July 2, 1888.] 



♦ KNOAATLEDGE ♦ 



193 



% ILLUSTBATED^MAGAZINE ^ 



liClENCE,tiTEKATUIlE,& ART, 



LONDON : JULY 2, 1888. 



MAN'S RELIGION THE EXPRESSION OF 

 HIS KNOWLEDGE. 



nOME time since a series of papers appeared in 

 Knowledge under the title " The Unknow- 

 able," in which we attempted to sliow how 

 that borderland be\"ond the known (or what 

 i> supposed to be known) in which lie all 

 the vague possibilities man is ever ready to 

 l)icture where ignorance or imiierfect know- 

 ledge permits, is the true domain of religions aspirations in 

 so far as they belong to emotional faich. We now propose 

 to supplement those papers by a series showing in what 

 bcnse. religion is the outcome of knowledge, and how the 

 religion of every nation and of every .age has ever been the 

 expression of the knowledge (such as it has been) of each 

 nation and each age. We shall, in fact, strive to do for 

 religion from one special point of view what Professor 

 Drummond has striven to do for it from another. He has 

 endeavoured to show that in the spiritual world there aie 

 natural laws akin to those which the student of science has 

 learned to recognise in the world of m.atter. We shall 

 endeavour to show that the men of every age and nation 

 have striven to embody in their religion sr.ch natural laws 

 .as they knew or supposed they knew. In other words, we 

 shall strive to show the eminently reasonable character of 

 all religious .S3'stenis, nay, of each specific religious dogma — 

 granted onlj' that men had lightly apprehended the signifi- 

 cance of the facts of n.ature as seen by them and as they 

 understood them. Wo may thus learn bow it has come to 

 pass that certain doctrines have been almost universally 

 accepted ; others limited to special races or to special times. 

 We shall learn to distinguish what is probabl}' well founded 

 from what is probably unsound in the religions of the 

 human race — not by considering religious doctrines in them- 

 selves, but by striving to understand on what ideas about 

 natural facts or natural Laws they were originally based. 

 And in this way the true bearing of science on religion will 

 bo recognised. For few fcientific teachings have any direct 

 bearing on religious doctrines ns actually developed, even 

 when they may have the most decided and decisive bearing 

 on the ideas out of which the development of that doctrine 

 sprang. As the discoveries of astronomy h.ave no direct 

 bearing on the doctrines of astrology, while fully inter- 

 preting most of the facts on which those doctrines were 

 originally based, so is it with the teachings of modern 

 science in relation to nearly .all the doctrines of every 

 religion the world has known. Science can seldom prove or 

 disprove any dogma of religion, but science can in a number 

 of instances s.ay confidently that this or that fact on which 

 such and such dogmas were primarily based must be intei'- 

 ]n'eted thus or thus — as it was interpreted by tho.se who 

 first found in it the germ of some special religious teachintr, 

 or (it may be) rjuitc otherwise. 



In such an inquiry science is working, without doubt, 

 within its proper iield. For it is the special aim and pur- 

 pose of science to interpret facts if it can, and to classify 

 them (for future interpretation, perhaps) where it cannot. 

 The student of religion will also heio be engaged on an 

 infjuiry which leally bears upon religion : for he cannot but 

 be interested in consideiing the origin of specific religious 

 doctrines; and where ob.served facts or supposed facts and 

 natural laws more or less clearly discerned have led (.as they 

 alw.ays have led, first or last) to religious views, it cannot 

 but interest him to inquire how far the observations were 

 real or illusory, and in what degree laws really hold which 

 men have supposed they had determined. The inquiry will 

 extend to each one of those dogmas of religion to which 

 Professor Drummond has striven to extend the idea of 

 natur.al Law, but other matters (outside his sul ject) will be 

 considered also in our discussion of religious views as the 

 expression of men's knowledge, real or supposed, of nature 

 and her workins;s. 



THE RELIGION OF THE ANCIENT 



BRITONS.* 



II. 



T is among the non- Aryan. prc-C'eltic dwellers in 

 Britain that Druidlsra flourished, and became 

 in large measure mingkHl with Celtic poly- 

 theism, so that the elements of each are not 

 easy of separation. C.o^sar says of it that it 

 " is thought to have been invented in Britain, 

 and to have been carried over to Gaul ; and 

 at the present time those who wish to gain a more 

 precise knowledge of the system travel to that country 

 for the purpose of studying it."t The straightforward 

 and interesting account which he gives of G.allic Dniid- 

 ism, of the functions of the priesthood and character 

 of the ceremonies, is therefore to be applied, with local 

 modifications, to Britain. But wo must guard against 

 giving high-sounding names and titles, and crediting philo- 

 sophic qualities, to a religion so barbaric in its origin and 

 essence as that of the earlier rtices of the.se islands, judging 

 from analogy and from the dcscriiitlon of Tacitus and other 

 writers, must have been. A good deal of speculation has 

 been expended on the deriv.ation of the name Druid, the 

 Irish word for which is dmoi, meaning a magician or sooth- 

 sayer ; but Profes.sor Rhys, after weighing the matter, and 

 citing evidence concerning tree-worship, inclines to the 

 old etymology drus, "oak," as the true one. Not only 

 was that tree, as the emblem of Jupiter, .sacred among 

 the Romans, who also called the acorns "juglans," i.e. 

 " Jovis glans," the fruit of the god ; among the Greeks, 

 in whose literature and legends there is frequent reference 

 to the oak as sacred to Zeus, who, as the source of divina- 

 tion, spake through the rustling leaves of the ssicred oaks at 

 Dodona ; among the Scandinavians, as the tree of Thor ; 

 and among the Teutons, as shown in the many vestiges of 

 holy o<aks ; but also among the non-Aryan Finns, as sacred 

 to Jumala, their .supreme god. 



Stripped of the philosophic garb in which contact with 

 more civilised liices, or with which the imagination of 

 classic writers endowed them, and as yet unmodified by the 

 milder influence of Aryan polytheism, the Druids were 

 doubtless the magicians, soothsayers, and priests — "the 

 swarm of prophesying quacks" as Pliny calls them, corre- 



* " Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion, as illustrated 

 by Celtic Heathendom." By John Rhys, Professor of Celtic in the 

 University of Oxford. (Williams & Norgate: 1888.) 

 t " De Bell. Gall." vi. c. 12. 



