Primitive Theology
By E. E. KELLETT
TN this remarkable book, a welcome addition to Messrs. Kegan Paul's " Histories of Civilization," the distinguished. Helsingfors professor sets forth the views on comparative religion at which he has arrived after thirty years of study.' He has a double claim on the attention of his fellow-workers in this inexhaustible field. He has, as his most comprehensive' bibliography shows, left scarcely any important books or papers on the subject unnoticed (though curiously enough I do not observe in it-the names of Malinowski or Elliott Smith). But he has also investigated at' first hand the ideas of certain obscure Finno-Ugric tribes, and has spent no less than six years among South American peoples. The value of such personal contacts needs no emphasizing. It has, for instance, made Professor Karsten quick to detect the difference between the superficial observer and such close and conscientious students as Howitt or Spencer and Gillen. It also enriches the book with many new facts which he has himself collected. Here I would specially mention the description (page 212 sq.) of the way in which the South American modicine-man is trained for his exacting profession.
Before going further I may touch on a few small points which disturb One's enjoyment of the hook. I see no mention of a translator. If the English is Professor Karsten's own, it is a proof of his linguistic powers : if it has been rendered into English, some fault may legitimately be found. Such a phrase as " exercises comprised • by the general term of asceticism " (page 223) ought snot to have been passed ; " incarnation by a deity " (221) does not say what it means ; " the body of the victim was attribuled with an intrinsic power " (267)' sounds strangely in our ears. A little more care,•again, might have been taken with foreign names. We are better acquainted with Thor than with Tor : we know Gortyn or Gorlyna but not Gortynae (100) ; Tanagrec should be Tanagra : and the Greek form of the Semitic Beth-el (stone-dwelling of a spirit) is Baitylos or Ballyhoo and cannot form a plural Baitylioi (123). Hieros nosos (172) is peculiar ; thysia (260) appears to be treated as a neuter plural ; and the Greeks said sphagia, not spagia. These, however, and other trifles; can easily be corrected in a second edition.
One looks, of course, with special interest to discover Professor Karsten's opinions on the half-dozen main questions which divide anthropologists. First, are we to take the confused polytheistic conceptions of savages as cases of degeneration from a priMitive monotheism ? Must we hold, with Andrew Lang and Father Schmidt, that original man was possessed of a lofty cult and arced, which has been corrupted into the low and crude customs 'and beliefs of barbarous races, and from which even civilized nations ,have not entirely freed themselves 2.: On ,this,..Professor Karsten speaks with no uncertain voice : he belongs to..tbe evolutionary or pro- gressive school ; and here, I believe, he has the vast majority of his. coadjutors with hiria. His arguirkenfS., though' briefly put, seem to me conclusiVe.
This leads to' another question, Are there any known tribes which have developed, or retained,' the conception of one Supreme Being ? Ilere Professor ,,,,Karsten's experience has taught him eautiOn. He knows how ,.easy it is for the missionary, in the very act of putting the question, to suggest the answer ; and he knows that many a tribe has been remarkably quick in -aeriiifring'ide'as from travellers or more advanced neighbours. He therefore eross-examines his witnesses with care. E. H. Man, for example, discovered . a supreme, moral and immortal deity among the Andainane4e.
The Origins of Religion. By Rafael Karsten. (Kegan Paul.
12s. ed.) -
A later investigator found two, entirely non-moral, which turned out to be the two monsoons. In like fashion, a Supreme. Deity disappeared from Tierra del Fuego.
Again, there are often extraordinary .likenesses, both in custom and in niyth, between widely-sundered people's, between .Egypt and Mexico, for instance, or between were and Greece. Are ' 'these to be ascribed, as they were by Tylor, to the tendency of humanity, when it reaches a certain stage of culture, to. express itself in the same way, or do the creeds and rituals pass from land to land, like a sort of Black Death, by a show procesi of transfusion ? There, are some who would even trace the whole civilization of the world to its source in the Nile, whence in time it spread to Babylonia, to Greece, or actually to Polynesia. Here again Professor Karsten- has his answer. He 'cannot ,deny that legends and stories ` may thus, transmit themselves. As Lang showed long ago, it is impossible to belieVe that the tale of Jason and Medea should have arisen spontaneously in fifty different countries ; nor can the 'story of eiriderella have been hit on independentlY in three hundred and sixty. But he holds that the case is, quite otherwise with ritual and forms of worship. These, he thinks, are specially stulaborn and tenacious ; tribes are slow to welcome a foreign cult, and very jealous of the integrity of their own.
There are certain points on which Professor Karsten is likely to meet perhaps more searchinig criticism than on those I have mentioned. He will have nothing to do with the " aniiriatism 'of Dr, Marett and others, whom he accuses of ,employing too deductive methods. ' By this is meant' that a tree, for instance, is conceived not as the abode of a spirit, Mit as living like OurselveS ; as a child, When it hits the door that has hurt it, thinks of the doOr as a persaii," and not as a thing possessed by 'a demon. This " animatist " stage, says Dr. Marett, precedes the " animistic " stage' which Tylor and his followers regarded as " Against " preaniinisni " Karsten sets his face. He is an " animist." When (it is usually late in human history) men worship the sun, they do not exactly worship it, nor, do they .think. of it as he ; they are adoring the sPirit, in it. Not that there is no magic in religion. The spirit, like man himself, can be controlled by spells and incantations worship constantly takes the form of a magic ritual, and t4e, priest tends to become a sorcerer. I cannot so much as refer to a tithe of the point's' of interest in this hook. Professor Karst6n is no fanatical adherent of any single theory. A.4 the title .seemi to hint, there are many " origins " of religion. Vegetation-spirits he reduces to a secondary place, and the celestial bodies, as we have seen, do not enter the Pantheon till a later date. So far as I can judge, if he' regards any influence as more important than others in the creation of deities, it is reverence for the dead, and, speeially for , the dead ancestor. Here he may seen.' to be 'approaching the view ,of Herbert Spencer ; but as might be expected, hi is more cautious and discrinainating. The reverence is often hard to mark off from terror ; but Professor Karsten' draws a most interesting distinction. YOu may revere your dead parent, as you may have loved him when alive ; but you hate and fear the spirit which killed him, and which is conceived as still inhabiting him. It is against this spirit that you take your precautions, disguising yoUrseif, putting On strange garments, turning the ' corpse round and 'round that it may not know the way back to the house, Scattering sharp flints on the " church-yard path " that it may be lained before it has gone ten paces. 'It is 'for the-other` that yonprepare'the friendly nutal, and it is to the other that you pray for help. '•
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