour.
In various islands of the Pacific, for both the reasons above
specified, the name of the reigning chief is so rigorously
"tabu," that common words and even syllables resembling that
name in sound must be omitted from the language. In New
Zealand, where a chiefs name was Maripi, or "knife," it became
necessary to call knives nekra; and in Tahiti, fetu, "star,"
had to be changed into fetia, and tui, "to strike," became
tiai, etc., because the king's name was Tu. Curious freaks are
played with the languages of these islands by this
ever-recurring necessity. Among the Kafirs the women have come
to speak a different dialect from the men, because words
resembling the names of their lords or male relatives are in
like manner "tabu." The student of human culture will trace
among such primeval notions the origin of the Jew's
unwillingness to pronounce the name of Jehovah; and hence we
may perhaps have before us the ultimate source of the horror
with which the Hebraizing Puritan regards such forms of light
swearing--"Mon Dieu," etc.--as are still tolerated on the
continent of Europe, but have disappeared from good society in
Puritanic England and America. The reader interested in this
group of ideas and customs may consult Tylor, Early History of
Mankind, pp. 142, 363; Max Muller, Science of Language, 6th
edition, Vol. II. p. 37; Mackay, Religious Development of the
Greeks and Hebrews, Vol. I. p. 146.
Chamisso's well-known tale of Peter Schlemihl belongs to a
widely diffused family of legends, which show that a man's
shadow has been generally regarded not only as an entity, but
as a sort of spiritual attendant of the body, which under
certain circumstances it may permanently forsake. It is in
strict accordance with this idea that not only in the classic
languages, but in various barbaric tongues, the word for
"shadow" expresses also the soul or other self. Tasmanians,
Algonquins, Central-Americans, Abipones, Basutos, and Zulus
are cited by Mr. Tylor as thus implicitly asserting the
identity of the shadow with the ghost or phantasm seen in
dreams; the Basutos going so far as to think "that if a man
walks on the river-bank, a crocodile may seize his shadow in
the water and draw him in." Among the Algonquins a sick person
is supposed to have his shadow or other self temporarily
detached from his body, and the convalescent is at times
"reproached for exposing himself before his shadow was safely
settled down in him." If the sick man has been plunged into
stupor, it is because his other self has travelled away as far
as the brink of the river of death, but not being allowed to
cross has come back and re-entered him. And acting upon a
similar notion the ailing Fiji will sometimes lie down and
raise a hue and cry for his soul to be brought back. Thus,
continues Mr. Tylor, "in various countries the bringing back
of lost souls becomes a regular part of the sorcerer's or
priest's profession."[164] On Aryan soil we find the notion of
a temporary departure of the soul surviving to a late date in
the theory that the witch may attend the infernal Sabbath
while her earthly tabernacle is quietly sleeping at home. The
primeval conception reappears, clothed in bitterest sarcasm,
in Dante's reference to his living contemporaries whose souls
he met with in the vaults of hell, while their bodies were
still walking about on the earth, inhabited by devils.
[164] Tylor, Primitive Culture, I. 394. "The Zulus hold that a
dead body can cast no shadow, because that appurtenance
departed from it at the close of life." Hardwick, Traditions,
Superstitions, and Folk-Lore, p. 123.
The theory which identifies the soul with the shadow, and
supposes the shadow to depart with the sickness and death of
the body, would seem liable to be attended with some
difficulties in the way of verification, even to the dim
intelligence of the savage. But the propriety of identifying
soul and breath is borne out by all primeval experience. The
breath, which really quits the body at its decease, has
furnished the chief name for the soul, not only to the Hebrew,
the Sanskrit, and the classic tongues; not only to German and
English, where geist, and ghost, according to Max Muller, have
the meaning of "breath," and are akin to such words as gas,
gust, and geyser; but also to numerous barbaric languages.
Among the natives of Nicaragua and California, in Java and in
West Australia, the soul is described as the air or breeze
which passes in and out through the nostrils and mouth; and
the Greenlanders, according to Cranz, reckon two separate
souls, the breath and the shadow. "Among the Seminoles of
Florida, when a woman died in childbirth, the infant was held
over her face to receive her parting spirit, and thus acquire
strength and knowledge for its future use..... Their state of
mind is kept up to this day among Tyrolese peasants, who can
still fancy a good man's soul to issue from his mouth at death
like a little white cloud."[165] It is kept up, too, in
Lancashire, where a well-known witch died a few years since;
"but before she could 'shuffle off this mortal coil' she must
needs TRANSFER HER FAMILIAR SPIRIT to some trusty successor.
An intimate acquaintance from a neighbouring township was
consequently sent for in all haste, and on her arrival was
immediately closeted with her dying friend. What passed
between them has never fully transpired, but it is confidently
affirmed that at the close of the interview this associate
RECEIVED THE WITCH'S LAST BREATH INTO HER MOUTH AND WITH IT
HER FAMILIAR SPIRIT. The dreaded woman thus ceased to exist,
but her powers for good or evil were transferred to her
companion; and on passing along the road from Burnley to
Blackburn we can point out a farmhouse at no great distance
with whose thrifty matron no neighbouring farmer will yet dare
to quarrel."[166]
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