object:1.07 - Incarnate Human Gods
book class:The Golden Bough
author class:James George Frazer
subject class:Occultism
class:chapter
VII. Incarnate Human Gods
THE INSTANCES which in the preceding chapters I have drawn from the
beliefs and practices of rude peoples all over the world, may
suffice to prove that the savage fails to recognise those
limitations to his power over nature which seem so obvious to us. In
a society where every man is supposed to be endowed more or less
with powers which we should call supernatural, it is plain that the
distinction between gods and men is somewhat blurred, or rather has
scarcely emerged. The conception of gods as superhuman beings
endowed with powers to which man possesses nothing comparable in
degree and hardly even in kind, has been slowly evolved in the
course of history. By primitive peoples the supernatural agents are
not regarded as greatly, if at all, superior to man; for they may be
frightened and coerced by him into doing his will. At this stage of
thought the world is viewed as a great democracy; all beings in it,
whether natural or supernatural, are supposed to stand on a footing
of tolerable equality. But with the growth of his knowledge man
learns to realise more clearly the vastness of nature and his own
littleness and feebleness in presence of it. The recognition of his
helplessness does not, however, carry with it a corresponding belief
in the impotence of those supernatural beings with which his
imagination peoples the universe. On the contrary, it enhances his
conception of their power. For the idea of the world as a system of
impersonal forces acting in accordance with fixed and invariable
laws has not yet fully dawned or darkened upon him. The germ of the
idea he certainly has, and he acts upon it, not only in magic art,
but in much of the business of daily life. But the idea remains
undeveloped, and so far as he attempts to explain the world he lives
in, he pictures it as the manifestation of conscious will and
personal agency. If then he feels himself to be so frail and slight,
how vast and powerful must he deem the beings who control the
gigantic machinery of nature! Thus as his old sense of equality with
the gods slowly vanishes, he resigns at the same time the hope of
directing the course of nature by his own unaided resources, that
is, by magic, and looks more and more to the gods as the sole
repositories of those supernatural powers which he once claimed to
share with them. With the advance of knowledge, therefore, prayer
and sacrifice assume the leading place in religious ritual; and
magic, which once ranked with them as a legitimate equal, is
gradually relegated to the background and sinks to the level of a
black art. It is not regarded as an encroachment, at once vain and
impious, on the domain of the gods, and as such encounters the
steady opposition of the priests, whose reputation and influence
rise or fall with those of their gods. Hence, when at a late period
the distinction between religion and superstition has emerged, we
find that sacrifice and prayer are the resource of the pious and
enlightened portion of the community, while magic is the refuge of
the superstitious and ignorant. But when, still later, the
conception of the elemental forces as personal agents is giving way
to the recognition of natural law; then magic, based as it
implicitly is on the idea of a necessary and invariable sequence of
cause and effect, independent of personal will, reappears from the
obscurity and discredit into which it had fallen, and by
investigating the causal sequences in nature, directly prepares the
way for science. Alchemy leads up to chemistry.
The notion of a man-god, or of a human being endowed with divine or
supernatural powers, belongs essentially to that earlier period of
religious history in which gods and men are still viewed as beings
of much the same order, and before they are divided by the
impassable gulf which, to later thought, opens out between them.
Strange, therefore, as may seem to us the idea of a god incarnate in
human form, it has nothing very startling for early man, who sees in
a man-god or a god-man only a higher degree of the same supernatural
powers which he arrogates in perfect good faith to himself. Nor does
he draw any very sharp distinction between a god and a powerful
sorcerer. His gods are often merely invisible magicians who behind
the veil of nature work the same sort of charms and incantations
which the human magician works in a visible and bodily form among
his fellows. And as the gods are commonly believed to exhibit
themselves in the likeness of men to their worshippers, it is easy
for the magician, with his supposed miraculous powers, to acquire
the reputation of being an incarnate deity. Thus beginning as little
more than a simple conjurer, the medicine-man or magician tends to
blossom out into a full-blown god and king in one. Only in speaking
of him as a god we must beware of importing into the savage
conception of deity those very abstract and complex ideas which we
attach to the term. Our ideas on this profound subject are the fruit
of a long intellectual and moral evolution, and they are so far from
being shared by the savage that he cannot even understand them when
they are explained to him. Much of the controversy which has raged
as to the religion of the lower races has sprung merely from a
mutual misunderstanding. The savage does not understand the thoughts
of the civilised man, and few civilised men understand the thoughts
of the savage. When the savage uses his word for god, he has in his
mind a being of a certain sort: when the civilised man uses his word
for god, he has in his mind a being of a very different sort; and
if, as commonly happens, the two men are equally unable to place
themselves at the other's point of view, nothing but confusion and
mistakes can result from their discussions. If we civilised men
insist on limiting the name of God to that particular conception of
the divine nature which we ourselves have formed, then we must
confess that the savage has no god at all. But we shall adhere more
closely to the facts of history if we allow most of the higher
savages at least to possess a rudimentary notion of certain
supernatural beings who may fittingly be called gods, though not in
the full sense in which we use the word. That rudimentary notion
represents in all probability the germ out of which the civilised
peoples have gradually evolved their own high conceptions of deity;
and if we could trace the whole course of religious development, we
might find that the chain which links our idea of the Godhead with
that of the savage is one and unbroken.
With these explanations and cautions I will now adduce some examples
of gods who have been believed by their worshippers to be incarnate
in living human beings, whether men or women. The persons in whom a
deity is thought to reveal himself are by no means always kings or
descendants of kings; the supposed incarnation may take place even
in men of the humblest rank. In India, for example, one human god
started in life as a cotton-bleacher and another as the son of a
carpenter. I shall therefore not draw my examples exclusively from
royal personages, as I wish to illustrate the general principle of
the deification of living men, in other words, the incarnation of a
deity in human form. Such incarnate gods are common in rude society.
The incarnation may be temporary or permanent. In the former case,
the incarnation--commonly known as inspiration or
possession--reveals itself in supernatural knowledge rather than in
supernatural power. In other words, its usual manifestations are
divination and prophecy rather than miracles. On the other hand,
when the incarnation is not merely temporary, when the divine spirit
has permanently taken up its abode in a human body, the god-man is
usually expected to vindicate his character by working miracles.
Only we have to remember that by men at this stage of thought
miracles are not considered as breaches of natural law. Not
conceiving the existence of natural law, primitive man cannot
conceive a breach of it. A miracle is to him merely an unusually
striking manifestation of a common power.
The belief in temporary incarnation or inspiration is world-wide.
Certain persons are supposed to be possessed from time to time by a
spirit or deity; while the possession lasts, their own personality
lies in abeyance, the presence of the spirit is revealed by
convulsive shiverings and shakings of the man's whole body, by wild
gestures and excited looks, all of which are referred, not to the
man himself, but to the spirit which has entered into him; and in
this abnormal state all his utterances are accepted as the voice of
the god or spirit dwelling in him and speaking through him. Thus,
for example, in the Sandwich Islands, the king, personating the god,
uttered the responses of the oracle from his concealment in a frame
of wicker-work. But in the southern islands of the Pacific the god
"frequently entered the priest, who, inflated as it were with the
divinity, ceased to act or speak as a voluntary agent, but moved and
spoke as entirely under supernatural influence. In this respect
there was a striking resemblance between the rude oracles of the
Polynesians, and those of the celebrated nations of ancient Greece.
As soon as the god was supposed to have entered the priest, the
latter became violently agitated, and worked himself up to the
highest pitch of apparent frenzy, the muscles of the limbs seemed
convulsed, the body swelled, the countenance became terrific, the
features distorted, and the eyes wild and strained. In this state he
often rolled on the earth, foaming at the mouth, as if labouring
under the influence of the divinity by whom he was possessed, and,
in shrill cries, and violent and often indistinct sounds, revealed
the will of the god. The priests, who were attending, and versed in
the mysteries, received, and reported to the people, the
declarations which had been thus received. When the priest had
uttered the response of the oracle, the violent paroxysm gradually
subsided, and comparative composure ensued. The god did not,
however, always leave him as soon as the communication had been
made. Sometimes the same _taura,_ or priest, continued for two or
three days possessed by the spirit or deity; a piece of a native
cloth, of a peculiar kind, worn round one arm, was an indication of
inspiration, or of the indwelling of the god with the individual who
wore it. The acts of the man during this period were considered as
those of the god, and hence the greatest attention was paid to his
expressions, and the whole of his deportment. . . . When _uruhia_
(under the inspiration of the spirit), the priest was always
considered as sacred as the god, and was called, during this period,
_atua,_ god, though at other times only denominated _taura_ or
priest."
But examples of such temporary inspiration are so common in every
part of the world and are now so familiar through books on ethnology
that it is needless to multiply illustrations of the general
principle. It may be well, however, to refer to two particular modes
of producing temporary inspiration, because they are perhaps less
known than some others, and because we shall have occasion to refer
to them later on. One of these modes of producing inspiration is by
sucking the fresh blood of a sacrificed victim. In the temple of
Apollo Diradiotes at Argos, a lamb was sacrificed by night once a
month; a woman, who had to observe a rule of chastity, tasted the
blood of the lamb, and thus being inspired by the god she prophesied
or divined. At Aegira in Achaia the priestess of Earth drank the
fresh blood of a bull before she descended into the cave to
prophesy. Similarly among the Kuruvikkarans, a class of
bird-catchers and beggars in Southern India, the goddess Kali is
believed to descend upon the priest, and he gives oracular replies
after sucking the blood which streams from the cut throat of a goat.
At a festival of the Alfoors of Minahassa, in Northern Celebes,
after a pig has been killed, the priest rushes furiously at it,
thrusts his head into the carcase, and drinks of the blood. Then he
is dragged away from it by force and set on a chair, whereupon he
begins to prophesy how the rice-crop will turn out that year. A
second time he runs at the carcase and drinks of the blood; a second
time he is forced into the chair and continues his predictions. It
is thought that there is a spirit in him which possesses the power
of prophecy.
The other mode of producing temporary inspiration, to which I shall
here refer, consists in the use of a sacred tree or plant. Thus in
the Hindoo Koosh a fire is kindled with twigs of the sacred cedar;
and the Dainyal or sibyl, with a cloth over her head, inhales the
thick pungent smoke till she is seized with convulsions and falls
senseless to the ground. Soon she rises and raises a shrill chant,
which is caught up and loudly repeated by her audience. So Apollo's
prophetess ate the sacred laurel and was fumigated with it before
she prophesied. The Bacchanals ate ivy, and their inspired fury was
by some believed to be due to the exciting and intoxicating
properties of the plant. In Uganda the priest, in order to be
inspired by his god, smokes a pipe of tobacco fiercely till he works
himself into a frenzy; the loud excited tones in which he then talks
are recognised as the voice of the god speaking through him. In
Madura, an island off the north coast of Java, each spirit has its
regular medium, who is oftener a woman than a man. To prepare
herself for the reception of the spirit she inhales the fumes of
incense, sitting with her head over a smoking censer. Gradually she
falls into a sort of trance accompanied by shrieks, grimaces, and
violent spasms. The spirit is now supposed to have entered into her,
and when she grows calmer her words are regarded as oracular, being
the utterances of the indwelling spirit, while her own soul is
temporarily absent.
The person temporarily inspired is believed to acquire, not merely
divine knowledge, but also, at least occasionally, divine power. In
Cambodia, when an epidemic breaks out, the inhabitants of several
villages unite and go with a band of music at their head to look for
the man whom the local god is supposed to have chosen for his
temporary incarnation. When found, the man is conducted to the altar
of the god, where the mystery of incarnation takes place. Then the
man becomes an object of veneration to his fellows, who implore him
to protect the village against the plague. A certain image of
Apollo, which stood in a sacred cave at Hylae near Magnesia, was
thought to impart superhuman strength. Sacred men, inspired by it,
leaped down precipices, tore up huge trees by the roots, and carried
them on their backs along the narrowest defiles. The feats performed
by inspired dervishes belong to the same class.
Thus far we have seen that the savage, failing to discern the limits
of his ability to control nature, ascribes to himself and to all men
certain powers which we should now call supernatural. Further, we
have seen that, over and above this general supernaturalism, some
persons are supposed to be inspired for short periods by a divine
spirit, and thus temporarily to enjoy the knowledge and power of the
indwelling deity. From beliefs like these it is an easy step to the
conviction that certain men are permanently possessed by a deity, or
in some other undefined way are endued with so high a degree of
supernatural power as to be ranked as gods and to receive the homage
of prayer and sacrifice. Sometimes these human gods are restricted
to purely supernatural or spiritual functions. Sometimes they
exercise supreme political power in addition. In the latter case
they are kings as well as gods, and the government is a theocracy.
Thus in the Marquesas or Washington Islands there was a class of men
who were deified in their lifetime. They were supposed to wield a
supernatural power over the elements: they could give abundant
harvests or smite the ground with barrenness; and they could inflict
disease or death. Human sacrifices were offered to them to avert
their wrath. There were not many of them, at the most one or two in
each island. They lived in mystic seclusion. Their powers were
sometimes, but not always, hereditary. A missionary has described
one of these human gods from personal observation. The god was a
very old man who lived in a large house within an enclosure. In the
house was a kind of altar, and on the beams of the house and on the
trees round it were hung human skeletons, head down. No one entered
the enclosure except the persons dedicated to the service of the
god; only on days when human victims were sacrificed might ordinary
people penetrate into the precinct. This human god received more
sacrifices than all the other gods; often he would sit on a sort of
scaffold in front of his house and call for two or three human
victims at a time. They were always brought, for the terror he
inspired was extreme. He was invoked all over the island, and
offerings were sent to him from every side. Again, of the South Sea
Islands in general we are told that each island had a man who
represented or personified the divinity. Such men were called gods,
and their substance was confounded with that of the deity. The
man-god was sometimes the king himself; oftener he was a priest or
subordinate chief.
The ancient Egyptians, far from restricting their adoration to cats
and dogs and such small deer, very liberally extended it to men. One
of these human deities resided at the village of Anabis, and burnt
sacrifices were offered to him on the altars; after which, says
Porphyry, he would eat his dinner just as if he were an ordinary
mortal. In classical antiquity the Sicilian philosopher Empedocles
gave himself out to be not merely a wizard but a god. Addressing his
fellow-citizens in verse he said:
"O friends, in this great city that climbs the yellow slope
Of Agrigentum's citadel, who make good works your scope,
Who offer to the stranger a haven quiet and fair,
All hail! Among you honoured I walk with lofty air.
With garlands, blooming garlands you crown my noble brow,
A mortal man no longer, a deathless godhead now.
Where e'er I go, the people crowd round and worship pay,
And thousands follow seeking to learn the better way.
Some crave prophetic visions, some smit with anguish sore
Would fain hear words of comfort and suffer pain no more."
He asserted that he could teach his disciples how to make the wind
to blow or be still, the rain to fall and the sun to shine, how to
banish sickness and old age and to raise the dead. When Demetrius
Poliorcetes restored the Athenian democracy in 307 B.C., the
Athenians decreed divine honours to him and his father Antigonus,
both of them being then alive, under the title of the Saviour Gods.
Altars were set up to the Saviours, and a priest appointed to attend
to their worship. The people went forth to meet their deliverer with
hymns and dances, with garlands and incense and libations; they
lined the streets and sang that he was the only true god, for the
other gods slept, or dwelt far away, or were not. In the words of a
contemporary poet, which were chanted in public and sung in private:
"Of all the gods the greatest and the dearest
To the city are come.
For Demeter and Demetrius
Together time has brought.
She comes to hold the Maiden's awful rites,
And he joyous and fair and laughing,
As befits a god.
A glorious sight, with all his friends about him,
He in their midst,
They like to stars, and he the sun.
Son of Poseidon the mighty, Aphrodite's son,
All hail!
The other gods dwell far away,
Or have no ears,
Or are not, or pay us no heed.
But thee we present see,
No god of wood or stone, but godhead true.
Therefore to thee we pray."
The ancient Germans believed that there was something holy in women,
and accordingly consulted them as oracles. Their sacred women, we
are told, looked on the eddying rivers and listened to the murmur or
the roar of the water, and from the sight and sound foretold what
would come to pass. But often the veneration of the men went
further, and they worshipped women as true and living goddesses. For
example, in the reign of Vespasian a certain Veleda, of the tribe of
the Bructeri, was commonly held to be a deity, and in that character
reigned over her people, her sway being acknowledged far and wide.
She lived in a tower on the river Lippe, a tributary of the Rhine.
When the people of Cologne sent to make a treaty with her, the
ambassadors were not admitted to her presence; the negotiations were
conducted through a minister, who acted as the mouthpiece of her
divinity and reported her oracular utterances. The example shows how
easily among our rude forefathers the ideas of divinity and royalty
coalesced. It is said that among the Getae down to the beginning of
our era there was always a man who personified a god and was called
God by the people. He dwelt on a sacred mountain and acted as
adviser to the king.
According to the early Portuguese historian, Dos Santos, the Zimbas,
or Muzimbas, a people of South-eastern Africa, "do not adore idols
or recognize any god, but instead they venerate and honour their
king, whom they regard as a divinity, and they say he is the
greatest and best in the world. And the said king says of himself
that he alone is god of the earth, for which reason if it rains when
he does not wish it to do so, or is too hot, he shoots arrows at the
sky for not obeying him." The Mashona of Southern Africa informed
their bishop that they had once had a god, but that the Matabeles
had driven him away. "This last was in reference to a curious custom
in some villages of keeping a man they called their god. He seemed
to be consulted by the people and had presents given to him. There
was one at a village belonging to a chief Magondi, in the old days.
We were asked not to fire off any guns near the village, or we
should frighten him away." This Mashona god was formerly bound to
render an annual tribute to the king of the Matabele in the shape of
four black oxen and one dance. A missionary has seen and described
the deity discharging the latter part of his duty in front of the
royal hut. For three mortal hours, without a break, to the banging
of a tambourine, the click of castanettes, and the drone of a
monotonous song, the swarthy god engaged in a frenzied dance,
crouching on his hams like a tailor, sweating like a pig, and
bounding about with an agility which testified to the strength and
elasticity of his divine legs.
The Baganda of Central Africa believed in a god of Lake Nyanza, who
sometimes took up his abode in a man or woman. The incarnate god was
much feared by all the people, including the king and the chiefs.
When the mystery of incarnation had taken place, the man, or rather
the god, removed about a mile and a half from the margin of the
lake, and there awaited the appearance of the new moon before he
engaged in his sacred duties. From the moment that the crescent moon
appeared faintly in the sky, the king and all his subjects were at
the command of the divine man, or _Lubare_ (god), as he was called,
who reigned supreme not only in matters of faith and ritual, but
also in questions of war and state policy. He was consulted as an
oracle; by his word he could inflict or heal sickness, withhold
rain, and cause famine. Large presents were made him when his advice
was sought. The chief of Urua, a large region to the west of Lake
Tanganyika, "arrogates to himself divine honours and power and
pretends to abstain from food for days without feeling its
necessity; and, indeed, declares that as a god he is altogether
above requiring food and only eats, drinks, and smokes for the
pleasure it affords him." Among the Gallas, when a woman grows tired
of the cares of housekeeping, she begins to talk incoherently and to
demean herself extravagantly. This is a sign of the descent of the
holy spirit Callo upon her. Immediately her husband prostrates
himself and adores her; she ceases to bear the humble title of wife
and is called "Lord"; domestic duties have no further claim on her,
and her will is a divine law.
The king of Loango is honoured by his people "as though he were a
god; and he is called Sambee and Pango, which mean god. They believe
that he can let them have rain when he likes; and once a year, in
December, which is the time they want rain, the people come to beg
of him to grant it to them." On this occasion the king, standing on
his throne, shoots an arrow into the air, which is supposed to bring
on rain. Much the same is said of the king of Mombasa. Down to a few
years ago, when his spiritual reign on earth was brought to an
abrupt end by the carnal weapons of English marines and bluejackets,
the king of Benin was the chief object of worship in his dominions.
"He occupies a higher post here than the Pope does in Catholic
Europe; for he is not only God's vicegerent upon earth, but a god
himself, whose subjects both obey and adore him as such, although I
believe their adoration to arise rather from fear than love." The
king of Iddah told the English officers of the Niger Expedition,
"God made me after his own image; I am all the same as God; and he
appointed me a king."
A peculiarly bloodthirsty monarch of Burma, by name Badonsachen,
whose very countenance reflected the inbred ferocity of his nature,
and under whose reign more victims perished by the executioner than
by the common enemy, conceived the notion that he was something more
than mortal, and that this high distinction had been granted him as
a reward for his numerous good works. Accordingly he laid aside the
title of king and aimed at making himself a god. With this view, and
in imitation of Buddha, who, before being advanced to the rank of a
divinity, had quitted his royal palace and seraglio and retired from
the world, Badonsachen withdrew from his palace to an immense
pagoda, the largest in the empire, which he had been engaged in
constructing for many years. Here he held conferences with the most
learned monks, in which he sought to persuade them that the five
thousand years assigned for the observance of the law of Buddha were
now elapsed, and that he himself was the god who was destined to
appear after that period, and to abolish the old law by substituting
his own. But to his great mortification many of the monks undertook
to demonstrate the contrary; and this disappointment, combined with
his love of power and his impatience under the restraints of an
ascetic life, quickly disabused him of his imaginary godhead, and
drove him back to his palace and his harem. The king of Siam "is
venerated equally with a divinity. His subjects ought not to look
him in the face; they prostrate themselves before him when he
passes, and appear before him on their knees, their elbows resting
on the ground." There is a special language devoted to his sacred
person and attributes, and it must be used by all who speak to or of
him. Even the natives have difficulty in mastering this peculiar
vocabulary. The hairs of the monarch's head, the soles of his feet,
the breath of his body, indeed every single detail of his person,
both outward and inward, have particular names. When he eats or
drinks, sleeps or walks, a special word indicates that these acts
are being performed by the sovereign, and such words cannot possibly
be applied to the acts of any other person whatever. There is no
word in the Siamese language by which any creature of higher rank or
greater dignity than a monarch can be described; and the
missionaries, when they speak of God, are forced to use the native
word for king.
But perhaps no country in the world has been so prolific of human
gods as India; nowhere has the divine grace been poured out in a
more liberal measure on all classes of society from kings down to
milkmen. Thus amongst the Todas, a pastoral people of the Neilgherry
Hills of Southern India, the dairy is a sanctuary, and the milkman
who attends to it has been described as a god. On being asked
whether the Todas salute the sun, one of these divine milkmen
replied, "Those poor fellows do so, but I," tapping his chest, "I, a
god! why should I salute the sun?" Every one, even his own father,
prostrates himself before the milkman, and no one would dare to
refuse him anything. No human being, except another milkman, may
touch him; and he gives oracles to all who consult him, speaking
with the voice of a god.
Further, in India "every king is regarded as little short of a
present god." The Hindoo law-book of Manu goes farther and says that
"even an infant king must not be despised from an idea that he is a
mere mortal; for he is a great deity in human form." There is said
to have been a sect in Orissa some years ago who worshipped the late
Queen Victoria in her lifetime as their chief divinity. And to this
day in India all living persons remarkable for great strength or
valour or for supposed miraculous powers run the risk of being
worshipped as gods. Thus, a sect in the Punjaub worshipped a deity
whom they called Nikkal Sen. This Nikkal Sen was no other than the
redoubted General Nicholson, and nothing that the general could do
or say damped the ardour of his adorers. The more he punished them,
the greater grew the religious awe with which they worshipped him.
At Benares not many years ago a celebrated deity was incarnate in
the person of a Hindoo gentleman who rejoiced in the euphonious name
of Swami Bhaskaranandaji Saraswati, and looked uncommonly like the
late Cardinal Manning, only more ingenuous. His eyes beamed with
kindly human interest, and he took what is described as an innocent
pleasure in the divine honours paid him by his confiding
worshippers.
At Chinchvad, a small town about ten miles from Poona in Western
India, there lives a family of whom one in each generation is
believed by a large proportion of the Mahrattas to be an incarnation
of the elephant-headed god Gunputty. That celebrated deity was first
made flesh about the year 1640 in the person of a Brahman of Poona,
by name Mooraba Gosseyn, who sought to work out his salvation by
abstinence, mortification, and prayer. His piety had its reward. The
god himself appeared to him in a vision of the night and promised
that a portion of his, that is, of Gunputty's holy spirit should
abide with him and with his seed after him even to the seventh
generation. The divine promise was fulfilled. Seven successive
incarnations, transmitted from father to son, manifested the light
of Gunputty to a dark world. The last of the direct line, a
heavy-looking god with very weak eyes, died in the year 1810. But
the cause of truth was too sacred, and the value of the church
property too considerable, to allow the Brahmans to contemplate with
equanimity the unspeakable loss that would be sustained by a world
which knew not Gunputty. Accordingly they sought and found a holy
vessel in whom the divine spirit of the master had revealed itself
anew, and the revelation has been happily continued in an unbroken
succession of vessels from that time to this. But a mysterious law
of spiritual economy, whose operation in the history of religion we
may deplore though we cannot alter, has decreed that the miracles
wrought by the god-man in these degenerate days cannot compare with
those which were wrought by his predecessors in days gone by; and it
is even reported that the only sign vouchsafed by him to the present
generation of vipers is the miracle of feeding the multitude whom he
annually entertains to dinner at Chinchvad.
A Hindoo sect, which has many representatives in Bombay and Central
India, holds that its spiritual chiefs or Maharajas, as they are
called, are representatives or even actual incarnations on earth of
the god Krishna. And as Krishna looks down from heaven with most
favour on such as minister to the wants of his successors and vicars
on earth, a peculiar rite called Self-devotion has been instituted,
whereby his faithful worshippers make over their bodies, their
souls, and, what is perhaps still more important, their worldly
substance to his adorable incarnations; and women are taught to
believe that the highest bliss for themselves and their families is
to be attained by yielding themselves to the embraces of those
beings in whom the divine nature mysteriously coexists with the form
and even the appetites of true humanity.
Christianity itself has not uniformly escaped the taint of these
unhappy delusions; indeed it has often been sullied by the
extravagances of vain pretenders to a divinity equal to or even
surpassing that of its great Founder. In the second century Montanus
the Phrygian claimed to be the incarnate Trinity, uniting in his
single person God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost.
Nor is this an isolated case, the exorbitant pretension of a single
ill-balanced mind. From the earliest times down to the present day
many sects have believed that Christ, nay God himself, is incarnate
in every fully initiated Christian, and they have carried this
belief to its logical conclusion by adoring each other. Tertullian
records that this was done by his fellow-Christians at Carthage in
the second century; the disciples of St. Columba worshipped him as
an embodiment of Christ; and in the eighth century Elipandus of
Toledo spoke of Christ as "a god among gods," meaning that all
believers were gods just as truly as Jesus himself. The adoration of
each other was customary among the Albigenses, and is noticed
hundreds of times in the records of the Inquisition at Toulouse in
the early part of the fourteenth century.
In the thirteenth century there arose a sect called the Brethren and
Sisters of the Free Spirit, who held that by long and assiduous
contemplation any man might be united to the deity in an ineffable
manner and become one with the source and parent of all things, and
that he who had thus ascended to God and been absorbed in his
beatific essence, actually formed part of the Godhead, was the Son
of God in the same sense and manner with Christ himself, and enjoyed
thereby a glorious immunity from the trammels of all laws human and
divine. Inwardly transported by this blissful persuasion, though
outwardly presenting in their aspect and manners a shocking air of
lunacy and distraction, the sectaries roamed from place to place,
attired in the most fantastic apparel and begging their bread with
wild shouts and clamour, spurning indignantly every kind of honest
labour and industry as an obstacle to divine contemplation and to
the ascent of the soul towards the Father of spirits. In all their
excursions they were followed by women with whom they lived on terms
of the closest familiarity. Those of them who conceived they had
made the greatest proficiency in the higher spiritual life dispensed
with the use of clothes altogether in their assemblies, looking upon
decency and modesty as marks of inward corruption, characteristics
of a soul that still grovelled under the dominion of the flesh and
had not yet been elevated into communion with the divine spirit, its
centre and source. Sometimes their progress towards this mystic
communion was accelerated by the Inquisition, and they expired in
the flames, not merely with unclouded serenity, but with the most
triumphant feelings of cheerfulness and joy.
About the year 1830 there appeared, in one of the States of the
American Union bordering on Kentucky, an impostor who declared that
he was the Son of God, the Saviour of mankind, and that he had
reappeared on earth to recall the impious, the unbelieving, and
sinners to their duty. He protested that if they did not mend their
ways within a certain time, he would give the signal, and in a
moment the world would crumble to ruins. These extravagant
pretensions were received with favour even by persons of wealth and
position in society. At last a German humbly besought the new
Messiah to announce the dreadful catastrophe to his
fellow-countrymen in the German language, as they did not understand
English, and it seemed a pity that they should be damned merely on
that account. The would-be Saviour in reply confessed with great
candour that he did not know German. "What!" retorted the German,
"you the Son of God, and don't speak all languages, and don't even
know German? Come, come, you are a knave, a hypocrite, and a madman.
Bedlam is the place for you." The spectators laughed, and went away
ashamed of their credulity.
Sometimes, at the death of the human incarnation, the divine spirit
transmigrates into another man. The Buddhist Tartars believe in a
great number of living Buddhas, who officiate as Grand Lamas at the
head of the most important monasteries. When one of these Grand
Lamas dies his disciples do not sorrow, for they know that he will
soon reappear, being born in the form of an infant. Their only
anxiety is to discover the place of his birth. If at this time they
see a rainbow they take it as a sign sent them by the departed Lama
to guide them to his cradle. Sometimes the divine infant himself
reveals his identity. "I am the Grand Lama," he says, "the living
Buddha of such and such a temple. Take me to my old monastery. I am
its immortal head." In whatever way the birthplace of the Buddha is
revealed, whether by the Buddha's own avowal or by the sign in the
sky, tents are struck, and the joyful pilgrims, often headed by the
king or one of the most illustrious of the royal family, set forth
to find and bring home the infant god. Generally he is born in
Tibet, the holy land, and to reach him the caravan has often to
traverse the most frightful deserts. When at last they find the
child they fall down and worship him. Before, however, he is
acknowledged as the Grand Lama whom they seek he must satisfy them
of his identity. He is asked the name of the monastery of which he
claims to be the head, how far off it is, and how many monks live in
it; he must also describe the habits of the deceased Grand Lama and
the manner of his death. Then various articles, as prayer-books,
tea-pots, and cups, are placed before him, and he has to point out
those used by himself in his previous life. If he does so without a
mistake his claims are admitted, and he is conducted in triumph to
the monastery. At the head of all the Lamas is the Dalai Lama of
Lhasa, the Rome of Tibet. He is regarded as a living god, and at
death his divine and immortal spirit is born again in a child.
According to some accounts the mode of discovering the Dalai Lama is
similar to the method, already described, of discovering an ordinary
Grand Lama. Other accounts speak of an election by drawing lots from
a golden jar. Wherever he is born, the trees and plants put forth
green leaves; at his bidding flowers bloom and springs of water
rise; and his presence diffuses heavenly blessings.
But he is by no means the only man who poses as a god in these
regions. A register of all the incarnate gods in the Chinese empire
is kept in the _Li fan yiian_ or Colonial Office at Peking. The
number of gods who have thus taken out a license is one hundred and
sixty. Tibet is blessed with thirty of them, Northern Mongolia
rejoices in nineteen, and Southern Mongolia basks in the sunshine of
no less than fifty-seven. The Chinese government, with a paternal
solicitude for the welfare of its subjects, forbids the gods on the
register to be reborn anywhere but in Tibet. They fear lest the
birth of a god in Mongolia should have serious political
consequences by stirring the dormant patriotism and warlike spirit
of the Mongols, who might rally round an ambitious native deity of
royal lineage and seek to win for him, at the point of the sword, a
temporal as well as a spiritual kingdom. But besides these public or
licensed gods there are a great many little private gods, or
unlicensed practitioners of divinity, who work miracles and bless
their people in holes and corners; and of late years the Chinese
government has winked at the rebirth of these pettifogging deities
outside of Tibet. However, once they are born, the government keeps
its eye on them as well as on the regular practitioners, and if any
of them misbehaves he is promptly degraded, banished to a distant
monastery, and strictly forbidden ever to be born again in the
flesh.
From our survey of the religious position occupied by the king in
rude societies we may infer that the claim to divine and
supernatural powers put forward by the monarchs of great historical
empires like those of Egypt, Mexico, and Peru, was not the simple
outcome of inflated vanity or the empty expression of a grovelling
adulation; it was merely a survival and extension of the old savage
apotheosis of living kings. Thus, for example, as children of the
Sun the Incas of Peru were revered like gods; they could do no
wrong, and no one dreamed of offending against the person, honour,
or property of the monarch or of any of the royal race. Hence, too,
the Incas did not, like most people, look on sickness as an evil.
They considered it a messenger sent from their father the Sun to
call them to come and rest with him in heaven. Therefore the usual
words in which an Inca announced his approaching end were these: "My
father calls me to come and rest with him." They would not oppose
their father's will by offering sacrifice for recovery, but openly
declared that he had called them to his rest. Issuing from the
sultry valleys upon the lofty tableland of the Colombian Andes, the
Spanish conquerors were astonished to find, in contrast to the
savage hordes they had left in the sweltering jungles below, a
people enjoying a fair degree of civilisation, practising
agriculture, and living under a government which Humboldt has
compared to the theocracies of Tibet and Japan. These were the
Chibchas, Muyscas, or Mozcas, divided into two kingdoms, with
capitals at Bogota and Tunja, but united apparently in spiritual
allegiance to the high pontiff of Sogamozo or Iraca. By a long and
ascetic novitiate, this ghostly ruler was reputed to have acquired
such sanctity that the waters and the rain obeyed him, and the
weather depended on his will. The Mexican kings at their accession,
as we have seen, took an oath that they would make the sun to shine,
the clouds to give rain, the rivers to flow, and the earth to bring
forth fruits in abundance. We are told that Montezuma, the last king
of Mexico, was worshipped by his people as a god.
The early Babylonian kings, from the time of Sargon I. till the
fourth dynasty of Ur or later, claimed to be gods in their lifetime.
The monarchs of the fourth dynasty of Ur in particular had temples
built in their honour; they set up their statues in various
sanctuaries and commanded the people to sacrifice to them; the
eighth month was especially dedicated to the kings, and sacrifices
were offered to them at the new moon and on the fifteenth of each
month. Again, the Parthian monarchs of the Arsacid house styled
themselves brothers of the sun and moon and were worshipped as
deities. It was esteemed sacrilege to strike even a private member
of the Arsacid family in a brawl.
The kings of Egypt were deified in their lifetime, sacrifices were
offered to them, and their worship was celebrated in special temples
and by special priests. Indeed the worship of the kings sometimes
cast that of the gods into the shade. Thus in the reign of Merenra a
high official declared that he had built many holy places in order
that the spirits of the king, the ever-living Merenra, might be
invoked "more than all the gods." "It has never been doubted that
the king claimed actual divinity; he was the 'great god,' the'golden
Horus,' and son of Ra. He claimed authority not only over Egypt, but
over'all lands and nations,''the whole world in its length and its
breadth, the east and the west,''the entire compass of the great
circuit of the sun,''the sky and what is in it, the earth and all
that is upon it,''every creature that walks upon two or upon four
legs, all that fly or flutter, the whole world offers her
productions to him.' Whatever in fact might be asserted of the
Sun-god, was dogmatically predicable of the king of Egypt. His
titles were directly derived from those of the Sun-god." "In the
course of his existence," we are told, "the king of Egypt exhausted
all the possible conceptions of divinity which the Egyptians had
framed for themselves. A superhuman god by his birth and by his
royal office, he became the deified man after his death. Thus all
that was known of the divine was summed up in him."
We have now completed our sketch, for it is no more than a sketch,
of the evolution of that sacred kingship which attained its highest
form, its most absolute expression, in the monarchies of Peru and
Egypt. Historically, the institution appears to have originated in
the order of public magicians or medicine-men; logically it rests on
a mistaken deduction from the association of ideas. Men mistook the
order of their ideas for the order of nature, and hence imagined
that the control which they have, or seem to have, over their
thoughts, permitted them to exercise a corresponding control over
things. The men who for one reason or another, because of the
strength or the weakness of their natural parts, were supposed to
possess these magical powers in the highest degree, were gradually
marked off from their fellows and became a separate class, who were
destined to exercise a most far-reaching influence on the political,
religious, and intellectual evolution of mankind. Social progress,
as we know, consists mainly in a successive differentiation of
functions, or, in simpler language, a division of labour. The work
which in primitive society is done by all alike and by all equally
ill, or nearly so, is gradually distributed among different classes
of workers and executed more and more perfectly; and so far as the
products, material or immaterial, of this specialised labour are
shared by all, the whole community benefits by the increasing
specialisation. Now magicians or medicine-men appear to constitute
the oldest artificial or professional class in the evolution of
society. For sorcerers are found in every savage tribe known to us;
and among the lowest savages, such as the Australian aborigines,
they are the only professional class that exists. As time goes on,
and the process of differentiation continues, the order of
medicine-men is itself subdivided into such classes as the healers
of disease, the makers of rain, and so forth; while the most
powerful member of the order wins for himself a position as chief
and gradually develops into a sacred king, his old magical functions
falling more and more into the background and being exchanged for
priestly or even divine duties, in proportion as magic is slowly
ousted by religion. Still later, a partition is effected between the
civil and the religious aspect of the kingship, the temporal power
being committed to one man and the spiritual to another. Meanwhile
the magicians, who may be repressed but cannot be extirpated by the
predominance of religion, still addict themselves to their old
occult arts in preference to the newer ritual of sacrifice and
prayer; and in time the more sagacious of their number perceive the
fallacy of magic and hit upon a more effectual mode of manipulating
the forces of nature for the good of man; in short, they abandon
sorcery for science. I am far from affirming that the course of
development has everywhere rigidly followed these lines: it has
doubtless varied greatly in different societies. I merely mean to
indicate in the broadest outline what I conceive to have been its
general trend. Regarded from the industrial point of view the
evolution has been from uniformity to diversity of function:
regarded from the political point of view, it has been from
democracy to despotism. With the later history of monarchy,
especially with the decay of despotism and its displacement by forms
of government better adapted to the higher needs of humanity, we are
not concerned in this enquiry: our theme is the growth, not the
decay, of a great and, in its time, beneficent institution.
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