106 



♦ KNOWLEDGE 



[Fkb. 1, 1886. 



savage hunter and his family — nay on which his life and 

 theirs — seemed to dejiend. Belief in the transmigration 

 of souls from animal to animal and from animal to man 

 — would seem naturally to belong to this early stage of 

 thought. But, as a matter of fact, men seem to have been 

 more prone to consider the probable future of the second 

 self of men who had lived, and especially of those who 

 had seemed exceptionally foi-tunate, than to inquire into 

 the past of that other self, — even as, in our own time, and 

 among the most religious peoples, belief in the immor- 

 tality of the soul continues one-sided, directed wholly to 

 the future and having no reference whatever to the past. 



So long as man continued to trust solely or chief!}- 

 in the natur.il fruits of the earth or in such food as he 

 could obtain by hunting and fishing, his ideas of the 

 existence outside himself of something akin to what ho 

 found in himself " welling up as consciousness " would 

 be limited to the natural objects of various orders, the 

 natural forces and processes of vaiious sorts, which 

 influenced his fortunes. With regard to clothing, as 

 probably the earlier races of men lived where clothing 

 was little needed — at any rate for their hardy frames, 

 .still in large degree clothed with hair where now only 

 down attests the former hairiness of the human body — we 

 may believe that any such artificial clothing as he began 

 to require he would obtain from the skins of animals and 

 the leaves of trees. The struggle for existence would 

 not depend in such degree on the securing of such 

 artificial clothing as to affect his ideas about existences 

 outside his own. Man would in those early times be 

 naked without much suffering, and certainly without 

 being particularly ashamed.* 



As the pastoral life gradually encroached on the life of 

 the fruit eater, the huntsman, and the fisher, new recog- 

 nitions of external influences would be introduced. The 

 calf .n,nd the lamb would be more important to pastoral 

 races, than the deer or the antelope. The regenerant 

 powers of nature would have deeper interest than they 

 had had of yore. Yet the influences of air and rain and 

 sky would still be recognised, — nay they would be now 

 recognised more clearly than when the comparatively 

 rough and brutish hmitsm.an faced with little concern 

 the fury of the storm and the conflicting powers of the 

 elements. Moreover the fiercer animals would still 

 represent forces to be feared or to be propitiated. The 



* It may indeed be said, — I offer the idea as suggesting a new- 

 symbolical interpretation of tlie history of Adam and his family — 

 tliat Adam may be regarded as before tlie fall typifying savage 

 man living simply on the fruits of Nature's garden; while after 

 tlie fall he typified man living alike on the fruits of the earth and 

 on his fellow animals. Abel the next man may in like manner be 

 regarded as typifying pastoral races,— and Cain the third as typifying 

 races wliich later lived by agriculture, from whom descended fresli 

 pastoral races of the nomadic sort, and later civilised races, artificers 

 and :irtisans as well as races possessing artistic skill. A\e should 

 escape thus— it we conceive escape to be necessary — from the un- 

 scientific and in reality inadmissible idea that all jjastoral races 

 descended from Jabal, all agricultural races from Cain, all artificers 

 from Tubal-Cain, and " all such as handle the harp and pipe " from 

 Jubal. Kucli accounts, interpreted literally, are fit only for children or 

 for child races. Interpreted symbolically and allegorically, they need 

 not be regarded as necessarily more inadmissible than the seeming 

 accounts of nations being descended from a single pair (even tlie 

 \yhole human race as so descended), accounts which as interpreted 

 literally could only have bad their origin among men ignorant alike 

 of biological and physiological laws. Men who view the bible 

 account as expressing simply what the wisest men of those unlearned 

 times thought about such matters, need not be at the pains to sift 

 out the symbolical from the literal. Kor them the record as it 

 stands is full of interest in many ways ; but in its freedom from all 

 effort to introduce later knowledge into a very ancient .attempt 

 to solve the mysteries of existence— it is especially interesting to 

 the student of the past of religion. 



bear and thg lion, the wolf and the crocodile, especially 

 if by this time they had been regarded as tenanted by 

 human souls, would be regarded as requiring jierhaps 

 more than mere observance and respect — sacrifice would 

 be offered to them. Nay sacrifice offered to some of the 

 fiercer animals of prey would not be offered wholly in 

 vain, vain though the belief might be that those animals 

 were tenanted by human souls. For flocks and herds 

 might be saved by well-devised sacrifices of calves or 

 lambs. It is even conceivable that what was thus 

 done originally with design belonging only to pastoral 

 wisdom, might have been the beginning of sacrifices 

 offered later with religious intent. Assuredly a custom 

 so begun would develope in the fulness of time into a 

 religious observance. So that we may put as among the 

 quite possible causes of this special class of sacrifices — 

 and therefore jiossibly of all sacrificial observances — a 

 jUMctice which men living by flocks and herds, .sueh 

 races " as dwell in tents and have cattle " — had found 

 effective to save many bj- the sacrifice of a few. 



Probably the observance of the heavenly bodies would 

 have begun with the pastoral stage of the particular 

 race or races of men from whom the religions in which 

 we are chiefly interested had their origin. I believe 

 that the full faith in the influences of the sun moon 

 planets and stars, the clear recognition that they are for 

 signs for seasons and for days and years, belonged to a 

 later stage of development. But we can hardly imagine 

 that pastoral races would long have failed to observe the 

 stars in their courses, or observing them have long 

 escaped the thought that on their motions depend the 

 fortunes of their herds and flocks. In the first place the 

 life of the herdsman, unlike that of his predeces.sor the 

 huntsman, was one special!}- requiring nigditly watch. It 

 is not a mere vague fancy or an idle tradition that races 

 which of old " watched from the centres of their sleeping 

 flocks " were the first astronomers, or that they early re- 

 cognised in the iilanets, orbs like radiant messengers, that 

 seemed to move as though "carrying through lether in 

 perpetual round," the influences and almost " the de- 

 crees and resohitions " of external powers. 



Thus as the calf (witness the golden calf for worship- 

 ping which the Jewish people were punished) and the 

 lamb became early religious emblems, so we find among 

 the most ancient objects pictured by men's fancies in the 

 heavens, those animals in which the shejiherd was esjie- 

 cially interested. There we find the Ram and the Bull, 

 the Waggoner be?.rs on his shoulders the two Kids, the 

 Herdsman with uplifted arms (well seen in the heavens 

 even now, though no longer existing in star maps) drives 

 away from his flocks the Bear and the Lion, the creatures 

 which as we know were most dreaded by the shepherds 

 of oriental countries. 



We c.innot doubt that at this stage of man's develop- 

 ment the movements of the sun and moon would be 

 noted, though as yet perhaps the sun would be but 

 slightly considered. The moon would acquire at this 

 early stage the character which was afterwards more 

 distinctly recognised in her, — that of the measurer of 

 time, a character indicated in the name which all 

 eastern races gave to her. She was described indeed 

 by two names, one indicating measurement the other 

 light, and among the Greeks the former was scarcely 

 ever used, while among the Romans it was altogether 

 lost except in compounds relating to the month : but in 

 older languages the measure name of the moon was the 

 chief, in some cases the only one, and it still remains 

 among- our.selves. To pastoral races the nioon's value as 

 a lime measurer would obviously be great. To this day 



