By JANE ELLEN HARRISON.
Hon. D.Litt. (Durham), Hon. LL.D. (Aberdeen), Staff Lecturer and sometime Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge. Corresponding member of the German Archaeological Institute.
The title of my paper might well have been "the creation by Darwinism of the scientific study of Religions," but that I feared to mar my tribute to a great name by any shadow of exaggeration. Before the publication of "The Origin of Species" and "The Descent of Man", even in the eighteenth century, isolated thinkers, notably Hume and Herder, had conjectured that the orthodox beliefs of their own day were developments from the cruder superstitions of the past. These were however only particular speculations of individual sceptics. Religion was not yet generally regarded as a proper subject for scientific study, with facts to be collected and theories to be deduced. A Congress of Religions such as that recently held at Oxford would have savoured of impiety.
In the brief space allotted me I can attempt only two things; first, and very briefly, I shall try to indicate the normal attitude towards religion in the early part of the last century; second, and in more detail, I shall try to make clear what is the outlook of advanced thinkers to-day. (To be accurate I ought to add "in Europe." I advisedly omit from consideration the whole immense field of Oriental mysticism, because it has remained practically untouched by the influence of Darwinism.) From this second inquiry it will, I hope, be abundantly manifest that it is the doctrine of evolution that has made this outlook possible and even necessary.
The ultimate and unchallenged presupposition of the old view was that religion was a DOCTRINE, a body of supposed truths. It was in fact what we should now call Theology, and what the ancients called Mythology. Ritual was scarcely considered at all, and, when considered, it was held to be a form in which beliefs, already defined and fixed as dogma, found a natural mode of expression. This, it will be later shown, is a profound error or rather a most misleading half-truth. Creeds, doctrines, theology and the like are only a part, and at first the least important part, of religion.
Further, and the fact is important, this DOGMA, thus supposed to be the essential content of the "true" religion, was a teleological scheme complete and unalterable, which had been revealed to man once and for all by a highly anthropomorphic God, whose existence was assumed. The duty of man towards this revelation was to accept its doctrines and obey its precepts. The notion that this revelation had grown bit by bit out of man's consciousness and that his business was to better it would have seemed rank blasphemy. Religion, so conceived, left no place for development. "The Truth" might be learnt, but never critically examined;being thus avowedly complete and final, it was doomed to stagnation.
The details of this supposed revelation seem almost too ***** for enumeration. As Hume observed, "popular theology has a positive appetite for absurdity." It is sufficient to recall that "revelation" included such items as the Creation (It is interesting to note that the very word "Creator" has nowadays almost passed into the region of mythology. Instead we have "L'Evolution Creatrice".) of the world out of nothing in six days;the ****** of Eve from one of Adam's ribs; the Temptation by a talking snake; the confusion of tongues at the tower of Babel; the doctrine of Original Sin; a scheme of salvation which demanded the Virgin Birth, Vicarious Atonement, and the Resurrection of the material body. The scheme was unfolded in an infallible Book, or, for one section of Christians, guarded by the tradition of an infallible Church, and on the acceptance or refusal of this scheme depended an eternity of weal or woe. There is not one of these doctrines that has not now been recast, softened down, mysticised, allegorised into something more conformable with modern thinking. It is hard for the present generation, unless their breeding has been singularly archaic, to realise that these amazing doctrines were literally held and believed to constitute the very essence of religion; to doubt them was a moral delinquency.
It had not, however, escaped the notice of travellers and missionaries that savages carried on some sort of practices that seemed to be religious, and believed in some sort of spirits or demons. Hence, beyond the confines illuminated by revealed truth, a vague region was assigned to NATURALReligion. The original revelation had been kept intact only by one chosen people, the Jews, by them to be handed on to Christianity. Outside the borders of this Goshen the world had sunk into the darkness of Egypt.
Where analogies between savage cults and the Christian religions were observed, they were explained as degradations; the heathen had somehow wilfully "lost the light." Our business was not to study but, exclusively, to convert them, to root out superstition and carry the torch of revelation to "Souls in heathen darkness lying." To us nowadays it is a commonplace of anthropological research that we must seek for the beginnings of religion in the religions of primitive peoples, but in the last century the orthodox mind was convinced that it possessed a complete and luminous ready-made revelation; the study of what was held to be a mere degradation seemed idle and superfluous.