B206,380


cbe university of Gbicago
FO UN DED BY JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER
A STUDY IN THE PSYCHOLOGY
OF RITUALISM
A DISSERTATION
SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND
LITERATURE IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(DEPARTMENT OF PHILosophy)
BY
FREDERICK GOODRICH HENKE
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

A/.
6&O
& A53
COPYRIGHT 1910 By
THE UNIVERSITY of CHICAGo
All Rights Reserved
Published October 1910
Composed and Printed By
The University of Chicago Press
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.
|
CONTENTS
PART I: THE CEREMONY
CHAPTER I. DESCRIPTION OF THE CEREMONY
Religious and Moral Problems Studied Today by Conservative Theo-
logians to Keep the Dogmas and Traditions of Christianity Intact
and by Scientists to Get Hold of Fundamental Truths—Object of
Thesis a Critical Study of Ritualism from the Psychological Point of
View for the Purpose of Determining the Laws of Its Origin, Develop-
ment, and Survival. Thesis Stated—General Description of the Inti-
chiuma Ceremonies of the Blacks of Australia—The Intichiuma of the
Hakea Flower Totem—Movements and Chants of the Ceremony and
Their Relation to the Life of the Natives—Decorations: In the Zuni
Hláhewe Ceremony for Rain and the Intichiuma of the Emu Totem
of the Arunta Tribe—Decorations Deal with Things and Situations in
the Life of the Natives—Relation of Movements to Decorations—
Both Often Indicative of Emotion.
CHAPTER II. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF RITUALISM
- Ceremony Defined: (1) Ceremony Always a Social Reaction—Brinton's
Individual Rites Also Social—Reasons for Calling Ceremony Social—
(2) Practical Character of the Ritual Emphasized—Primitive Ritual
Covers Every Act of Life—The Cherokee Find of 1887 and 1888 Cited
—Toda Ritual Concerned with the Dairy, Dairymen, and Buffaloes—
Rain Ceremonies in Dry Climate. Social Organization and Matters
of Sex Controlled by Ritual—(3) Ritual Symptomatic—Ceremony
Not Imposed from Without but Reflects the Social Consciousness of
Group Concerned—Symptomatic Character Illustrated from Chinese
Ceremonies Performed for Their Dead—Ritual Shows the Relation
between the Participant and Other Selves Involved in the Ceremony
–(4) Symbolic Character of Ritualism—A Meaning Implied—Cere-
mony Performed (a) to Obtain Something That Cannot Be Had through
Means Ordinarily Employed or (b) to Accomplish Something without
Being Directly Implicated—Illustration from a Malay Charm Book—
Primitive Ceremonies Usually Dramatic Representations—Circum-
cision, Subincision, Knocking Out of Teeth Symbolize Group Values—
Rites Often Reproduce Sacred History of Tribe. Cases Cited—Type
of Social Consciousness of Savage Determines the Character of his
Ceremonials.
PART II: THE DEVELOPMENT OF RITUALISM
CHAPTER III. DETERMINING INSTINCTS AND IMPULSES OF THE
PRIMITIVE CEREMONY e As
Primitive Peoples Unable to Give an Intelligent Account of the Origin
of Their Rituals—Danger of the Psychologists' Fallacy in Looking
iii
PAGE
3–7
8–I6
I9-35

IV CONTENTS
PAGE
Down from a Higher to a Lower Stage of Culture—Three Guiding
Principles Adopted—Comparative Psychology the Field in Which to
Look for Impulses and Instincts Fundamental in Ancient Society—
(1) Food Impulse—Its Place in Primitive Man's Life—Manifests
Itself in Totally Different Activities in Primitive Men and Women—
Ceremony Representative of Both but Man the Leader—(2) Sex In-
stinct—Aboriginal Woman the Social Nucleus—Marriage by Capture
Probably the Normal Form in Case of Hostility between Groups; for
the Rest Marriage through Barter, Service, or Purchase in Vogue;
Content of Primitive Ceremony Symptomatic of Sex Impulse—In-
stances Cited from Bedouins of Sinai, Blacks of Central Australia—
Sex Impulse a Determining Factor in Circumcision, Subincision, Cere-
monies to Promote Growth of Breasts, Love Philters, and Various
Types of Corroborees—Illustration from Bushmen of Kalahari–(3)
Fear—A Derivative Instinct—Fear in Animals and Children—A Part
of Man's Original Endowment but Is Gradually Rationalized and
Made Adaptive—The “Great Fear” a Leading Motive in Rain Cere-
mony, Intichiuma Ceremonies, and Snake Dance of the Hopi Indians—
Wollungua Ceremonies Described—Taboo, Various Types of Divina-
tion, Funeral Ceremonies, and Propitiatory Rites Due to Fear—(4)
Anger—Instinct of Conservation under the Offensive Form—Self-
Assertion Its Chief Characteristic—Always Social—A Chinese Cere-
mony in Which Anger Is the Impelling Motive—Anger and the Black
Art—The War Dance—There May Be an Overlapping of Impulses in
the Ceremony—Play Activities Have Practical Implications—All
Activities of the Psychophysical Organism. Due to More or Less
Automatic Action Included in This Chapter—Ritualism Built upon
Man’s Native Endowment but Not Consciously as Ritualism.
CHAPTER IV. THE PLACE OF ATTENTION IN THE PRIMITIVE
CEREMONY . . . . . . . . . . 36–45
Study of Organization of Human Consciousness Throws Light upon
Question of Origin and Development of Ceremony as Far as There Is
Indication of Thought—Brinton's and Pfleiderer's View of the Imita-
tive Origin Discussed—Pantomimicry Implies Representation—Man's
Native Endowment of Instincts and Impulses Makes Him Neither
ab initio Religious Nor Blindly Imitative of All He Sees—The Prob-
lematic Situation the Occasion for Thought—Attention Born Out of
Crisis—Ritual Represents Crystallized Group Habits—Many Cere-
monies Had Their Origin in a Problematic Situation—Two Methods of
Solving the Problem: (1) Trial and Error Method—(2) Thought—
Primitive Thought Described—Dualism of Self and the World in the
Ceremony—Crisis Defined—Attention a Matter of Individual Initia-
tive—Magical Ceremony Shows Crude Thought—Illustrations from
Malay Peninsula and Murray Island—Frazer's and Haddon's View
of Magic Too Closely Akin to Natural Science—The Adaptive Reaction
Not a Ceremony When First It Appears but Merely a Method of Meet-
CONTENTS V
tº e PAGE
ing a Particular Situation—When Reaction Has Become a Group
Habit among Primitive Peoples, It Is ipso facto Ritualized.
CHAPTER V. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SUPERNATURALISM
IN THE RITUAL . . . . . . . . . 46–56
Contents of the Ceremony from Psychological Point of View—Person-
ified Nature Powers, Spirits, Preternatural and Supernatural Powers as
Elements in the Primitive Social Consciousness. Does the Savage
Regard All Things “as Animated with a Life Like His Own”?—In-
stincts Social—Social Consciousness Logically Prior to Consciousness
of Self—Man's Native Endowment Normally Functions in the Direc-
tion of Recognizing and Creating Social Objects—The Unusual, Strik-
ing, or Moving Object Viewed as Social by Primitive Man—Animatism
Present Also in Animals and Children—Psychological Basis of Animism
—Illustrations from Negroes, Amerinds, and Sandwich Islanders—
Tendency of Primitive Man to Assume More and More Spirits—
Other Sources of Belief in Invisible Agency—Visits from Spirit
World in Dreams—Spirit Possession with Subsequent Exorcism
through Ritual—Animatism and Animism Serve to Explain Reference
in Ceremony to Living Objects and Spirits—Transition from Poly-
daemonism to Polytheism and to Monotheism: (1) In Case of Semites
—(2) By Way of Fetishism to Idolatry and from There Up-(3) From
Primitive Man’s Attitude toward the Heavenly Bodies—The Method ;
of Transition Always Concrete—Conclusion.
i
CHAPTER VI. THE RELATION OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE
RITUAL TO CHANGES WITHIN THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUS-
NESS. . . . . . . . . . . . 57–62
Ritual Tends to Develop as the Social Consciousness of the Group
Changes—Situations Conducive" to Profound Changes in the Social
Consciousness: (1) Transition from One Type of Life to Another—(2)
Influence of the Great Man—(3) Great Calamity or Special Streak of
Good Fortune—(4) Rise of the Scientific Attitude—(5) Rational
Socialization of the Universe of Social Objects.
General Stages of the Development of the Ritual: (1) The Undiffer-
entiated Stage—Primitive Man's Lack of Logical Analysis Resulted
in Long and Most Elaborate Rituals—In This Stage Religion, Phi-
losophy, Science, Medicine, Ethics, and the Techniques of Everyday
Life Were within the Borders of the Ritual—Religious Element
Approved by the Group: Irreligious and Immoral Not—(2) Differenti-
ation Begun by Comprehending Illogical and Unscientific Implications
of the Ceremony and by Appreciating the Value of Individual Experi-
ence—(3) Stage in Which Deity Is Completely Socialized—Ritual Per-
formed to Make the Content of the Socialized Alter One's Own or to
Develop Capacity for Moral Action.
Vl CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER VII. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE RITUAL ILLUS-
TRATED . . . . . . . . . . . 63–78
Propose to Examine the Rituals of the Semites in Various Stages
of Their Historic Evolution, as Well as the Origin and Development
of the Eucharist, in Order to Illustrate that the Development of
Rituals Depends upon Changes within the Social Consciousness—
Life of Nomadic Semites, Their Social Consciousness, and Their
Religion Described—Sacrifice a Sacramental Communion—Sacrifice
Described—Religion of Israelites under the Leadership of Moses
Nomadic—Religion and Ritual of the Canaanites—Sacrifice No
Longer Sacramental Communion but a Gift to Which Deity Was
Entitled—Israelites Overcame Canaanites—Their Nomadic Religion
Became a Peasant Religion and Jahwe the God of Israel the Lord of
Palestine—Reconstruction of Old Conceptions by Prophets—Pro-
phetic Social Consciousness Opposed to Peasant Ritual—Babylonian
Exile a Crisis in Which the Political, Social, and Religious Char-
acter of the Hebrews Was Transformed—Sense of Sin Emerges—The
Legal Religion the Outcome—Sacrificial System Described.
Religion Stereotyped in Laws Reduced to Writing Hard to Change—
Jesus a Great Reformer Who Gave the Idea of a Completely Socialized
God—Instituted a Meal to Commemorate His Death—Eucharist and
Agape Celebrated Together by Early Christian Church but Began to Be
Separated in Time of Paul—Magni, Harnack, and Gardner on the
Influence of Ethnic Religion on the Eucharist—Description of the
Eucharist from Dionysius Areopagites Shows a Profound Change in
the Underlying Social Consciousness—Doctrine of Transubstantiation
—Challenged and Reconstructed during the Reformation—Science of
Bacteriology and Its Effect on the Lord's Supper–Conditions under
Which the Eucharist May Continue to Survive.
PART III: THE SURVIVAL OF RITUALISM
CHAPTER VIII. THE SURVIVAL OF THE CEREMONY . . . 81-93
Ceremonies That Have Lost Their Practical Significance Soon Fall
Away—Modern Society so Organized that Groups with Very Primitive
Standards May Be Progressively Maintained and New Ones Formed—
Music and Decorative Art Were Bound Up with Primitive Ceremony
* but Gradually Acquired a Value of Their Own—The Place of the
Aesthetic Experience in the Ritualistic Acts—Hylan’s and Leuba's
Investigations Yield Evidence Confirming the Practical Theory of
Modern Ceremonies—Rituals of Fraternal Orders Also Survive Be-
cause They Mediate Practical Results—Since the Scientific Attitude,
the Recognition of the Value of Individual Experience, and the Ration-
al Socialization of the World of Social Objects Tend to Break Down the
Ritual, Why Does the Ceremony Continue to Survive in This Age? .
Answer to Be Sought in Psychology of Evaluation—Power of Habit
as Shown in the Ritual of Non-liturgical Churches—Core of Self Emo-
tional, and Stuff Out of Which Social Objects Are Constructed Also
CONTENTS vii
,” PAGE
Emotional—In Evaluation the Court of Final Appeal Is the Emotional
State of Consciousness Aroused by the Situation—The Place of Emo-'
tion in the Lord's Supper Described—Application to the Survival of the
Ritual—Since the Rituals Represent Group Values and Are the Overt
Expression of Attitudes Common to the Group, Anything That
Threatens to Destroy Them at Once Arouses Opposition—The War
Dance of the Iroquois a Case in Point—Feather Dance Also Illustrates
the Point—As Long as the Ceremony Promotes the Group Conscious-
ness, Conserves Group Values, and Satisfies Individual Needs, It Will
Survive.
BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . 94-96
PART I
THE CEREMONY
"L'ordre du monde depend de l'ordre des rites qu'on observe.''
—RENAN, Le Prêtre de Nemi.
CHAPTER I
DESCRIPTION OF THE CEREMONY
Religious and moral problems have never been more assiduously
and faithfully studied than they are today. On the one hand are
the conservative theologians who are bending every effort to
keep intact the dogmas and traditions of Christianity. The wel-
fare of humanity, they think, depends upon doing this. On the
other hand are the scientists, motivated not by a spirit of oppo-
sition but by an earnest desire to get hold of the truth. Truth,
they hold, cannot permanently injure humanity. Any light that
anthropology, psychology, archaeology, or any other line of
research can throw on questions of religion and morality should
be welcomed. Scientific research should be encouraged.
A central problem of religion and morality, and one to which
comparatively little attention has been given, is ritualism. The
object of the present undertaking is a critical study from the point
of view of the psychology of religion and social psychology of
this type of reaction, for the purpose of describing the laws
of its origin, development, and survival. The thesis which
we shall defend is that the type of reaction designated as ritual-
ism is always social, that it is performed to mediate practical
control, and that it has a natural history in accordance with
well-known psychological laws. It is, of course, impossible to
examine every ceremony past and present, nor is it necessary,
for we are interested less in morphological classification than in
psychological function. Modern scholars now generally recognize
that all available historical and contemporary data point to the
fact that, notwithstanding the differences in the stages of culture
among men, the structure of mind and the laws of mental develop-
ment are essentially the same wherever man is found. The
similarity in rituals and objects of worship among primitive
peoples separated far in time and space has long been one of
the conspicuous phenomena of the history of religion and is in
striking confirmation of the above.
In view of this now generally recognized law, we can find no
better starting-point for our study than the description of a few
typical ceremonies. The monumental works of Spencer and Gil-
3
4. THE PSYCHIOLOGY OF RITUALISM
len," and A. W. Howitt” contain an abundance of excellent descrip-
tive material relative to the rites and ceremonies of the Blacks
of Australia, any of which might serve our purpose. As, how-
ever, the Intichiuma ceremonies are of special importance to the
natives of the central part of the continent and are extremely
suggestive, we first turn our attention to them.
The purpose of these ceremonies” is the increase of the totem
objects. As the totem objects are plants and animals, to which
are added wind, sun, water, and clouds, it is plain that a sub-
stantial increase of the food supply is the real end sought. The
ceremonies of no two totem groups are alike, for reasons that
appear later, but through all there runs the common purpose as
indicated. Here we have the key to the situation. The climate
of Central Australia is exceedingly hot and dry. There are long-
continued times of drought, when the food supply is at a mini-
mum.” Moreover, the dry season is of uncertain length, and
the rainy one often of irregular occurrence. At such times the
scarcity of food becomes a serious problem for the savages. It
is, then, not at all surprising to learn that many of the totem
groups perform the Intichiuma ceremony just about when they
look for a good season." That is the time when rations are lowest
and when they have reason to believe that magic will be most
effective. The ceremony is presided over by the Alatunja or
headman of the group," who is obliged to eat a little of the
totem so that he may be able to perform the ceremony with
success. The members of the totem group “eat only sparingly
of their totemic animal,” or plant, a strict man eating none at
all. The rest they hand “to the other men who do not belong to
the totem, giving them permission to eat it freely.”
Spencer and Gillen describe the Intichiuma of the Unjiamba
or Hakea Flower Totem as follows:
* Spencer and Gillen, (1) The Native Tribes of Central Australia (London,
1899); (2) The Northern Tribes of Central Australia (London, 1904).
* A. W. Howitt, The Native Tribes of South-east Australia (London, 1904).
* Vide Spencer and Gillen, The Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp.
167–21 1 ; and The Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 283—319.
* The Native Tribes of South-east Australia, pp. 38 and 155,
* The Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 170.
“Ibid., pp. 9 f.
* The Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 184 f.
DESCRIPTION OF THE CEREMONY 5
At a place called Ilyaba the ceremony is performed by men of the Bul-
thara and Panunga classes, and the exact spot at which it takes place is a
shallow, oval-shaped pit, by the side of which grows an ancient Hakea tree.
In the center of the depression is a small projecting and much worn block
of stone, which is supposed to represent a mass of Unjiamba or Hakea
flowers, the tree being the Nanja tree of an Alcheringa woman whose rein-
carnation is now alive.
Before the ceremony commences the pit is carefully swept clean by an
old Unjiamba man, who then strokes the stone all over with his hands.
When this has been done the men sit around the stone and a considerable
time is spent in singing chants, the burden of which is a reiterated invita-
tion to the Unjiamba tree to flower much, and to the blossoms to be full
of honey. Then the old leader asks one of the young men to open a vein
in his arm, which he does, and allows the blood to sprinkle freely over the
stone, while the other men continue the singing. The blood flows until the
stone is completely covered, the flowing blood being supposed to represent
the preparation of Abmoara, that is, the drink which is made by steeping
the flowers in water, this being a very favorite beverage of the natives. As
soon as the stone is covered with blood the ceremony is complete.”
The determining impulse in this ceremony is food. The spe-
cific reference is the favorite Hakea flower beverage. The things
that are conspicuous are the movements and the accompanying
chant. The movements are not mere random movements. They
are designed to represent actual situations in the life of the natives,
“the flowing of the blood being supposed to represent the prepara-
tion of the beverage”; or they are the expression of attitudes,
as when Hakea-Flower-Totem old man strokes the stone with his
hands. This “stone is regarded as a churinga and the spot is . . .
forbidden to the women, children, and uninitiated men.” As the
Central Australians have nothing more sacred than their churinga,
it is not surprising that emotion should appear when they are
handled.” The accompanying chants indicate that the participants
view the Unjiamba tree as a social rather than a physical object.
They speak directly to the tree itself, making definite petition for
what they want. The ceremony has reference to the everyday
* The Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 184 f.
* “Churinga is the name given by the Arunta natives to certain sacred
objects which, on penalty of death or very severe punishment, such as blinding
by means of a fire stick, are never allowed to be seen by women or uninitiated
men.” The churinga are one and all connected with the totems and may not be
seen except upon very rare occasions (The Native Tribes of Central Australia,
chap. v).
6 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RITUALISM
life of the natives. The situation is not merely a product of the
imagination, but an attempt at a type of control that from the
primitive point of view is perfectly rational.
In addition to the movements and accompanying myth, chants,
or prayer, the element of decoration is very conspicuous in many
primitive ceremonies. The Zuni ceremony called Hláhewe Cere-
mony for Rain,” in which the personators of the corn maidens
wear a headdress with a tablet ornamented with cloud, sun, cres-
cent, and star symbols, displays this trait, as does the Intichiuma
ceremony of the Emu Totem of the Arunta tribe. In the instance
of the latter, the Alatunja and his two sons saturate a patch of
ground, covering about three square yards with blood from a vein
in their arms. The blood dries and leaves a hard surface. On
this a totemic design is painted.
It is supposed to represent certain parts of the emu; two large patches
of yellow indicate lumps of fat, of which the natives are very fond, but the
greater part represented, by means of circles and circular patches, the eggs
in various stages of development, some before and some after laying. Small
circular yellow patches represented the small eggs in the ovary; a black
patch surrounded by a black circle was a fully-formed egg ready to be laid;
while two large concentric circles meant an egg which has been laid and
incubated, so that a chicken has been formed. In addition to these marks,
various sinuous lines drawn in black, red and yellow, indicate parts of the
intestines, the excrements being represented by black dots. Everywhere
over the surface, in and amongst the various drawings, white spots indi-
cated the feathers of the bird, the whole device being enclosed by a thin
line of pale pink down.”
The decorations, like the movements in the ceremony, com-
monly deal with things and situations in the lives of the natives
themselves. In their simplest form the decorations are an attempt
to reproduce concrete situations, as when the decoration of the
Emu Totèm represents the emu.” Often, however, as in the illus-
tration above, the design is largely of a conventional pattern. The
meaning in such cases is well known to the natives participating.
The movements and the decorations usually belong together.
Besides reproducing actual situations from life (as when, in the
case of the Plumtree Totem, one man knocks off imaginary plums
* Mathilda Coxe Stevenson, “The Zuni Indians,” Twenty-third Annual Re-
port of the Bureau of American Ethnology, pp. 180–204.
* The Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp. I79 f.
* Ibid., p. 343.
DESCRIPTION OF THE CEREMONY 7
and another eats them), the movements are often designed to give
a dramatic representation of the movements of totemic animals. In
the lizard ceremony a man decorated to represent a lizard comes up
to the ceremony ground slowly in a zig-zag course, stooping down
and assuming a variety of attitudes.” In the ceremony of the
Fish Totem of Uratinga, the performer is decorated to represent a
fish. Squatting on the ground, he moves his body and extends his
arms, opening and closing them as he leans forward “so as to imi-
tate a fish swelling itself out and opening and closing its gills.”
Here we have an indication (many other examples could be cited)
that a certain type of decoration implies a corresponding type of
motion, and vice versa.
Let it not be inferred, however, that the types of movements and
decorations above enumerated are always the only ones present. It
would indeed be absurd to expect only these. I have already referred
to movements which produce various types of emotion. Handling
and stroking the churinga is manifestly one of these. Then there is
often much dancing, often also a swaying motion, both of which, if
carried to excess, are favorable to sensory and motor automatisms—
experiences that doubtless have had a determining influence in the
construction of primitive man’s world.
* Ibid., p. 304.
“Ibid., p. 317.
CHAPTER II
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF RITUALISM
A rite or ceremony is the observance of some formal act or series
of acts in the manner prescribed by custom or authority, and from
the point of view of functional psychology must be considered as a
type of overt reaction performed for the purpose of control. In
the case of the Intichiuma ceremony described in the last chapter,
the purpose is control of the food situation. The totemic cere-
monies described constitute a part of the initiation ceremonies' in the
Arunta tribe, and are intimately connected with matters of sex and
social organization. As designed for control, the ceremony has
subjective and objective aspects. Both are invariably present,
\though often in varying degrees.
This brings us to a consideration of first importance. The cere-
mony is always a social reaction. There is always implicit or explicit
reference to other selves, be they real or imagined. To divide rites
into communal and personal” is to distinguish on a superficial basis.
Even such a supposedly individual rite as that of naming the child
always implies a relation to others. The name is given by others. It
is given to mark the child as a member of a certain group, to distin-
guish it from other members of the group, to designate its relation to
society at large, and last but not least, to insure more adequate con-
trol of the individual by the group. Thus viewed, this rite, which
Brinton catalogues under “personal” rites, naturally comes to take
its place as a communal rite. It certainly would be quite as much
* A. W. Howitt has a significant paragraph on the initiation ceremonies.
Though his words have immediate reference to the natives of Southeast Aus-
tralia, they apply equally well to Central Australia. “The intention of all that
is done at this ceremony is to make a momentous change in the boy's life; the
past is to be cut off from him by a gulf which he can never repass. His con-
nection with his mother as her child is broken off, and he becomes henceforth
attached to the men. . . . . He is now to be a man, instructed in and sensible
of the duties which devolve upon him as a member of the . . . . community.
. . . . The ceremonies are intended to impress and terrify the boy in such a
manner that the lesson may be indelible, and may govern the whole of his
future life.”—The Native Tribes of South-east Australia, p. 532.
* Daniel G. Brinton, Religions of Primitive Peoples (New York, 1897), pp.
177 f.
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF RITUALISM 9
so as sacrifice, which he calls a communal rite; for here the indi-
vidual may have done nothing more than make himself unclean,”
and be sacrificing to remove the uncleanness.
The position which I shall defend in the present undertaking
is that every ceremony, every rite, is social. It is social because of
several considerations. The first has already been indicated; viz.,
that as an overt type of reaction it invariably has reference—implied
or explicit—to other selves. There is no rite in the history of
religion in which an individual participates alone without any
reference to other selves, lower, co-ordinate, or higher. In the
Second place, the various ceremonies are overt reactions out of a
matrix which is nothing more or less than the social consciousness.
It is, for instance, as absurd to suppose that the god who is pro-
pitiated by the savage or barbarian is other than he is conceived
by the savage himself, as it is to suppose that the prayer of the
child is addressed to a being other than the one with whom it places
itself into relation. “O God, isn’t it nice to ride in the cable car !
Please send me a bicycle. Amen,” prayed the little child.* We
may without hesitation say that many of primitive man's ceremonies
contain elements as spontaneous as this prayer of the little child.
In the third place, the ceremony, whatever its origin may have
been in the past, is for the worshiper or immediate participant an
institution originated and prescribed by some other self—usually
a god or ancestor; if by a god, there is an accompanying myth of
the occasion of the revelation, as in the case of the Hebrews; if by
an ancestor, it is believed to have been handed down through tra-
dition, as among the Central Australians. In either case its origin
is social. “ . *
In addition to the social aspect, we need, in the second place,
to illuminate more fully the practical character of the ritual to which
some reference has already been made. From a higher stage
of culture we are apt to look upon these ceremonies as so much
nonsense and waste of good energy. But we should not forget that
some things in vogue in our own stage of culture scarcely a cen-
tury ago appear thus to us today. When we place the first type
of locomotive manufactured beside one of the colossal freight or
passenger engines of the present day, the former looks like a toy
* Num, chap. 19.
* George A. Coe, Education in Religion and Morals (New York, 1904), p.
168 (footnote).
IO THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RITUALISM
in the presence of the latter. Likewise, when we compare the
ceremonies of primitive man with our modern scientific methods
of control, the former appear like so much play. But even as the
first locomotive, impractical as it may be today, grew out of practical
demands, so the ritual has been an instrument of practical con-
trol." Wherever a comparatively primitive type of ritual survives
in higher stages of culture, the social consciousness back of it
still finds it a practical method of control.
We may here note the fact that in primitive society the ritual
refers to every act of life. In 1887 and 1888 about six hundred
sacred formulas were obtained on the Cherokee reservation in
North Carolina. They cover “every subject pertaining to the daily
life and thought of the Indian, including medicine, love, hunting,
fishing, war, self-protection, destruction of enemies, witchcraft, the
crops, the council, the ball play, etc., and in fact embodying almost
the whole of the ancient religion of the Cherokees.” This is
excellent evidence in favor of the practical character of the ritual.
The Todas afford an example of how an elaborate ritual can grow
up about the chief concern of everyday life. These primitive people
gain almost their entire livelihood from the products of the dairy.
The large part of their ritual is concerned with the dairy, dairymen,
and buffaloes." Again, if our theory of the practical character of
the ritual is correct, it would be reasonable to expect that in a hot,
arid climate where the rainy season is followed by long dry spells.
there would be ceremonies for the purpose of securing rain and
increasing the food supply. These are precisely the conditions
actually existing in Central Australia and in New Mexico and
Arizona; and, what is more, as we have noted, both the natives of
Central Australia and the Amerinds of New Mexico have elaborate
rituals to cover these conditions. The matter of social organiza-
tion or government is also of intense practical interest from the
point of view of sex, and becomes one of the first considerations in
a large number of totemic ceremonies. Thus, we may go the round
of what would rightly come to be matters of practical importance
for primitive man—birth, death, sickness, food, social organiza-
tion, sex, and so forth—and find that all are represented by elabo-
rate rituals. x
*James Mooney, “The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees,” Seventh Annual
Report of the Bureau of Ethnology (Washington, 1891), p. 307.
* W. H. R. Rivers, The Todas (London, 1906), pp. 38 f.
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF RITUALISM II
In the third place, rites and ceremonies, from imitative magic
to baptism as it is practiced in the Christian church in our day, are ...
symptomatic. They are the overt expression of subjective states.
Attitudes, imaginations, ideas, emotions, all are manifested in multi-
tudinous form, and in the most diverse ways in ceremonial prac-
tices. As by the pulse, temperature, and other symptoms the skilful
physician is able to diagnose the physical condition of his patient,
thus the trained psychologist is prepared from the ceremonial
practices of the group to estimate its stage of culture and describe
its social consciousness. The point that needs special emphasis
is that the ceremony is in no wise imposed from without by some
higher power. The thus-saith-the-Lord of the mystical experience
of the great leader, prophet, or apostle, at the base of the ceremony,
is at most no more than an excellent indication of the interlocutory
nature of consciousness' or of the sudden incursion of material
from the fringe into the focus of attention.* The complex system
of ceremonial observances laid down in the Pentateuch, believed
by many to have been received by Moses direct from Jahwe, is now
known to be in substantial harmony with practices of surrounding
peoples. Archaeological research, especially the discovery of the
Code of Hammurabi, as well as careful study of contemporary
savage practices, has done much to bring about a realization of
the fact that even these rites reflect the social consciousness of the
group concerned.
A specific question will perhaps serve to bring into better per-
spective the symptomatic character of the ceremonial practices.
What is the belief of the Chinese regarding the dead? There are a
number of ways in which one presumably might be able to procure
an answer to that question. But there is none better than to study
the ceremonial practices of the Chinese performed for their dead.
The writer has had opportunity to do this during his residence
among the Chinese, and does not hesitate to say that the Chinese
of Central China believe that each man has at least three souls
which survive death. One is thought to frequent the grave. This
is easily gathered from the fact that chickens, pigs, etc., are sacri-
ficed at the grave on the appointed day in the spring, and from
* Cf. Anna Louise Strong, A Consideration of Prayer from the Standpoint of
Social Psychology (Chicago, 1908), p. 17.
* William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York, 1909),
pp. 193 and 234.
I 2 THE PSYCHIOLOGY OF RITUALISM
the little opening left in many graves with the almost imperceptible
soul-path leading from it. The second soul is supposed to remain
in the home—more specifically in the ancestral tablet. This I have
concluded from the fact of worship in front of the tablet, and this
has been further substantiated by a most weird phenomenon. Just
at dusk a woman will step out of the front door of the house, and
with a mournful, wailing call invite the wandering soul back into
the home. The third soul is believed to have gone into the world
of spirits. In evidence of this it is customary for the Chinese to
burn up hundreds of thousands of supposed hundred-cash bills.
The smoke is thought to carry the money into the other world. I
have also witnessed a like performance in the case of a house con-
structed of various colors of paper, and fitted out with the con-
veniences of the Chinese home made of similar material.
Ritual expresses in the form of overt reactions the relation
between the participant and certain other selves involved in the
ceremony. In the event that the social consciousness is characterized
by the naïveté of animism, the ceremony will be symptomatic of
that condition. If the social consciousness is marked by a fearful
attitude toward a god whose dignity is outraged on the slightest
occasion, the ritual will include a well-developed piacular cere-
mony. On the other hand, where the sacrifice partakes of the
nature of feasting and merry-making, as among the early Semites,
Greeks, and Romans,” it is a certain indication that the attitude
of the group toward its god, ancestor, or totem is that of confi-
dence and fellowship. Naïveté in the ceremony and naïveté of
subjective states go together. Storm and stress without indicate
storm and stress within. The inner and outer are mutually
determining. This is a point of first importance in studying the
ceremony.
A fourth feature of ritualism deserving special attention is its
'A symbolic character. As a symbol the ceremony “stands for some-
thing, which, in itself, it is not.” Though there is a growing
tendency to seek for aesthetic effect in connection with practical
aspects, yet there is this general correspondence between ceremonies
of cultured society and those of primitive man, that neither are as
a rule performed for the mere sake of the ceremonies themselves.
* W. Robertson Smith, The Religion of the Semites (London, 1901), pp.
255 fſ.
* Charles Hubbard Judd, Psychology, p. 256.



GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF RITUALISM t I3
A meaning is usually implied—a meaning that is to be conveyed to
somebody for some definite purpose. Here again the social character
of the reaction comes to the surface. The meaning is not always
apparent to the superficial observer or to the uninitiated, but it is
there nevertheless. “Men have always argued,” writes Andrew
Lang,” “like one of the persons in M. Renan's play Le Prêtre de
Nemi, that ‘l'ordre du monde depend de l'ordre des rites qu'on ob-
serve.’” This is a hyperbolical statement, and yet so far as primitive
man is concerned it is very near the truth. “In our day the domain
of ritual is restricted, but in primitive culture it pervades the whole
life. Not a single action of any importance can be performed that
is not accompanied by prescribed rites of more or less elaborate
form.” Among the Navajos, for instance, the shaman, when
the house-dedication song is sung, “listens closely to hear whether
the correct words are sung. This is a matter of great importance,
as the omission of a part of the song or the incorrect rendering
of any word would entail evil consequences to the house and its
inmates.” A similar state of affairs as to the care with which
the prescribed ritual had to be carried out has prevailed in India
since the simpler and more spontaneous worship represented by the
Rig Veda was supplemented by the elaborate ritual of the Brah-
manas. It is true that there is a great diversity in the nature of
the various rituals and the amount of symbolism involved, but a
degree of symbolism is usually not far from the surface.
The ceremony may be performed because the participant wants
something that cannot be obtained through the means ordinarily
at his disposal (the type of behavior designated by James H. Leuba
as “mechanical”),” or because he wishes to perform the act with-
out being directly inplicated in the overt result. The ceremony
in this way becomes a method of transmitting the wishes and
desires of the individual or group concerned to the power which
is to bring about the results... It is not necessary that this power
be sharply defined. Sometimes it is and sometimes it is not, as
*Andrew Lang, Myth, Ritual and Religion (London, 1887), I, 260.
* Franz Boas, “Some Traits of Primitive Culture,” Journal of American
Folk-Lore, XVII, 25o.
* Cosmos Mindeleff, “Navaho Houses” (Ceremonies of Dedication), Seven-
teenth Annual Report of Bureau of American Ethnology, Part 2, p. 506.
*James H. Leuba, The Psychological Origin and the Nature of Religion
(Chicago, 1909).
I4. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RITUALISM
in case of the Hakea tree in the ceremony described in the last
chapter. The point I wish to emphasize is that the ceremony
often is designed to influence a higher power which is to help if
approached in the right way.
A description of a ceremony taken from the charm book of a
Langat Malay will serve to illustrate this point:
You make an image to resemble a corpse out of wax from an empty
bees' comb and of the length of a footstep. If you want to cause sickness,
you pierce the eye and blindness results; or you pierce the waist and the
stomach gets sick, or you pierce the head and the head gets sick, or you
pierce the breast and the breast gets sick. If you want to cause death, you
transfix it from the head right through to the buttocks, the “transfixers” being
a gomuti-palm ; then you enshroud the image as you would a corpse, and you
pray over it as if you were praying over the dead; then you bury it in the
middle of the path [which goes to] the place of the person whom you wish
to charm, so that he may step across it.”
It is a striking fact that the ceremonies of primitive man are
almost invariably dramatic representations. Evidently language is
often thought to be an inadequate conveyance of meaning. Fearing
that the gods or powers concerned might fail to understand, primi-
tive man acts what he wishes to convey, or represents it by drawings
on the ground, or sacrifices it on the altar.” When we consider
*Walter William Skeat, Malay Magic (London, 1900), pp. 570 f. When
the image is buried the following charm is repeated :
“Peace be to you ! Ho Prophet 'Tap, in whose charge the earth is,
Lo, I am burying the corpse of Somebody,
I am bidden [to do so] by the Prophet Muhammed
Because he [the corpse] was a rebel to God.
Do you assist in killing him or making him sick:
If you do not make him sick, if you do not kill him,
You shall be a rebel against God;
A rebel against Muhammed.
It is not I who am burying him,
It is Gabriel who is burying him.
Do you too grant my prayer and petition, this very day that appeared,
Grant it by the grace of my petition within the fold of the Creed.
La ilaha,” etc.
* The following observation is made on this point by Fewkes: “In the
growth of religion it was early recognized that the gods had their own language
and that possibly they were unable to understand that of men; hence, as has
been shown by Powell, there arose and developed a religious gesture language
or an expression of prayer by dramatization. The worshipper in this type of
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF RITUALISM IS
that the language of primitive man is often of necessity supple-
mented by pantomimicry in his intercourse with his fellows because
of its inadequacy, this is not surprising.”
But the symbolism of the ceremonies often has another aspect.
They symbolize certain group values. The initiation ceremonies of
the Australians, Bushmen, and many other primitive peoples are of
this nature. Circumcision, subincision, knocking out of teeth, instruc-
tion by the elders of the tribe, corroborees, and other ceremonies
symbolize the attainment of real manhood. In the instance of the
Australians, the boys live in the women's camp before their initia-
tion, but afterward are at home in the men's camp.” Spencer
and Gillen also found initiation ceremonies of women in vogue in
Central Australia.” Rites of lustration and sacrifice are also cases
in point. All have a peculiar value for the participant, not alone
in what the rites themselves are, but in what they symbolize.
We have referred to the dramatic representations as being
designed to convey the wishes and desires of the group to the
higher power. This is, however, not the only symbolic significance
they may have. They often refer to the sacred history of the
tribe. The Intichiuma (ceremony) of the Witchetty-grub of the
Arunta tribes of Alice Springs, Central Australia, is a case in
point. “The men assemble in camp, and, leaving everything behind
them, . . . . they walk in single file to a spot, now called the
Emily Gap. . . . . This place is especially associated with the
Alcheringa ancestors of the group and on its walls are the sacred
drawings characteristic of the totem.” After certain additional
ceremonies have been performed and other sacred spots carefully
examined, “they march back to camp following precisely the track
which, according to tradition, was followed by their Alcheringa
ancestors.” The Alatunja or leader of the ceremony is supposed
prayer, which may be called dramatic prayer, showed the gods through action
what he desired.”—Jesse Walter Fewkes, “Notes on Tusayan Snake and Flute
Ceremonies,” Nineteenth Annual Report of Bureau of American Ethnology, p.
IOIO.
* Both mimicry and pantomimicry also serve as an outlet of attitudes. I
have often found pleasure in watching two Chinese make a bargain. Mimicry
and pantomimicry play a very important part.
* Spencer and Gillen, The Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 338.
* Spencer and Gillen, The Native Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 92 f.
30 Spencer and Gillen, The Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 289 f.
* Ibid., p. 290.
I6 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RITUALISM
to do what the celebrated Intwailiuka or great leader of the Witch-
etty-grubs in the Alcheringa did. If we turn to the North Ameri-
can Indians, dramatic representations of sacred history are equally
in evidence. Masked or costumed personages “enact the part of
divine beings whose history is recounted in the myth.” This pres-
entation of sacred history is, however, “usually of a conventional
character so that the symbolism is apparent only to the initiated.”
The conventional character of the rite is, if anything, more pro-
nounced in higher stages of culture. The splendid and highly con-
ventional ritual of the Catholic church, called High Mass, is a
dramatic representation of the supper in the house of Simon, and
the Passion itself.” The Lord's Supper, under the doctrine of
transubstantiation of the Catholic church as well as according to
the tenets of the Protestant churches, is highly symbolical.
If the conclusions we have reached with reference to the sym-
bolism involved in rites and ceremonies are correct, they show not
only a vivid imagination but often also the power of abstraction on
the part of the intelligent participants. That is to say, the method
of control is not as inane as it appears on the surface. Primitive
man reasons from analogy, and while this method falls far short
of securing the control of scientific thought, it does in many in-
stances secure a type of control that is adequate to meet his needs.
The wild and weird ceremonies of earlier man are not wild and
weird from his viewpoint. The difference is one of culture. What
to us seems confusion and disorder, to him appears normal and
rational. Given the type of social consciousness of the native Aus-
tralian, the North American Indian, the Bushman, or the Hottentot,
the reaction could not be otherwise. To show this shall be part of
my task in Part II.
* William Wells Newell, “Ritual Regarded as the Dramatization of Myth,”
The International Congress of Anthropology (Chicago, 1894), p. 240.
* Ibid., p. 239.
PART II
DEVELOPMENT OF RITUALISM
“Der Mensch erkennt sich nur im Menschen, nur
Das Leben lehret jedem was er sei.”
—Goet HE, Tasso, Act II, scene 3.
“Though existing religious ideas and institutions have an average adapta-
tion to the characters of the people who live under them ; yet, as these characters
are ever changing, the adaptation is ever becoming imperfect; and the ideas and
institutions need remodeling with a frequency proportional to the rapidity of
the change.”—HERBERT SPENCER, First Principles, sec. 34.
CHAPTER III
DETERMINING INSTINCTS AND IMPULSES OF THE PRIMITIVE
CEREMONY
In the preceding chapters two points have been especially empha-
sized. The first is that the ceremony is intimately related to primi-
tive man's practical life—that it is his method of practical control....
The movement and decorations are not a sheer product of the
imagination: they are the reproductions of situations with which
the savage is familiar. The second point is that the ceremony is
always a social reaction. Without the constant reference tofother?
selves, real or imaginary, it has neither meaning nor purpose. The
ceremony is a type of reaction emerging out of attitudes that are
definitely social and that have been built up gradually in the strug-
gle for life. It now becomes our task to justify this position more
explicitly with reference to the origin and development of ritualism.
Here two difficulties at once loom up. The first is, that, when
inquiry is made of primitive peoples who are in the habit of per-
forming certain ceremonies—such as the Intichiuma of the native
Australians or the Snake ceremonies of the Amerinds of New
Mexico—they are unable to give an intelligent account of the
origin of the rites. When W. H. R. Rivers tried to obtain an
explanation from the Todas of any one of their ceremonies, he met
with the same difficulty. He almost invariably received the reply,
“that it had been so ordained by Teikirza,” a goddess, and this was
regarded as final. The Central Australians have no tradition
which deals with the origin of the Intichiuma ceremonies,” a very
important series. With reference to the initiation ceremonies
among them, there are often the most naive myths, which reveal a
strong imagination and leave the impression that an explanation of
some sort is very acceptable,” but which could scarcely be construed
into real history. Sometimes the myth accompanying the ceremony
does offer an explanation of certain aspects of the ceremony. That
the rite-myth, however, ever explains all the symbolism of the rite
* W. H. R. Rivers, The Todas, p. 186.
* Spencer and Gillen, The Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 167.
* Spencer and Gillen, The Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 344–46.
M
I9
2O THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RITUALISM
is improbable.* Then, again, there is the peculiar dilemma of two
myths purporting to explain one ceremony, as in the case of the
most ancient Navajo ceremony now in existence, the kledji qacal,
or night chant.” Altogether, the situation appears almost hopeless
when viewed from the standpoint of what the primitive man him-
self consciously contributes toward an explanation of origins. Con-
temporary savages know little or nothing about the real origin of
their many rituals, and hence we ought not to look to them for the
solution of this perplexing problem of social psychology.
Here the second difficulty appears. While, in a sense, it is
easier to look down from a higher than to look up from a lower
stage of culture, there is always the danger of the “psychologist's
fallacy” in estimating conditions among contemporaneous savages,
and more so with reference to aboriginal humans. It is certainly a
postulate which can be accepted without hesitation, that primitive
man does not reason as the trained scientist. If his reactions are
symptomatic in any sense whatever, so much would surely pass
muster. For a modern scholar, then, to sit in his office and reason
how a person must have felt under the conditions in which aborigi-
nal peoples found themselves, and assert that the origin of religion
is to be sought in primitive man's exercise of his faculty of “the
perception of the Infinite” or in his “sense of the Infinite,” certainly
seems to be misconstruing the situation.” It is not likely, if we are
to judge from the experience that most individuals in a higher stage
of culture have, that the “perception of the Infinite” enters largely
into the warp and woof of the material of which life is made. A
careful investigation through a widely circulated questionnaire
might throw further light on this subject.
As it is, we must adopt a different method. Three guiding
principles will put us on a modern scientific basis. (I) We may
begin with the principle of the comparative psychologists that, from
the phylogenetic standpoint, there is no real gap between animal
and human experience. Man has started out with instincts and
“Washington Matthews, “Some Illustrations of the Connection between
Myths and Ceremony,” The International Congress of Anthropology (Chicago,
1894), p. 246.
* Ibid., p. 247.
* At least three modern scholars, Max Müller, C. P. Tiele, and Morris
Jastrow, Jr., fall back on such a faculty in their explanation of the origin of
religion.
INSTINCTS AND IMPULSES OF PRIMITIVE CEREMONY 2I
impulses common to animals. What progress he has made has been
from that point on. (2) We need to bear in mind that, though the
stage of culture may vary, there is essential similarity in the mental
organization of different races of men." (3) Our third principle is
taken from functional psychology: Mind, wherever found, is “an
organ of service for the control of environment in relation to the
ends of the life process.” With these three principles in view, we
may venture to interpret the concrete material gathered by ethnolo-
gists from actual observation among contemporary savages, or
from reliable data secured through archaeological research.
A double task awaits us before we can hope to give a rational
answer to the question of the origin and development of ritualism.
We must, in the first place, attempt to describe the place of some of
the more important determining instincts and impulses in the primi-
tive ceremony—that is to say, such as would lead to overt reactions
which would tend to crystallize into group habits, and thus become
ritualized. Then there is the matter of the organization of human
consciousness, which, too, is a consideration of first importance,
for we must try to determine whether the ritual is symptomatic
merely of blind impulse and chance variation, or of thought also.
In the present chapter we turn to a consideration of the former.
The term primitive, as applied to man, has come to have a
double connotation with us. Sometimes we use it with reference
to contemporary savages. At other times its usage applies to
aboriginal humans. While it may be true in a general sense that
aboriginal human traits were similar to those of existing savages,
yet it would be rather bold to assume that a study of contemporary
savage life leads to accurate inferences regarding the aboriginal
institutions. Existing savages have passed through a long period
of mental development. This may have been retarded, and hence
be more closely affiliated with aboriginal reactions than that of
higher stages of culture; yet it marks an actual advance.
The evolutionary point of view suggests comparative psychology
as the proper field in which to look for impulses and instincts that
were fundamental and determining in ancient society. Primitive
man was first animal and then man. As an animal he was a bundle
* Franz Boas, The Mind of Primitive Man. Wide also William I. Thomas,
Source Book for Social Origins (Chicago, 1909), pp. 143–55.
* John Dewey, Interpretation of Savage Mind; and see Source Book for
Social Origins, p. 175. -
22 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RITUALISM
of wants, impulses, and instincts, and made his way by the spon-
taneous expression of characteristics common to the species. That
he had as many instincts as the higher animals and perhaps even
more, would seem indisputable.” As a man he supplemented his
instinctive reactions by activity under the control of thought. Com-
parative psychology gives a long list of instincts and impulses
which are common to animals and man. The more important
ones for our study of the origin of ritualism are food, sex, fear,
and anger. Food and sex are primary."
It is probable that in his first condition man's mode of life was
not far different from that of the anthropoid ape. We have even
at this late date an example in the Pygmy of a human
type “almost as fully arboreal as was his tree-dwelling
ancestor.” He dwells in the moist and sultry depth of the forest,
and pines when removed from his native realm in the heart of the
tropic woods. Primeval man probably lived upon fruits and roots.
This kind of subsistence restricted him to a tropical or subtropical
climate. “In fruit and nut-bearing forest under a tropical sun,”
our progenitors commenced their existence.” We may assume
that thus early man had the power of abstraction, for it is likely
that language was his earliest invention, and that he made use of it
while he was yet a tree-liver. But in this stage he was largely
a creature of instinct and impulse. As we ascend in the scale
of structural organization, subsistence becomes increasingly diffi-
cult and the food impulse relatively stronger. It is not improbable
that intelligence early came to the surface in some food crisis.
We may, at any rate, assert that the food impulse was a controlling
factor in aboriginal man's life. He may have been frugivorous
in practice for some time, but animal food became a part of his
fare at any early period. He became a hunter, and from that time
on, the food impulse became even more determining. Sex began
to enter in as an essential factor. As long as fruits, nuts, and
roots were the regular fare, man and woman were at about the
same advantage. Both could gather as they pleased. When, how-
Food
* Th. Ribot, The Psychology of the Emotions (London, 1900), p. 194.
* Vide W. I. Thomas, Sea and Society; and Edward Scribner Ames, Psy-
chology of Religious Experience, chap. iii, “Determining Impulses in Primitive
Religion.”
* Charles Morris, Man and His Ancestors (New York, 1902), p. 134.
* Lewis H. Morgan, Ancient Society (New York, 1878), p. 20.
INSTINCTS AND IMPULSES OF PRIMITIVE CEREMONY 23
ever, animal food became a necessity, a marked division of labor
resulted. Men were engaged in the hunt, while the attention of
women was directed chiefly to the vegetable environment. Man's
activities required strength, violence, speed, craft, and foresight.
Woman’s work was slow, unspasmodic, routine, and stationary.”
Man was the hunter; woman was the child-bearer and home-
maker.
The thing of significance is that the food impulse manifested
itself in totally different activities in men and women. As a simple
impulse back of the hunt, the gathering of fruits, the sowing, the
reaping, it was partly responsible for specific ceremonies for those
occasions. The activities of both men and women were represented;
but man, being stronger and more aggressive, was almost invaria-
bly the leader in the ceremony. This we call a direct influence
upon the ceremony. To this we may add an indirect influence. The
differentiation in the activities between men and women in get-
ting the necessary food had a marked effect on primitive Social
organization. It was one of the controlling factors in naming the
totems, and in this way definitely determined a large number of
the totemic ceremonies of the Blacks of Australia, the Amerinds,
and doubtless of other primitive peoples.
Next to the food impulse is the influence of the instinct of
reproduction, or the sex impulse, upon primitive man's life. It is
now quite generally conceded that the earliest group-
ings of population were about the females. When
primitive man desired a mate, he sought her. Woman became the
social nucleus. To her, man returned from his wanderings. The
relation between mother and child became peculiarly intimate.
“The mother and her children, and her children's children; and so
on indefinitely in the female line, form a group.” Descent was
through mother-right. Exogamy, so characteristic of tribal life,
thus was a natural consequence of man’s “emotional interest in
making unfamiliar sexual alliances.”
Marriage by capture was probably an early form. It is not
likely, however, that it ever was universal, as it would tend to
give rise to the blood feud, and is contrary to the now generally
recognized primitive mother-right. In the case of actual hostility
Sex
* William I. Thomas, Sea and Society (Chicago, 1907), p. 123.
* Ibid., p. 56.
* Ibid., p. 57.
24 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RITUALISM
between the groups, it was probably the normal form;” but for
the rest, marriage through barter, service, or purchase was in
vogue.” The significant fact for our study is that marriage cere-
monies are a direct outgrowth of the sex impulse, and this not only
in a general way. The specific content of the primitive ceremony
is symptomatic of the sex impulse. Thus capture, which in addition
to being a method of securing wives between hostile groups also
is an expression of female coyness” and of the rapacious nature
of the male, became a part of the marriage ceremony. Among the
Bedouins of Sinai, for instance, “the bridegroom seizes the woman
whom he has legally purchased, drags her into her father's tent,
lifts her violently struggling upon her camel, holds her fast while
he bears her away, and finally pulls her forcibly into his house,
though her powerful resistance may be the occasion of serious
wounds.” Wife purchase, an almost universal practice among
primitive peoples, remained a part of the ceremony after it had
ceased to be a reality.”
* Spencer and Gillen, The Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 555.
* Edward Westermarck, The History of Human Marriage (London, 1901),
chap. xvii; George Elliot Howard, A History of Matrimonial Institutions
(Chicago, 1904), I, chap. iv.; William I. Thomas, Sea and Society, p. 78.
* William I. Thomas, Source Book for Social Origins, p. 533.
* George Elliot Howard, A History of Matrimonial Institutions, I, 165 f.
* Westermarck, op. cit., p. 418. Arnold van Gennep gives the following
account of betrothal and wedding ceremonies in which capture and marriage by
purchase both survive in the marriage ceremony: -
“Je citerai la séquence de ces cérémonies chez les Bhotia du Tibet
méridional et du Sikkim : 19 des magiciens déterminent si le mariage projeté
sera favorable; 2° les oncles de la fille et ceux du garçon se réunissent dans
la maison du garçon puis se rendent dans celle de la fille et la demandent en
mariage; 3° si les présents qu'ils ont apportés sont acceptés (cérémonie de
nangchang), l'affaire est conclue; on détermine le montant de la dot et 4° on
offre aux intermédiaires un repas rituel accompagné de prières (cérémonie dite
khelen). . . . . 5° Un an après vient la cérémonie nyen, c'est un repas (aux
frais des parents du fiancé) auguel assistent tous les apparentés des deux
cótés; on paie le prix de la fille; 6° un an après le nyen, il y a la cérémonie
changthoong ; a) un magicien détermine le jour favorable pour le départ de la
fiancée de chez ses parents; b) on organise une grande fête ou sont invités des
lamas; c) deux hommes, surnommés à ce moment “voleurs,” penêtrent de force
dans la maison, soi-disant pour voler la fiancée ; on se livre à un combat simulé;
les “voleurs” sont rossés et on leur jette de la viande à moitié cuite dans la
bouche; ils échappent à ce traitement en donnant de l'argent aux gardiens de la
fiancée. Deux jours après les “voleurs” sont honorés et surnommés “Les-
INSTINCTS AND IMPULSES OF PRIMITIVE CEREMONY 25
The marriage ceremony may also indicate the new relation
between the man and the woman. “Sometimes it symbolizes sexual
intercourse, but more frequently the living together.” The former
is, of course, an extreme case. Marriage ceremonies of this type
occur in Central Australia with essential uniformity. Spencer and
Gillen give the following account of the ceremony in the Warra-
munga tribe:
The girl is taken to the selected spot near to the camp by an elder sister
who says to her, “Come with me, you and I walk along corrobboree.” Three
tribal brothers who are kulla-kulla (lawful husbands) to her, the actual
husband being in the middle, lie down full length, side by side on the ground.
The elder sister places the girl across them and the operation (the rite of cut-
ting open the vagina) is performed by an old man who is wankilli (father’s
sister's son) to the girl. . . . . After the operation she is decorated with
string, head-bands, armlets, and necklets, which, later on, she gives to her
father and mother. The man to whom she has been allotted at once takes
her to his camp, where she remains quietly until the next morning, the
two sleeping on opposite sides of the fire. For two or three mornings after
this the man takes her out with him when he goes into the bush—still
having no intercourse with her—and on each occasion he rubs her body
with grease and red ochre. During this time, she is busy collecting vege-
table food—grass seed and yams—and takes these to her mother and elder
sister, who then tie round her waist the small string apron called matjulari,
the emblem of a married woman in this tribe. For two nights she is then
lent to turtundi (mother's. mother's brother), wankilli (father's sister's
son), kankºwia (paternal grandfather), paperti and kukaitja (elder and
younger brothers, but not in blood), and kulla-kulla (lawful husbands).
After this she becomes the property of the man to whom she was assigned.”
In addition to its influence upon the content of the marriage
ceremony, the sex impulse is doubtless the determining factor in
circumcision, subincision, ceremonies to promote the growth of the
breasts, love philters, various types of corroborees, and initiation
stratégistes-heureux”; d) les invités font des présents à la fiancée et à
ses parents; e) cortège de départ avec réjouissances; f) le pére et la mère du
garçon viennent à la rencontre du cortège, les conduisent chez eux; fêtes pendant
deux ou trois jours; g) la fille et ses apparentés retournent chez eux; 7° de
nouveau un an après, cérémonie dite palokh, les parents de la fille lui remettant
sa dot (le double de ce qu'on a payé pour elle ou d’avantage) et on la conduit en
groupe chez le fiancé, où cette fois elle reste définitivement.—Les Rites de
Passage (Paris, 1909), pp. 173 f.
* Westermarck, op. cit., p. 419.
* Spencer and Gillen, The Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 134 f.
26 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RITUALISM
rites in general. Passarge gives the description of a corroboree
among the Bushmen–an initiation ceremony of a girl-which may
serve as a case in point:
Die Mädchen sollen keine “Schule” durchmachen, aber der Eintritt
der Reife wird auch gefeiert, und zwar bei den Aikwe durch den Elandbull-
tanz–duké. Im Chanse hatte ich Gelegenheit, einen solchen Tanz zu
beobachten und zu photographieren. Ein Mädchen hatte die erste Menstru-
ation gehabt, infolgedessen versammelten sich Männer und Frauen zur
Aufführung des durch Sitte und Brauch vorgeschriebenen Tanzes. Die
alten Weiber stehen an einer Stelle und bilden die Musikkapelle, indem
sie singen, in die Hände klatschen und mit Eisenstücken klappern. Zu
ihren Füssen liegt das junge Mädchen auf der Erde. Die verheirateten
jüngeren Frauen gehen nun im Gänsemarsch, zu dem Takt der Musik mit
den Füssen aufstampfend und die nach abwärts ausgestreckten Arme gleich-
falls rhythmisch nach unten stossend, um das Mädchen herum. . . . . Dabei
haben sie das hintere Schurtzfell hochgehoben. Mit dem entblössten Gesäss
. wackeln und kokettieren sie umher. Das geht so eine Weile, plötz-
lich naht sich ein Buschmann langsamen Schrittes, gleichfalls im Takt mit
den Füssen stampfend und mit den angezogenen Unterarmen und geballten
Fäusten ebenfalls den Takt schlagend. Auf dem Kopf hat er ein paar Hör-
ner nebst einem Stück Fell befestigt. . . . .
Der gehörnte Buschmann ist der Bulle, die Weiber sind die Kühe,
diese Beziehung ist unverkennbar. . . . . Die Bewegungen der Bullen und der
Kühe sind dabei so drastisch, dass man ohne weiteres erkennt, es handelt
sich um eine Szene aus der Brunstzeit der imitierten Tiere.“
Enough has been said to show that the lower races are intensely
interested in sexual life. There is every reason to believe that
this is one of the great interests of aboriginal man. In fact, we
may assert without hesitation that a large number of ceremonies
are due directly to the sex impulse, and that its indirect influence
pervades a great many more. .
From the phylogenetic point of view, fear should be considered
a derivative rather than a primary instinct. It probably first came
to the surface as a distinct emotional reaction when the
Fear B. B S S.
animal had experienced actual danger and pain in
quest of food. When, however, we come to higher forms of ani-
mal life, it has become a definite tendency. It no longer depends
exclusively upon preceding experience, but takes the form of a con-
servative instinct in the defensive form.* Usually, though not
* S. Passarge, Die Buschmänner der Kalahari (Berlin, 19o7), pp. Io1 f.
* Th. Ribot, The Psychology of the Emotions, p. 2o7.
INSTINCTS AND IMPULSEs of PRIMITIVE CEREMONY 27
*
invariably, flight is the form in which it is manifested. The unex-
pected, the strange, be it sound or sight, causes the animal to run
or fly away, if possible; and when flight is impossible, cringing
or trembling or some corresponding reactions are common. I
remember two little pups belonging to a friend of mine. I was
a stranger to them. Though they played about the yard in the
presence of others before I came, the moment I appeared they ran
under a shed, and nothing I did could entice them out. Birds are
afraid of a scarecrow, but not because they have had previous
experience with it. It is owing to their instinctive tendency to be
afraid of a strange moving object. “My friend Professor W. K.
Brooks,” writes James, “told me of his large and noble dog being
frightened into a sort of epileptic fit by a bone being drawn across
the floor by a thread which the dog did not see.”
In children, fear manifests itself in not dissimilar ways. Every-
one knows of the instinctive tendency of the small child to run
away from the strange and unexpected, and seek the protective
care of its mother. Strange men and strange animals very fre-
quently excite fear. Some children cry with terror at the first
sight of a cat or a dog. One of my little friends had often said that
she would like to see Santa Claus. As Christmas approached, I
reminded her that she would have an opportunity at the festival
in the church. She was very eager to see him until he came. But
when she heard him in the vestibule stamping his feet and speak-
ing in a loud voice, and then saw his long white beard and fur
coat and bold mien, she cried, saying to her mother to whom she
clung, “I want to go home !”
This primitive type of fear is relatively undifferentiated, and is,
of course, part of primitive man's original endowment. The fear-
inspiring object “sets the whole motor apparatus going at the
highest rate.” But experience soon comes in to modify the
reaction. “The fear force is gradually rationalized and made less
spasmodic and so more adaptive.” Increasing discrimination as to
the amount of pain likely to be inflicted affects the intensity of
the reaction. To this we may add a vivid representation on the
part of primitive man of potential pain, i.e., of the liability of its
occurrence and the degree when it occurs. This vivid representa-
* William James, Psychology, Briefer Course (New York, 1907), p. 412.
* Hiram M. Stanley, Studies in the Evolutionary Psychology of Feeling
(London, 1895), p. Io9.
28 THE PSYCHIOLOGY OF RITUALISM
tion becomes a powerful stimulation for adaptive conduct. “Fear,”
writes Stanley, “is a primary and most important motive to action
in a very wide range of the lower mental life. Those who have
observed animals and man in a state of nature are always greatly
impressed with the constant and large part which the emotion plays
in their consciousness.”
We are now ready to understand how important a place fear
has in the primitive ceremony. In the Intichiuma ceremonies cited
above, as well as in the rain ceremony, the “great fear,” starva-
tion, may easily become the leading motive. In fact, it is not
at all unlikely that it took a very important part in their origin.
A significant fact in confirmation of this is that in the case of the
Australians the Intichiuma are not universally observed. Passing
from the center of the continent north toward the Gulf of Carpen-
taria, we find that among the coastal tribes, Binbinga, Mara, and
Anula, there are only traces of these ceremonies. This is doubt-
less due to the more abundant rainfall which insures a more certain
food supply.” In the southeast, Queensland, New South Wales,
Victoria, and South Australia, they are entirely absent. The reason
for this, according to Dr. Howitt, is “the far more favorable con-
ditions under which they live.” I cannot help feeling that the
“great fear” has had the first place in the specific application of cere-
monies to the food and rain situation in the regions under considera-
tion. That the same tendency is at work among the Amerinds is
shown by the observation made by Fewkes regarding the elaborate
Snake dance of the Hopi Indians of Arizona. “The present pur-
pose of the Snake ceremony, which in many publications has been
confounded with the original aim, is primarily . . . . to bring rain
and thus promote the growth of corn; in fact this desire, due to
present environment, dominates all the rites of the Hopi ritual.”
In Arizona the climatic conditions are essentially the same as in
Central Australia.
The illustrations cited above are in harmony with the position
taken that fear becomes a powerful motive in preventing a repe-
tition of painful or calamitous experiences. In this instance, it is
27 Hiram M. Stanley, Studies in the Evolutionary Psychology of Feeling
(London, 1895), p. 94.
* The Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 318.
* The Native Tribes of South-east Australia, p. 152.
* Jesse Walter Fewkes, “Tusayan Flute and Snake Ceremonies,” Nineteenth
Annual Report of Bureau of American Ethnology, p. I oog.
INSTINCTS AND IMPULSES OF PRIMITIVE CEREMONY 29
a food crisis. There are, however, many cases on record where the
food impulse is lacking. The ceremonies concerned with the Wol-
lunqua Totem of the Warramunga tribe of Australia are an excel-
lent example.” The Wollunqua, a mythic monster—“though it
must be remembered that it is anything but mythic in the eyes of
the native”—is supposed to be so large that “if it were to stand
on its tail, its head would reach far away into the heavens.” Its
present home is a large water hole in a lonely valley in the
Murchison Range, whence the natives fear it may venture forth
and do damage. So afraid are they of this monster that they do not
use its real name among themselves, but call it urkulu mappaurinnia,
or “snake living in water.” One feature of striking interest in
the ceremonies of this totem is that in scope and nature they are
very similar to those of the Black Snake Totem. The motive back
of them, however, is the control of the dreadful monster, rather
than the increase of the totem. One of the Wollungua ceremonies,
according to Spencer and Gillen, was begun by digging a trench
north and south, fifteen feet long and two feet wide. This was
then filled with sand mixed with water,
every handful being carefully patted down until finally a keel-shaped mound
was made about two feet high and tapering off towards either end, its
length corresponding to that of the original trench. On the smooth surface
a long wavy band, about four inches in width, was outlined on each side,
the two bands meeting at both ends. At the northern end a small round
swelling indicated the head. . . . . The whole double band indicated the
body of the Wollunqua.”
The mound was finished late in the afternoon. The Uluuru men
to whom it really belonged then came to the sacred ground,
approaching the mound in single file. The Wollungua is believed
to have seen his representation and to be wriggling about under-
neath. One of the Uluuru men took a gum bough in his hand and
stroked the base of the mound to appease the snake. The cere-
mony continued all night. At times they sang for long stretches
at a time without pausing. When three o'clock came,
amidst a scene of wildest excitement, fires were lighted all around the cere-
monial ground. . . . . The Uluuru men ranged themselves in single file
kneeling beside the mound, and with their hands upon their thighs surged
round and round it, every man in unison bending over first to one side and
* The Northern Tribes of Central Australia, chap. vii, pp. 226–56.
* Ibid., pp. 233 f.
3O THE PSYCHIOLOGY OF RITUALISM
º .*
N /
then to the other, each successive movement being accompanied by a loud
and simultaneous shout. The Kingilli men were standing all around in a
state of greatest excitement, the oldest man amongst them swaying his
body about as, with exaggerated high-knee action, he walked backwards at
the head of the kneeling procession of the Uluuru men. As the Kingilli
clanged their boomerangs together, the Uluura swayed about wildly from
side to side shouting, or rather yelling at each movement, “Yrrsh ! yrrsh !
yrrsh 1”
When the earliest streak of dawn appeared, the Uluuru men,
urged to their task by the Kingilli, “fiercely attacked the mound
with spears, boomerangs, clubs and spear-throwers, until, in a
few minutes, it was hacked to pieces and all that remained was a
rough heap of sandy earth.” The object of this ceremony is
obviously to persuade, almost to force, the Wollungua to remain
in his water hole, and “to do no harm to any of the natives.” It is
probable that this ceremony had its origin in some particular inci-
dent in which fear was very prominent. At any rate, fear is the
impulse back of it now.
Fear is directly related to self-preservation. It is a conserva-
tive instinct in the defensive form. Things that inhibit, thwart,
destroy are fearful. They cause pain and may eventuate in death.
Strange things frequently are fearful. They may be a menace to
life. The organism is so constituted that it is always on the look-
out for the thing that may cause harm. Fear is the instinct that
sets it in an attitude of defense or self-protection. -
It thus makes possible the almost universal prevalence of
taboos among primitive peoples. Fear of the future eventuates in
various types of divination—such, for instance, as when the Baby-
lonian priests read the liver of the acceptable animal in order to
ascertain whether the war contemplated by the king would end
favorably or unfavorably. And finally, fear is the determining
factor in a considerable number of funeral ceremonies and pro-
pitiatory rites. It should be borne in mind, in this connection, that
the thesis which we have tried to establish in regard to fear is
not that fear determines the entire content of the ceremony, but
only that it enters in as an important impulse in a large number
of cases. We are not persuaded that Lucretius was correct
when he said: “Primus in orbe timor fecit deos.”
* The Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 237 f.
INSTINCTS AND IMPULSES OF PRIMITIVE CEREMONY 3I
Anger, like fear, is a derivative rather than a primary instinct.
It is found low in the animal scale, and probably first appeared
as a distinct emotional reaction when the animal was
frustrated in its quest for food. In its effort to defend
itself against the opposing animal, it became angered and was
successful. Anger became the instinct of conservation under the
offensive form. Fear had enabled the animal to avoid loss, but
this new instinct was aggressive in overcoming hindrance. “Fear
is regressive, anger is aggressive. Fear is contractile, anger is
expansive. Fear is the emotion of the pursued, the prey; anger
is the emotion of the pursuer, of the predaceous.” It was a
momentous day in the evolution of mind when some individual
actually became angry.
The characteristic thing about anger is self-assertion. When
it becomes an overt reaction, it takes the form of open hostility.
It is the direct opposite of fear. When the animal is afraid it
tries to extricate itself from the painful situation, and having
accomplished this, it is satisfied. When the animal is angry it is
under the impulse of inflicting positive injury. Stanley holds that
“with early psychisms, all perceptions of objects end in either
anger or fear. . . . . The organism perceives the object . . . .
feels fear and dashes away from it, or feels anger and dashes
against it. In higher forms experience has entered in and con-
trols the degree of hostility.” But even in man it is present in
some measure in its first form. Children of two months push
away objects they do not like, with real fits of passion, growing
red in the face, trembling all over, and sometimes shedding tears.
“At about one year old they will beat people, animals, and inani-
mate objects if they are angry with them, throw things at offend-
ing persons, and the like.” Nor does this simple, immediate
sort of anger disappear entirely in adult life. Who has not felt
an instinctive wave of anger when he has knocked his shin against
a rocking-chair in the dark, or struck his head against a low
door? The reason for this is that anger is, first and always, a
social instinct, The feeling of resentment which appears is but
a vestige of the way in which lower forms react against every
Anger
* Stanley, op. cit., p. 128.
* Ibid., p. 137.
* Charles Horton Cooley, Human Nature and the Social Order (New York,
1902), p. 232.
32 THE PSYCHIOLOGY OF RITUALISM
frustrating object. It is only very gradually that man has attained
the ability to distinguish between the physical and the social, and
has come to feel that it is after all absurd to be angry at a chair
or a door. g
On one of my travels in the interior of China, I was one morn-
ing the witness of a most interesting ceremony in which anger
was the impelling motive. A Chinese woman, according to the
regular custom, had hung out some clothes on a bamboo pole
to dry, and a thief had come along and stolen them while she
was inside looking after the house. When she came out in front
of the house and discovered that her clothes had disappeared, she
flew into a rage. Forthwith she anathematized the thief by all
the gods of the pantheon, and perceiving that it was of no avail
she turned her attention to magic. Seizing a bundle of straw
from the roof of the house, she twisted it into a shape vaguely
resembling a man. This effigy of the thief she held on a block
of wood and then proceeded to chop it in a thousand pieces, while
she wished the perpetrator of the crime every curse that earth
and the infernal regions might have in store.
Far from being an exceptional method among primitive peoples,
this magical ceremony is but one out of many. A very common
method of venting one's anger is to make the effigy of wax, clay,
or other material, and then stick pins or needles through it, or
otherwise maltreat it, with the definite purpose of thereby caus-
ing the death of the enemy.” In Australia pointing-sticks are
commonly used in evil magic. These are “short sticks or bones
with one end sharpened and the other usually, but not always,
tipped with porcupine-grass resin.” Spencer and Gillen give
the following description of the use of these sticks:
In the Arunta tribe a man desirous of using any of these goes away by
himself to some lonely spot in the bush, and, placing the stick or bone in
the ground, crouches down over it, muttering the following or some similar
curse as he does so:
“May your heart be rent asunder.”
* Vide Malay Magic, pp. 570–74. In West Africa, “if you want to cause an
enemy to die, you make a clay figure that is supposed to represent him, with a
needle you pierce the figure, and your enemy, the first time he comes in contact
with a foe, will be speared.”—Robert Hamill Nassau, Fetichism in West Africa
(New York, 1904), p. 117.
* The Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 455.
INSTINCTS AND IMPULSES OF PRIMITIVE CEREMONY 33
“May your backbone be split open and your ribs torn asunder.”
“May your head and throat be split open.”
Having done this he returns to his camp leaving the irna (stick) in the
ground, but after some time he brings it back again and secretes it somewhere
close to his camp. Then one evening, after it has grown dark . . . . he
removes the stick from its hiding-place, and, taking care that no one sees
him, quietly creeps up until he is close enough to distinguish the features of
his victim. He then stoops down, and turning his back to the camp, takes
the irna in both hands and jerks it repeatedly over his shoulders, muttering
the same curses again. The evil magic . . . . goes from the point of the
irna straight to the man, who afterwards, without apparent cause, sickens
and dies, unless his life is saved by some medicine man who can discover
and remove evil magic.”
Besides the methods described, there are numerous other ways
of inflicting permanent injury and death by means of the magical
ceremony. It is obvious that anger and its derivative, jealousy,
are important factors, both in the origin and in the survival
of such ceremonies. The influence here is direct. The war dance
is a ceremony in which anger may have both a primary and a
secondary influence. Sometimes the Amerinds had the war dance
just before they started on an expedition. At other times, it took
place after. In some instances, perhaps, both before and after.
But in any case, the object was to stir up and give vent to violent
passion. Peter Jones, missionary to the Indians, thus describes
the dance:
The war dance is designed to kindle the passion for war in every
breast; and certainly, when we consider their war song, painted bodies, war
implements, and the warriors’ antics performed on such occasions, nothing
could be better calculated to rouse the feeling to the highest state of excite-
ment. A smooth piece of ground is chosen for the exhibition, in the center
of which a pole is placed. The singers take their seats and begin to beat
on their drums, to which they keep time by singing in a most monotonous
tone. The warriors, fully equipped, dance round and round the pole,
brandishing their tomahawks, throwing their bodies into all sorts of postures,
and raising at intervals the hideous war whoop. A warrior will occasionally
strike the pole, which is a signal that he is about to make a speech. On a
sudden the dancing and singing cease, and all attention is given to the
speaker while he relates his war exploits, and receives the hearty response
of the assembly. At these dances they also have a sham fight in which they
* Ibid., pp. 457 f.
34 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RITUALISM
exhibit the manner of surprising the enemy—tomahawking, scalping, and
drinking the blood of the foe.”
Manifestly various impulses are operating in the war dance
as described by Jones, but that pugnacity takes the first place is
shown by the very nature of the ceremony. The thought of
impending war and the reinstating of movements in the dance
which have actually taken place in combat tend to arouse the
passion for war. If to this we add the fact that speeches are made
by the warriors in which they relate the successes of previous
wars, and call special attention to the wrongs perpetrated against
the tribe by the enemy, it is easy to understand that the natives
are brought thoroughly under the influence of the instinct of pug-
nacity.
Herewith we close the discussion of determining instincts and
impulses in ritualism. The situation is so complex that it is next
to impossible to do it full justice. In many instances, there are a
number of determining impulses—that is to say, there is over-
lapping. Which impulse will be of first importance will depend
upon the situation which is to be controlled. No attempt has
been made to give an exhaustive list. Others—such, for instance,
as self-display, an instinct closely related to the sex instinct—might
have been discussed, but only those have been selected that appear
to be of first importance. In his Development of Religion” Pro-
fessor King has placed considerable emphasis upon play in the
genesis of the religious attitude. To the present writer, the place
of play appears of minimum importance in the origin of ritualism.
Practical interests are by far the most important. Play itself, when
viewed from the agent's standpoint, is largely a practical interest.
Take the little girl playing with her dolls, for example. How does
she regard them? Are they so much porcelain, hair, sawdust, and
cloth, made into a doll cold and lifeless? No. The child enters
into an actual living relation. She is the mother of the child.
The baby must be sung to sleep, or wheeled about in the go-cart,
or taught how to pray. For the time being, this activity, Spon-
taneous though it may be, contains for the child a large prac-
tical element.
* Peter Jones, History of the Ojebway Indians (London, 1861), p. 133.
* Irving King, Development of Religion (New York, 1910), chap. v.
INSTINCTS AND IMPULSES OF PRIMITIVE CEREMONY 35
In the development and survival of the ceremony, so-called
play activities may emerge, but not without practical implica-
tions. Thus, in the course of the prolonged and serious initiation
ceremonies of the Blacks of Southeast Australia, humorous situa-
tions are introduced to relieve the strain and monotony. More-
over, there is, to judge from personal observation, among various
stages of culture a tendency (due to a complex of instincts and
impulses, as well as to the law of habit) to subserve in the form
of play activities interests which in time past were essential to the
struggle for life. The popular theater in China, and many of our
modern plays are cases in point. The various rituals of the Iroquois
also contain such elements.”
In this general class of instinctive and impulsive acts, though
strictly speaking some are not instincts, we include all activities of
the psychophysical organism due, not to thought, but to more or
less automatic action. The probable origin of the lamentation rites
in the spontaneous outburst of grief at the death of a particularly
intimate member of the group is an example. The thing of
importance for our study is that this substratum of instinct,
impulse, and reflex action which functions in man’s efforts to
control his environment appears in the rites and ceremonies in
various forms. Ritualism is built upon this native endowment,
not however, let it be noted, consciously qua ritualism. What
primitive man sought was not ritual but control.
* Lewis H. Morgan, League of the Iroquois (New York, 1904).
CHAPTER IV
THE PLACE OF ATTENTION IN THE PRIMITIVE CEREMONY
Primitive man's ceremonies represent the functioning of
inherited tendencies to action. The immediate and pressing needs
in the conservation of life have given rise to them. Primitive
man has the sex impulse, and consequently the marriage ceremony.
He has the food impulse, but the climate is hot and dry and there
is no food. Hence he has the rain ceremony. He has been
injured by someone, or frustrated in his desires, and anger func-
tions in offensive action. Hence primitive man has the “black
art.” In so far as the ceremony is an expression of innate hered-
itary acts and nothing more, there is no conscious control, and
the question of origin is entirely submerged in the problem of the
genesis of these attitudes and is purely a question of phylogenesis.
But to the writer many of the ceremonies described by the anthro-
pologist seem to give evidence of thought" as well as of instinct
and impulse.
A careful study of the organization of human consciousness
will throw further light upon the question of origins and develop-
ment as far as there is indication of thought in ritualism. The
view taken by Brinton and Pfleiderer regarding the origin of rites
may serve as a point of departure. Both agree in placing it in
mimicry or imitation of higher powers. “The oldest religious
usages of all were not,” writes Pfleiderer, “as is generally supposed,
sacrifice and prayers in which men bring before the heavenly
ones definite wishes which they entreat them to grant. . . . . The
oldest usages were much more naive . . . . acts, in fact, which
imitate the doings of the higher powers, or are meant to accom-
pany and assist these doings.” Brinton gives his view in the
following words: “The mimicry or imitative origin of rites is
well illustrated in that in use for “rain-making,” one of the com-
monest of all. In periods of drought the Indian rain-maker
mounts to the roof of his hut, and rattling vigorously a dry gourd
* Vide John Dewey, How We Think (Boston, 1910), chap. i.
* Otto Pfleiderer, The Philosophy of Religion on the Basis of Its History
(London, 1888), III, 24.
36
PLACE OF ATTENTION IN PRIMITIVE CEREMONY 37
containing pebbles to represent the thunder, scatters water through
a reed on the ground beneath, as he imagines up above in the
clouds do the spirits of the storm.”
The first objection to any such statement of the origin of cere-
monies is that there is reason to believe, as we shall show later, that
primitive man made use of ceremonies before he had framed the
concept of gods. Anthropologists at this late day give descriptions
of ceremonies in which no higher power has a place. Spencer and
Gillen, for instance, make the statement regarding the Intichiuma
ceremonies, that “their performance is not associated in the native
mind with the idea of appealing to the assistance of any super-
natural being.” But granted that the Savage has a notion of a
higher power, Supernatural being, or god, it yet is true that the
ceremony did not have its origin merely in the imitation of that
power. Brinton's illustration will serve to bring out this point.
Wherever the rain ceremony is in vogue, there are periods when
there is great need of rain. The rain ceremony is the type of overt
reaction used by primitive man in attempting to produce rain. The
savage is in a position of stress and strain. He is facing a crisis.
Perhaps his corn is drying up in the field, or it is time that the dry
season come to a close, and the warm rains descend and transform
the desert into a paradise. Starvation threatens. What shall he
do? There seems but one way of escape. He knows that he
cannot make rain himself. If rain is to come, the power that
makes rain must be influenced. But how can this be effected P
The answer is not far off. He must influence the personified rain,
or the higher power that causes rain. The Central Australians
afford an example of the former, and the Indians of New Mexico
and Arizona of the latter. Given a language, which presumably
man had before he migrated to districts where drought occurred and
rain became imperative, one natural resort would be to it as an
influencing medium. Language is today actually used by the Kaffirs
in trying to stop a storm. Or we may express it in another way by
saying that there would be a tendency to resort to gesture. It is in
the realm of gesture that all men live. Language itself is a type of
gesture. Man is as much at home in gesture as the duck in water.
The “We want you to rain” of primitive man’s language when
* Brinton, op. cit., pp. 173 f.
* The Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 17o.
38 THE PSYCHIOLOGY OF RITUALISM
carried over into pantomimicry is the rain ceremony of the Indian,
or of the Central Australian, or of the rain-maker of Torres Straits.
It is doubtless due to hasty generalization that both Pfleiderer
and Brinton see in this process nothing more than imitation of the
higher power. They are correct in so far as the rain ceremony is an
attempt at a reproduction of the rain situation, but miss the point
when they judge that “definite wishes” are not thereby presented
to the higher power. Suggestion is present, but there is more than
that. The rain ceremony is an instance of the gesture process.
Pantomimicry here involves putting oneself into the place of the
higher power. Pfleiderer and Brinton recognize this. But panto-
mimicry also implies representation, for man is from the start
social. When he engages in pantomimicry there is always some
real or imaginary social being to be influenced. In this case the
savage goes through the gesture that means rain, and this implies
asking for rain.
Human consciousness, then, is not organized on the principles
which seem to underlie the arguments of both writers. When our
ancestors were gradually coming up from their very humble origin
in the animal world, they brought with them a native endowment
consisting of a group of instincts or tendencies to action accom-
panied by certain emotions. Race habits we may call them. We
have no reason for assuming, however, that among these instincts
there was one that made men ab initio religious, or that there was
one which urged them blindly to imitate everything they saw, or
even that which they very much desired. The instincts which they
brought with them were all tendencies to action that had been of
immeasurable value in the onward progress already-made and con-
stituted the foundation upon which man was to build his structure
of culture. The process in the race has been, on the whole, upward
from this foundation, and the theory of recapitulation as applied to
the mental phase of life would at least contain this truth, that in
ontogenesis, too, the progress is from the foundation of instincts
upward. -
What were the conditions under which primitive man first began
to control his conduct by thought? As long as his habitual methods
(the standpoint is that the instincts at first alone determined the
habits) of meeting his needs were adequate, there was no occasion
for thought. Habit would carry him on smoothly and safely. But
PLACE OF ATTENTION IN PRIMITIVE CEREMONY 39
when the crisis came, when he had to meet a difficult situation,
then the question of control became of first importance.
How or when we do not know, but out of some conflict between
instinct on the one hand and crisis on the other, attention was born.
It became the organ of accommodation which manipulates the out-
side world. The problem of mental development from the lowest
to the present-day highest stage of culture thus has been that of
getting adequate attention. “Language, reflection, discussion, logical
analysis, abstraction, mechanical invention, magic, religion, and
science” have all “developed in the effort of the attention to meet
difficult situations through a readjustment of habit.” -
The ritualistic attitude, to judge from its general prevalence at
the dawn of historic time, as well as from its universal prevalence
among contemporary Savages, appeared very early. It was natural
that it should. JRitualism represents crystallized group habits.
Human nature has always been prone to fall back upon the habitual
mode of reacting, and to think only when occasion calls for thought.
No stage of culture affords a better example of this than the lowest
known stage today. The Bushman is perfectly contented when he
has enough to eat and a pipe to smoke. “Besitz macht inm Sorge,
und er ist darin der wahre Philosoph, omnia sua secum portans.”
As long as there is something left to eat he feels no need of going
out to hunt. In fact, he at times goes hungry, drawing a strap
tighter and tighter about his stomach." But when he finally ven-
tures forth, it is under the protection of magic. Right-angled stripes
one centimeter broad and two centimeters long are tattooed on the
arm above the elbow. They insure a good eye when shooting.
These stripes are well rubbed with a special charm made by pul-
verizing a charred piece of the heart and of the left ear of the kind
of animal he is going to hunt. The animal—giraffe, for instance—
will then be unable to hear him as he steals up through the grass
and brush.*
The point I wish to emphasize is that many of the specific types
of reaction that later become crystallized into ceremonies or rites
had their origin, logically and psychologically speaking, in a prob-
* William I. Thomas, Source Book for Social Origins (Chicago, 1909), p. 17.
* Gustav Fritsch, Die Eingeborenen Siid-Afrikas (Breslau, 1872), p. 419.
* Ibid., p. 427.
*S. Passarge, Die Buschmänner der Kalahari (Berlin, 1907), pp. 108 f.
4O THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RITUALISM
lematic situation. Now there are two ways of bringing this about.
The first is through trial and error without even the crudest thought.
The second is where voluntary attention becomes the organ for
manipulating the outside world, or in other words, where thought
enters in and helps in bringing about an adjustment. While it may
be possible to find ceremonies which appear to bear no trace of
the human mind, many of them are indicative of the power of
abstraction, and that is a thought process. There is the great dan-
ger here of falling into the error of the particularistic method—
of “overlooking the fact that the mind employs the principle of
abstraction.”
By thought in this connection we do not mean to imply a highly
rationalized procedure. The Savage has not acquired the elaborate
technique of scientific method. We do not find that in the compara-
tively high civilizations of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. Scien-
tific method is a gradual development out of an attempt at adequate
theory. As long as immediate practical interests are at stake theory
is neglected. This does not imply, however, that a real thought
process is lacking. Thought, like many other aspects of human life,
has passed through a process of development, the nature of which
we can understand in part by observing its progress in ontogenesis.
Abstraction in its simplest form is the isolating of a single content,
element, or relation without getting its connections. This particular
phase of experience is then frequently related to some practical
interest and thus becomes a factor in the control of activity. A
concrete example from the life of the Chinese taken from personal
observation will serve as illustration. They select the terrifying
aspect of an eclipse of the sun and relate it at once to great disaster
to themselves. This view of the situation results in two further
steps. First, the cause of the phenomenon is explained as an
attempt of the dragon to swallow the sun. In the second place,
an effort is made to control the situation. The method employed
is the vigorous beating of gongs of all sizes to attract the atten-
tion of the dragon and influence it to spit out the sun. Processes
such as these represent the beginning of reflection; the elaborate
scientific method of the modern period, its goal.
In any organized system of habits qua organized there is no
* William I. Thomas, Source Book for Social Origins, p. 24.
PLACE OF ATTENTION IN PRIMITIVE CEREMONY 4I
dualism of self and world.” Many ceremonies imply the actual
emergence of a duality. The reasoning back of the ceremony may
be very naive, but it is nevertheless thought. The piacular sacrifice
is manifestly an example. This sacrifice by very definition implies
a situation of stress, strain, and sometimes of interrupted relation
between the worshiper and the higher power or ancestor. If the
sacrifice should be referred back to the time when the offering was
a common meal, the objection would be justified that this last-
named sacrifice is really not the same as the piacular sacrifice; and
on the ground that, though it is a development out of the primitive
common meal, the underlying idea now is radically different. The
piacular sacrifice is definitely a sin offering, while the other is a
common meal. But the same point holds good equally in the
instance of the common meal, for this was always an occasion on
which the relation of the group, and hence also of the individuals
of the group, to the totem was much in evidence.
By crises, in this connection, I mean any incident which comes
sufficiently into conflict with the run of habit to call forth the
attention. It need not always be something as terrifying as impend-
ing doom. The fear of starvation lies at the heart of certain cere-
monies. Especially is this true in districts where food is periodi-
cally hard to procure. But there are vast areas in the tropics
where people never experience this “great fear.” Fruit is always
plentiful, and game is at hand in great numbers and is easily
procurable. Under such circumstances, the organized system of
habit easily fills the food bill. No ritual will ordinarily arise here
except when some mystery or difficulty interrupts. As soon as
man begins definitely to cultivate grain himself, then sowing, plant-
ing, and reaping ceremonies may appear.” In connection with
the hunt they may also be considered necessary. Birth, death,
and adolescence are universal phenomena. Both in low and in
high stages of culture they represent crises. In the former they
almost invariably are the occasion of rites. Exhaustion of game,
defeat’ in battle, floods, drought, pestilence, famine, birth, death,
adolescence, marriage; sowing, planting, reaping, migration from
one place to another, building of houses, are all examples of crises.
*John Dewey, “The Control of Ideas by Facts” (II), Journal of Philosophy,
Psychology, and Scientific Method, IV, 254.
* Walter William Skeat, Malay Magic, pp. 217 f.
42 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RITUALISM
Anything that draws out the attention and thus demands adjust-
ment and manipulation may, and usually does, stimulate thought.
All of the above mentioned and many others are represented in
primitive ritualism. In fact, we are told that among primitive
peoples every act of life has become the object of ritualistic
observances. If this is universally true, it would simply indi-
cate that in the course of time any habit is likely to be interrupted.
Attention, in the sense in which it is here used, is primarily a
matter of individual initiative. The group may create a positive
environment and eliminate certain factors from the sphere of con-
trol. It thus is par excellence the realm of suggestion. Almost
invariably, however, it is some individual or individuals of the
group that pass beyond the mere instinctive or habitual, and bring
about a satisfactory adjustment at the time of the crisis, or lead
the group through the problematic situation. It takes thought to
accomplish this. Considering the group as a whole, there is lack of
prevision, for attention is primarily a manifestation of the indi-
vidual. What prevision there is, is present in the consciousness of
the individuals who originate and emphasize particular types of
reaction that, because they are successful and appropriate, are
taken up by the group. The recognition of this fact is of con-
siderable importance. Is it not likely, for instance, that the Quabara
(sacred ceremonies) owned by individuals among the Blacks of
Central Australia have had their origin in just this way?
Then there is the question of magic. Does the magical cere-
mony give evidence of the power of abstraction, or not? Magic,
writes Professor Thomas, is “primitive philosophy.” The reason-
ing is, of course, unscientific. Scientific reasoning and atcurate
logical technique are, as we have seen, a comparatively modern
product and occur only in relatively high stages of culture.
Even there, they are not always able to hold their own. Primitive
man believes “that objects in juxtaposition, in an order of
sequence, or having points of resemblance have also causal con-
nection.” This way of interpreting cause and effect gives rise to
two more or less distinct and yet overlapping types of magic, viz.,
sympathetic and symbolic. My position on this point is that magic
is a thought product—crude, it is true, but nevertheless thought.”
*Source Book for Social Origins, p. 733.
*I do not mean to imply that there may not be, as Professor King asserts,
the underlying content of more or less impulsive action of the psychophysical
PLACE OF ATTENTION IN PRIMITIVE CEREMONY 43
One or the other of these types of magic is very frequently present
in the primitive ceremony, and often both. In sympathetic magic
the underlying principle is “that objects which were once related
to one another retain their connection though they may be sepa-
rated, and whatever may happen to one part or object the other
part or object is similarly affected.” Thus in the Malay peninsula
a ceremonial way of killing an enemy is to take parings of nails,
hair, eyebrows, saliva, or any other part of the intended victim,
and to make them up into his likeness with wax from a deserted
bees' comb. This figure is then slowly scorched by holding it over
a lamp every night for seven nights and saying: “It is not wax
that I am scorching; it is the liver, heart, and spleen of So-and-so
that I scorch.” After the seventh time, the figure is burnt and
the victim will die.
In symbolic magic, the reasoning is that resembling things
influence each other. A result can be attained by reproducing as
nearly as possible the thing desired. How this becomes the occa-
sion for thought is obvious from the rain ceremony in Murray
Island, Torres Straits, of which Professor Haddon gives the fol-
lowing description:”
The rain-maker scooped a hole in the ground, and lined it with leaves
and placed in it a rude stone image of a man which had previously been
anointed with oil and rubbed with scented grass; then he poured the depoc-
tion of minced leaves of various plants mixed with water over the image—
the image being so laid in the hole as to point to the quarter from which
rain was expected. Earth was heaped over the image and leaves and shells
placed on the mound, and all the while he muttered an incantation in a low
sepulchral tone. Four large screens composed of plaited coco-nut leaves
were placed at the head, foot, and sides of the grave to represent clouds;
on the upper part of each was fastened a blackened oblong of vegetable
organism. But it is a far call from the automatic to magic. The act does not
became magical until there is a consciousness of meaning present. And con-
sciousness of meaning implies reflection. It is, of course, possible, and doubt-
less frequently happens, that magic is used without reflection, simply because
that is the customary process. But that is entirely different from saying that
magic qua magic arose apart from thought. Magic minus teleology may be
instinct or automaton, but it does not deserve the name of magic. (Vide King,
The Development of Religion, pp. 179 ff.)
“Alfred C. Haddon, Magic and Fetishism (Chicago), pp. 2 f.
* Vide Malay Magic, p. 570.
* Haddon, Magic and Fetishism, pp. 16 f.
44 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RITUALISM
cloth to mimic a black thunder-cloud, and coco-nut leaves, with their leaflets
pointing downward, were suspended close by to represent rain. A torch
was ignited and waved lengthwise over the grave; the smoke represented
clouds and the flame mimicked lightning, and a bamboo clapper was sounded
to imitate thunder.
That such a ceremony represents thought appears indisputable.
How such a complicated, rationally concatenated series of acts
could originate by a mere trial and error method is inconceivable.
For reasons which I shall give farther on, I venture to suggest
that the view of symbolic magic represented by Frazer and Haddon
fails to emphasize sufficiently one point. Primitive man has not
reached the stage of mental development which distinguishes
sharply between social objects and physical objects. For him,
the thing that he is influencing is a social object which is influ-
enced in much the same way as his fellow-men are.” Primitive
man knows no other way. If the power cannot be influenced by
language or pantomimicry, primitive man has no means at hand.
Thus, when a Kaffir village headed by its medicine-man rushes
to the nearest hill and tries to divert a hurricane from its course
by yelling at it to get out of the way, we have language as the
influencing medium,” and when the Indian rain-maker reproduces
rain in a symbolic fashion we have pantomimicry as the medium.
Both represent a thought situation, but not as closely akin to
natural science as Frazer implies in the Golden Bough.”
At this juncture it is obvious that the situation of stress, strain,
and conflict is the occasion for the reworking of instinct and im-
pulses into a specific type of control. The incident or crisis,
thus, is the matrix out of which the specific overt reaction is
born, which later appears in the ceremony. This point should be
borne in mind. The reaction is not a ceremony when it first
appears. It is merely a method of meeting a particular situation.
In the majority of instances the originator of the act has no
* The clippings of hair, parings of nails, etc., mixed with wax in making an
effigy are thought to convey the soul of the individual of whom they originally
were a part. Wundt calls them “Seelenträger” (Völkerpsychologie, Zweiter Band,
Zweiter Teil, S. 336). The effigy forthwith becomes a social object in most inti-
mate relation with the party to be injured.
* R. R. Marett, “Pre-animistic Religion,” Folk-Lore, XI, 171.
*J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, 2d ed. (London, 1900), I, 9–74.
PLACE OF ATTENTION IN PRIMITIVE CEREMONY 45
intention of its ever becoming a ceremony, or part thereof.” If
the particular reaction is not repeated until it becomes a group
custom, it never eventuates in a ceremony. Nor does it become
a ceremony as long as it is merely the act (though repeated) of
one individual. It must become a group custom, that is to say,
must be performed by the group, or with the approval of the
group, or in the way in which the members of the group act. The
way it becomes this is through suggestion and the law of habit.
The act which is successful or accompanies a successful act is
repeated by the members of the group. Each repetition, from a
physiological point of view, deepens the new pathway of dis-
charge formed in the brain of the individuals by the first perform-
ance of the act. When the pathway is once well opened, incoming
currents from stimulation, similar to that preceding the first act,
ever after tend to traverse the same pathway. When once the
reaction has become a group habit among primitive peoples, it ibso
facto is ritualized.
Since it is out of a crisis that this reaction is born, the situation
is chiefly emotional. Thought enters in only in so far as habit
fails to mediate control. It should not be considered remark-
able that this is the only place reflection holds in the ceremony,
for it takes no more important place anywhere else. The end
sought in the ceremony is control. Attention is the organ of
manipulation. The accompanying affective current appears as
emotion when there is a checking, and an interest when it runs
smoothly.
* The careful deliberation of the old men among the Australians as to each
step of the initiation ceremonies is one of the exceptions. It shows that in
some instances the development of the ceremony is due to deliberate planning
for the introduction of more satisfactory control into the ceremonies.
\ CHAPTER V
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SUPERNATURALISM IN THE RITUAL1
Up to the present we have shown that the content of the cere-
mony consists of a combination of elements: (1) such as result
from the normal functioning of primitive man's instinctive and
impulsive activity in meeting his practical needs; (2) elements
introduced through the trial and error method; (3) the product
of thought when instinct or habit meets a crisis. One very im-
portant part of the ceremony, however, which, as we shall see,
properly falls under (I), remains unexplained. Abundant refer-
ence has been made to it, but no explanation offered. I refer
to the personified nature powers, the manes, the spirits good and
evil, the preternatural and supernatural powers that take such a
prominent part in the make-up of the social consciousness of the
savage. Without these powers, most, if not all, of primitive man's
ceremonies would drop away. Our problem in this chapter is to
explain this phase of the social consciousness of primitive man,
and its relation to the ceremony. -
Many descriptions of the primitive social consciousness have
been given, but most of them from the wrong point of view. As
this is an attempt to give the psychology of ritualism, I shall first
point out what I believe to be faulty psychology on this point. Both
Jevons and Menzies agree that the savage regards all things “as ani-
mated with a life like his own.” It is to the “like his own” that
critical attention should be directed. My thesis on this point is that,
though aboriginal man regards nature as animated, it is not with
a life “like his own.” He has not reached the stage where he
has made a reflective study of his own life, will, personality, or
spirit; and until that study—naive though it may be—has been
* The distinction between natural and supernatural is not made by primitive
man. It is a comparatively late product.
* “The savage regards all things as animated—as animated with a life like
his own.”—Allan Menzies, History of Religion (New York, 1906), p. 21.
“The savage imagines that even lifeless things are animated by a will, a
personality, a spirit like his own.”—Frank Byron Jevons, An Introduction to the
History of Religion (London, 1904), p. II.
46
PSYCHOLOGY OF SUPERNATURALISM IN THE RITUAL 47
made, he is not in a position to attribute these to objects round
about him.
The popular idea that man's consciousness of himself is imme-
diate, primitive, and alone by itself, while his social consciousness
is gradually acquired apart from the former through intercourse
with other selves, and is thus secondary, is based on false psy-
chology.” Anyone who will take the time to make a table of in-
stincts will easily see that a number of them are definitely social,
McDougall in his Introduction to Social Psychology gives eleven,
viz., flight, repulsion, curiosity, pugnacity, self-abasement, self-
assertion, parental instinct, instinct of reproduction, gregarious .
instinct, instinct of acquisition, and instinct of construction.* All
these have social implications, while such as pugnacity, reproduction,
the gregarious instinct, are social only. This, if interpreted cor-
rectly, indicates “the implicit presence in undeveloped human
consciousness of both the matter and the form of a Social object.”
If we approach the study of primitive man's Social conscious-
ness from this direction, the conclusion is that the social conscious-
ness is prior to the consciousness of self. That is to say, that
primitive man does not first have a definite idea of his own life,
will, or personality and then posit these in other objects. Primi-
tive man's idea of himself grows out of his relation to his sur-
roundings, and especially out of his relation to his fellows.
What is more, if it is once granted that among the instincts
and impulses the social ones predominate, then it is also apparent
that the normal functioning of his capacities is in the direction
of progressively recognizing and creating social objects. Their
number and character depend on the one hand on man's environ-
ment, and on the other on his ability to abstract certain objects as
purely physical. At first, however, primitive man has not acquired
the ability to concentrate his attention on a particular object in
such a way as to consider it physical no matter what happens. The
only distinction he soon seems able to draw in the vast number of
* Vide Josiah Royce, Studies of Good and Evil (New York, 1898), chap.
viii.; James Mark Baldwin, Mental Development in the Child and the Race (New
York, 1895); Baldwin, Social and Ethical Interpretation in Mental Develop-
ment (New York, 1902), pp. 13 f.
* William McDougall, Social Psychology (Boston, 1909), pp. 45–89.
* George H. Mead, “Social Psychology as Counterpart to Physiological Psy-
chology,” Psychological Bulletin, VI (No. 12), 404.
48 THE PSYCHIOLOGY OF RITUALISM
objects which are physical from the scientific standpoint is between
the normal and the accidental or unusual. Thus the Pygmy con-
siders his knife as commonplace so long as it serves him at his
regular task, but when it slips and cuts his finger, there is oudah in
the “cussed” thing." It forthwith becomes a social object to him.
The Babylonians went even farther, for they thought they were
surrounded by living powers, each of which was considered a gi
or spirit. A gi was not a spirit in the sense in which that term is
ordinarily used. “The gi was simply that which manifested life,
and the test of the manifestation of life was movement.” In this
instance everything that moved became a social object.
There is reason to believe that in the preanimistic stage (using
animism in Tylor's sense of separable spiritual beings), not only
the moving object that arrests the attention of the savage is per-
sonified, but anything unusual in shape, size, position, or color is
regarded as living. Marett finds the following to be true:
A solitary pillar of rock, a crumpled volcanic boulder, a meteorite, a
pebble resembling a pig, a yam, or an arrowhead, a piece of shining quartz,
these and such as these are almost certain to be invested with the vague
but dreadful attributes of Powers. Nor, although to us nothing appears so
utterly inanimate as a stone, is savage animatism in the least afraid to
regard it alive. Thus the Kanakas differentiate their sacred stones into
males and females, and firmly believe that from time to time little stones
appear at the side of the parent blocks.”
This is the period called by Marett Animatism, and by Clodd
Naturalism.”
The distinction made between the usual and the unusual, and
the personification of the striking phenomena are already found in
the animal world. Clodd cites an instance from Romanes:
A skye-terrier . . . . used to play with dry bones by tossing them in the
air, throwing them to a distance, and generally giving them the appearance
of animation, in order to give himself the ideal pleasure of worrying them.
On one occasion I tied a long and fine thread to a dry bone and gave him
* R. R. Marett, “Is Taboo a Negative Magic P” Anthropological Essays (pre-
sented to Edward Burnett Tylor) (Oxford, 1907), p. 230.
* Archibald Henry Sayce, Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as
Illustrated by the Religion of the Ancient Babylonians (London, 1891) (Hibbert
Lectures, 1887), p. 328.
* R. R. Marett, “Preanimistic Religion,” Folk-Lore, XI, 174.
* Edward Clodd, Animism (Chicago), p. 22.
PSYCHOLOGY OF SUPERNATURALISM IN THE RITUAL 49
the latter to play with. After he had tossed it about for a short time, I
took the opportunity, when it had fallen at a distance from him and while
he was following it up, of gently drawing it away from him by means of
the long, invisible thread. Instantly his whole demeanor changed. The
bone, which he had previously pretended to be alive, began to look as if it
were really alive, and his astonishment knew no bounds. He first approached
it with nervous caution, but, as the slow receding movement continued and
he became quite certain that the movement could not be accounted for by
any residuum of force which he had himself communicated, his astonish-
ment developed into dread and he ran to conceal himself under some
articles of furniture.” -
The naïve situation of regarding the inanimate objects as alive
is also exemplified by the way little children regard their dolls. In
the primitive ceremony this attitude comes to the surface where-
ever the object itself is viewed as though it were living and as
though it could be influenced without any further mediation. The
Intichiuma ceremony cited in the first chapter is obviously a case
in point. The Hakea tree is here addressed directly as though it
were a person. Indeed, for the black Australians it is a person.
But this first naive way of regarding objects as living beings is
superseded by animism proper. The notion of separable spirits
grows up, according to which any object whatsoever may become
the habitat of a spirit. The notion of the separable spirit may have
originated in a number of different ways. Wundt has given one
source when he says, “Das Bild, das der Naturmensch im Traume
sieht, ist ihm unmittelbare Wirklichkeit.” In the mental con-
struction of his world, early man makes no discrimination between
dreams, hallucinations, and normal perceptions. The very life
which the savage lives, as well as his lack of logical interpreta-
tion of normal perceptions, tends to increase the number of sensory
and motor automatisms. Hunger and repletion excite remarkably
vivid dreams. “After a bootless chase and a long fast he lies down
exhausted; and while slumbering, goes through a successful hunt—
kills, skins, and cooks his prey and suddenly wakes when about to
taste his first morsel.” Or having gorged himself with food, and
lying in a nightmare, he fancies himself run down by a lion and
*Ibid., pp. 22 f.
* William Wundt, Völkerpsychologie, Zweiter Band: “Mythus und Reli-
gion,” Zweiter Teil (Leipzig, 1906), p. 85.
* Herbert Spencer, Principles of Sociology (New York, 1906), I, 135.
5O THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RITUALISM
wakes with a start to find himself trembling with fright. Such
experiences Wundt and Spencer agree are taken at face value.
Again, the savage has lost some relative, or perhaps the chief of the
tribe has suddenly died. In his slumbers he sees his departed wife
in his lodge with him, or hears his chief urge his braves to war.
These dreams are related by the savage not as things which he
dreamed, but as things actually seen. Thus one strengthens the other
in the belief that realities are seen in dreams. What holds true
with reference to dreams is also true in the case of various types
of sensory automatisms. Hallucinations, trances, and other mystical
experiences are held to have objective value.
It is out of the firm belief in such experiences that the doctrine
of the separable soul has probably emerged. The sleeper or the
man having the mystical experience repeats to others what he has
seen while asleep or in the trance. He says he has been elsewhere:
his friends say he has not; and he verifies their testimony by finding
himself where he was before his experience. Or the sleeper feels
confident that he has seen his wife working about the lodge as he
has seen her so often before. But she is dead and buried. The
savage does not believe that one or the other of these positions is
false. He accepts them both. He himself has a double existence.
One of his individualities may leave the other and come back again.
His wife has a soul which survives the body and is separable from
it, and on Occasion may be seen.
That such beliefs are actually held by the savages can be shown
by material gathered from nearly all quarters. The negro of West
Africa speaks of his dream-soul. “That it is which leaves the body
on occasions during sleep, and, wandering off, delights itself by
visiting strange lands and strange scenes.” “Among the Semi-
moles of Florida, when a woman died in childbirth, the infant was
held over her face to receive her parting spirit, and thus acquire
strength and knowledge for its future use.” The Amerinds be-
lieve that “there are duplicate souls, one of which remains with
the body, while the other is free to depart on excursions during
sleep.” The Sandwich Islanders say the departed member of a
family appears to the survivors sometimes in a dream, and watches
over their destinies. Instances similar to these could be multiplied.
* Robert Hamill Nassau, Fetichism in West Africa (New York, 1904), p. 54.
* Edward B. Tylor, Primitive Culture (New York, 1889), I, 433.
* Herbert Spencer, op. cit., p. 137.
PSYCHOLOGY OF SUPERNATURALISM IN THE RITUAL 5I
The idea of duplicate souls—one remaining with the body and the .
other free to roam where it will—comes to expression in the primi-
tive belief, on the one hand, of the soul having a definite seat in
some definite part of the body—liver, fat, heart, blood—and, on the
other, in the separable soul variously called “anima” and “umbra.”
That the “anima,” or breath-soul, is capable of passing from one
individual to another is a firm conviction of primitive man. The
holding of the child of the dying Seminole woman so as to inhale
the escaping Spirit, as cited above, is a case in point. Likewise, at
the death of an ancient Roman, the nearest kinsman leaned over the
departing relative to get his last breath. This is manifestly one of
the simplest types of spirit possession. It opens avenues for a
savage world philosophy. The thing which I wish to emphasize
is that it is a product of the social consciousness. The “anima” or
“umbra” is always an alter, sometimes to be cherished and at other
times to be avoided.
This alter appears in multitudinous ways in primitive magic and
religion. It is not too bold to assume that when primitive man has
once attained to the conception of separable spirits in actual com-
munication with himself and others, souls that may take possession
of him through the process of inhalation, the natural tendency is
progressivly to assume more, and the occasions on which spirit
possession is considered a fact tend to multiply. It is not here con-
tended that sleep, dreams, death, and automatic experiences of
various kinds are the only source of the belief in invisible agency.
They manifestly are one agency. For the rest, it is doubtless true,
as Professor Thomas asserts, that “a mind which seeks explanation
of mysteries and of incidents uncontrolled by human agency is
forced to assume the presence of invisible personal agents or
spirits.” But it is also true that the material alluded to by
Spencer, Tylor, and Wundt is so much material on hand on which
the savage probably first draws. At any rate, when the conception
of a world of spirits is once attained, primitive man begins to
attribute any experience out of the ordinary to spirit possession or
the influence of a spirit.
For instance, what we call a nightmare is believed to be a visit “
from an evil spirit by primitive people. “The demon Koin strives
to throttle the dreaming Australian; the evil ‘na' crouches on the
stomach of the Karen; the North American Indian gorged with
* Thomas, Source Book for Social Origins, p. 733.
52 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RITUALISM
feasting is visited by nocturnal spirits; the Caribs subject to hideous
dreams, often wake declaring that the demon Maboya had beaten
them in their sleep and they could still feel the pain.” On one of
my numerous trips in the interior of China, my Chinese cook came
to me one morning greatly alarmed. “There was a demon in my
bedroom last night,” he said. “How do you know?” I inquired.
“It was in my sleep,” he said, “that I felt something heavy bearing
down on my chest. I was unable to breathe and woke up. Finally,
with one great effort I pushed it from me and lit a match; but I
could see nothing. It was a demon. I shall never sleep in that
room again.”
Automatic speech, automatic deeds of extraordinary strength or
skill, uncontrollable rage in battle, epilepsy, even spasmodic con-
tractions and contentless trances are interpreted as spirit possession
by the savage.” The presence of disquieting dreams during times
of sickness, as well as the unnatural tossing while in high fever and
the violence of insanity, leads to an association of the disease with
evil spirits. Thus disease is quite generally among primitive peoples
attributed to possession by evil spirits. The function of ritualism
in such a case is, of course, that of exorcism. A Chinese friend
has written me as follows regarding disease: “It is generally
believed in China that sickness is caused by the evil spirits or
demons. In such a case Taoist priests use charms to expel the
evil spirit from the person.” The type of ceremony varies, but the
end sought is the same. The Malay medicine-man invokes the
Tiger Spirit to assist him in expelling a rival spirit of less power.”
Among the Dakotas “the medicine-man's cure consists in reciting
charms over the patient, singing He-le-li-lah, etc., to the accompani-
ment of a gourd rattle with beads inside, ceremonially shooting a
symbolic bark representation of the intruding creature, sucking over
the seat of pain to get the spirit out, and firing guns at it as it is
supposed to be escaping.”
It is not necessary to multiply examples. Enough has been
said to make it obvious that animism serves to explain the refer-
ence to spirits in ancestor worship, in rites designed to exorcise
* Tylor, op. cit., II, 189.
* George A. Coe, “Automatic Factors in Religious Experiences,” art. in
Hastings' Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics (New York).
* Skeat, Malay Magic, p. 436.
* Tylor, op. cit., II, 128 f.
PSYCHOLOGY OF SUPERNATURALISM IN THE RITUAL 53
evil spirits and influences, and in ceremonies devised to make
medicine-men by bringing them into direct communication with
the spirit world. Our task is, however, not yet completed. While
animatism and animism serve to account for references to living
objects and spirits, they do not cover the entire range of higher
powers. How are we to account for the passage from polydae-
monism to polytheism and from thence to monotheism?” To this
question we may give the general answer, that the passage was
probably made in various ways. But in whatever way it may have
come about, the process was one of further discrimination within
the social consciousness.
In the case of the Semites, the early or nomad religion gathered
about the tribal god.” He was believed to be the ancestor of
the clan and belonged to that clan alone. There were as many
gods of this type as there were clans. The god made the wel-
fare of his tribe his greatest care and entered into all tribal enter-
prises. The tribal wars were his wars. He had neither help nor
sympathy for outsiders. Parallel with this belief in the tribal
god and his worship, subsisted a belief in animism as described
above. In fact, we may view the whole belief as animism with
one particular spirit elevated to the rank of god because he was
thought to be the common ancestor. Jahwe, who was probably recog-
nized by the Israelites as a most powerful tribal god, became their
national god under the leadership of Moses. There was, however,
a frank recognition of other gods. Up to the time of the prophets
the Israelites reached nothing higher than monolatry. In the teach-
ings of the prophets Jahwe was socialized to the extent that he
became the god of all men. Moreover, he was given an ethical char-
acter and thus ethical monotheism was attained. The steps from
tribal to national and from national to universal religion, or from
polydaemonism to monolatry and from monolatry to monotheism
were possible only because there had been a corresponding change
in the social consciousness. The deity reflects the social and politi-
cal condition of his people.
Or the advance from polydaemonism to polytheism may have
taken place by the way of fetishism. In its simplest form the
fetish is some natural object, as for instance a stock or a stone,
* Vide Irving King, The Development of Religion, chap. ix.
* Allan Menzies, History of Religion (New York, 1906), p. 158.
54 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RITUALISM
which is believed to be the habitat of some spirit. Not infre-
quently it is a small object hung about the neck. From this stage
advance is made by having some particular object consecrated as
a fetish by the magic doctor, to whom special influence over the
spirit world is attributed. The purpose in all this is to secure a
definite type of control over the environment. When the fetish
ceases to bring about the desired result, it is discarded. By some
it has been supposed that fetishism is peculiar to Africa and that
there it is the result of religious degeneration; but it may be
accepted as a general statement that wherever animism is found,
and we have reason to believe that this is more or less devel-
oped among all primitive peoples, there fetishism in some
form or other appears. The principle of fetishism is essentially
that of idolatry, that is to say, an object is viewed as the habitat
of a spirit. In case the polydaemonistic spirit inhabiting a par-
ticular object proves to be extraordinarily efficacious in bringing
about results, it becomes invested with great prestige. This would
be especially true if the spirit is believed to be that of a great
leader or of a common ancestor. Gradually hallowed by custom,
it becomes an object of awe, reverence, and worship—an idol rather
than a fetish. Objects similar to the one inhabited by the spirit
are made and the influence of the spirit is thought to extend
to these. This gives full-fledged idolatry. By almost impercep-
tible gradations the spirit has become a god. Is it not probable that
in some such way as this early Buddhism—a religion without a god
—gradually developed into an elaborate system of idolatry in Japan
and China? The basis on which any such development could
transpire would be that the spirit becomes efficacious in the realiza-
tion of group values.
Again, it is quite clear that certain of the great gods have
developed out of primitive man's attitude toward the heavenly
bodies and the phenomena of the weather. These are first regarded
as living. Each gradually acquires a character of its own, in
accordance with the value it represents to the group. Heaven
becomes a father, the earth the corresponding mother. The reason
is not hard to surmise. The storm is a god and the dawn a god-
dess. The various, thus personified nature gods are surrounded
with myths and legends. Each is confined to his particular sphere.
Polytheism is the result. Henotheism may easily follow and
finally monotheism.
PSYCHOLOGY OF SUPERNATURALISM IN THE RITUAL 55
It is not our purpose, in giving the above description of the
passage from polydaemonism to polytheism and from there on
up to monotheism, to assert that these are the only ways in which
this could take place. Nor do we wish to maintain that any one
line was of necessity rigorously carried out. There were doubtless
varying circumstances. Any particular transition would have its
own peculiarities and its own character. This much would, how-
ever, stand, that the method of transition was concrete. It came
out of man's effort to meet his everyday needs and should not
be conceived of as having come through any vague sense of the
infinite or of a mysterious power.
And now in closing this chapter, we pass once more to the
ceremony. Instinctive activity is man's primitive endowment and ".
determines the direction of his efforts. The medium in which this
takes place is the social group to which he belongs. As long
as instincts function smoothly no reorganization of conduct is
effected except through chance variation. On this level whatever
rituals there may be (I have been unable to find any) bear no trace
of thought. When, however, a problematic situation arises, when
the crisis comes, and attention brings about a reorganization of
conduct, then we have a thought process, though of a very crude
type. The content of the new reaction is determined by the way
in which attention utilizes the native endowment of instincts and
impulses, the social consciousness, and past experience in bring-
ing about satisfactory control. There is no other material at hand
that can be utilized by the savage. In case of disease, for instance,
primitive man cannot base a cure upon a scientific knowledge of
anatomy, physiology, and materia medica, when for him the ailment
is due to possession by an evil spirit. He naturally resorts to some
method of exorcism. In any given instance the fortunate or
satisfactory reaction is repeated when a similar occasion presents
itself, and so becomes a group habit. Hallowed by custom, it
becomes the prescribed method of procedure and thereby is
ritualized. -
As regards the development of old rituals—cults thoroughly ,
habituated and hence on a level with instinct and impulse—reor-
ganization can take place through chance variation or through a
thought process. Our present-day rituals are the result of long
and gradual development. The process has, on the whole, not
56 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RITUALISM
been that of consciously originating ceremonies, but of progres-
sively meeting the returning needs of life. From this point of
view, ritualism is the unconscious product of man's effort to meet
his needs and be at home in the world. It is a part of the organ-
ized social life into which each individual is born and to which
he conforms in an unconscious way. If the individual becomes really
conscious of it, it is usually when a problematic situation arises.
He may then become the dynamic center of another reconstruction.
CHAPTER VI
THE RELATION OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE RITUAL TO
CHANGES WITHIN THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS
I
If our description of the ceremony so far has been correct, it
follows that the rituals tend to develop according as the social con-
Sciousness of the group concerned changes. As long as the social
consciousness remains fixed upon the same objects in the same
way, there is like permanence in the ritualistic observances. But
let the change once come, and old habits are of necessity modified
and frequently entirely supplanted.
f
|
There are evidently a number of situations which would be con-
ducive to profound changes in the social consciousness. All would
fall under the head of crises discussed in the fourth chapter.
Whenever there is a transition from one type of life to another,
from a nomadic to an agricultural, for instance, or from a tribal
régime to a national government, we have instances of a corre-
sponding change in the social consciousness. There is a reorgani-
zation of the relation of the members of the group, not only
to one another and to other groups, but also to the spirits and
deities. Some of the latter will fall into the background; others
will get a prominent place in the pantheon. The character of all
is likely to assume a different aspect. That the overt expression
in rites and ceremonies should not change under such circum-
stances is, of course, inconceivable. §
Then, we have the typical situation of the great man in the
group. A Xenophanes, a Micah, a Gautama, a Jesus, rises up
in arms against current conceptions of religion and morality. He
becomes a thought stimulator, a leader of men. He creates a new
type of social consciousness. Such a typical thought situation
naturally tends to dissolve old habits and ipso facto cannot but
more or less profoundly affect the ritual.
In the third place, any great calamity that befalls the group
will bring about changes in its social consciousness. The same
is true of any special streak of good fortune. The inefficient
god is relegated to ignominy, the favorite deity is extolled and
T
57
58 THE PSYCHIOLOGY OF RITUALISM
made the center of elaborate worship. The conquered gods
become demons, the conquering tribal deity becomes a national god.
- In the fourth place, abstracting certain objects from the
general field of consciousness and investing them with purely
physical attributes takes them from the realm of the social
and places them into the category of the mechanical. Mys-
tery is resolved into force; teleology into mechanism. Movement
is now no longer invariably associated with life. It may be
strictly mechanical. The rise of the scientific attitude in its
various manifestations means the death of many old notions.
In the case of disease, for instance, demon possession and its
cure, exorcism, could no longer hold their own when a scientific
treatment of disease was discovered. Enter pathogenic bacilli,
exeunt demons and foreign substances such as crystals.
Finally, the rational socialization of the universe of social
objects by the group invests the social object itself with an
orderly, law-abiding character. This is a late product and is to
be carefully distinguished from the naïve primitive social con-
sciousness which is a result of the normal functioning of man's
native endowment of instincts and impulses. The type of social
consciousness here referred to is built through deliberate reflec-
tion upon the native endowment. The god is no longer thought
to be arbitrary and capricious. His conduct is rational. He is
completely socialized. He seeks the welfare of all. Not ritual
but rational conduct—i.e., the moral act—is the standard by
which he judges. If the rituals are retained it is not because of the
effect they have upon the higher power, but because of their influ-
ence upon the participant. It is well known that the initiation cere-
monies (I refer particularly to such as take the religious char-
acter) of modern secret societies are designed to that end.
II
If now we turn to a description of the general stages through
which the ritual passes in its development, we find the follow-
ing: The primitive ritual has its origin as the accompany-
ing overt expression of a naïve and relatively undiscriminat-
ing type of consciousness." Primitive man sees that particular
* Miss Strong has defended the same position with reference to prayer in her
monograph on the psychology of prayer (Anna Louise Strong, A Consideration
of Prayer from the Standpoint of Social Psychology, 1908).
RITUAL DEVELOPMENT AND SOCIAL CONSCIOUSINESS 59
events follow upon certain actions. His conclusion is that a
reproduction of the antecedents will mediate the consequences.
Sometimes he is right, and at others wrong. He is unable because
of lack of adequate technique to distinguish that which is essential
from that which is merely incidental, or that which is social from
that which is physical. He believes that the order and success of his
world depend upon the accuracy with which he is able to repro-vº
duce that which tradition teaches him to be the cause. The
slightest variation in the prescribed method is believed to be
disastrous. Thus, rain will not follow upon the performance of
the rain ceremony unless all the traditional minutiae have been
carefully and literally carried out. This lack of logical analysis
is one of the most potent factors in the development of the most
elaborate rituals, often extending over days and sometimes over
weeks and months. When at the time of a crisis a new element is
added, the old remains with but slight modifications. W. W. Skeat
has called attention to this in his Malay Magic. Over the substratum
of original primitive rituals, we find a veneer of Hinduism and Mo-
hammedanism. Likewise in China, one and the same individual
often sees no inconsistency in being a Confucianist, a Taoist, a
Buddhist, and a Christian. Anything that works in the Social
environment is ipso facto satisfactory. The writer at one time
had a coolie, Lao Wang, employed as gardener, who one day
came to him with the announcement that he wished to join the
church. “Why?” I asked. “Because I am working for you,” he
answered. He was desirous of so adapting himself to his envi-
ronment that he might reap every benefit. He was a typical child
of nature. The incident of being employed by a European was
the occasion for that crude or incomplete type of thought which
adapts itself to the new situation without recognizing any of the
deeper logical and moral implications of the act. The chief
objection to such primitive types of thought is just this lack of
adequate logical connection.
The ritual, we have heretofore asserted, is the outcome of
primitive man's effort at control. With him it is a practical affair.
The control sought is over his world. The ritual is not restricte
" ***~~~~~~~... ... ... ... "sº re-e. ..…" **i-sº e e
to some aspects of life; it pre-empts the entire realm of experi-
ence. At this undifferentiated stage it covers everything. Religion,
philosophy, science, medicine, ethics, and the techniques of
everyday life, all are within its borders. We may assert with
p.
*
6o THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RITUALISM
i
confidence that by far the larger number of ceremonies are
approved group habits. But that this is not universally true is
attested by the clandestine manner in which some magical cere-
monies are performed.
We may go a step farther in our analysis by pointing out
that the primitive rituals contain both the thou-shalt and the
thou-shalt-not. They are both religious and irreligious, moral
and immoral. The religious elements are incorporated in those
which are performed with the approval of the group: all others
are irreligious. The same is true with reference to the moral
and the immoral. That the entire group should participate as a
man is not necessary, but its approval is indispensable to religion
and morality. The “black art” rituals performed without the
approval of the group are examples of irreligious and immoral
ceremonies.
Any really profound change in the attitude toward ritualism
depends upon further differentiation of the objects of conscious-
ness. The difficulty does not lie in adding to the rituals, for the
dominant tendency is progressively to ritualize. The Jews of the
time of Jesus are a case in point. The real problem lies in
eliminating certain objects and situations from the ritual. This
state of affairs is reached when logical or scientific implications
are comprehended at least to the extent that the efficiency of the
ceremony is critically examined, or when the value of individual
experience takes such a place in the life of the group that his
manner of reacting is no longer definitely delimited. Individual
freedom is not the virgin soil of ritualism.
As soon, then, as discrimination begins, inroad is made on the
field of ritualism. We may take the rain ceremony as an instance.
As long as the rain is viewed as a social object which can be
influenced by direct appeal either through pantomimicry or
language, the ritual is the normal method of control. Likewise,
as long as the prescientific stage of reasoning from pure analogy
prevails, the ritual subsists. The successful act and its con-
comitants are incorporated into the ritual until it sometimes takes
days to perform the ceremony. When, however, the utter use-
lessness of all these ceremonial performances in bringing about
rain is realized, when scientific research has brought to light
RITUAL DEVELOPMENT AND SOCIAL CONSCIOUSINESS 6I
the inanity of any such method of control, the ritual dies a
natural death.
The thing essential for such a breakdown is that the group
become conscious of the new situation. In this the authorities
and leaders of the group may either render great assistance or
materially hinder the course of events. The Chinese in many
parts of the empire have not yet become cognizant of the situa-
tion and are not infrequently heard performing the rain ceremony
or the ceremony for the cessation of rain. A large percent-
age of the officials know well that such ceremonies have no
rain-determining values, but they increase their prestige over the .
people by performing the ceremony as soon as the barometer
indicates the desired change. Let the group once become
thoroughly inoculated with the new attitude toward rain, and the
ceremony will disappear. This particular ceremony is, of course,
an obvious case and one comparatively easy to deal with. The
scientific attitude has, however, made such inroads that it has
pretty well disposed not only of this but of all rituals designed for
the control of the physical environment.
Likewise, if we turn to the development of individual free-
dom and of the recognition of the value of individual experience,
which are indispensable accompaniments of Scientific progress,
we find a tendency to sever connection with old group standards
and to contend for autonomic action. That was the motivating
spirit of Martin Luther and his sympathizers in the Reformation.
Its success meant a break with the ritual of the Roman Catholic
church. On the other hand, if one would see for himself just
how strong the hold of ritualism is upon a people that has not
yet passed from religious serfdom into religious autonomy, he
will find a superb example in a comparatively high stage of cul-
ture in the famous City of Seven Hills. Religion and ritualism
are there synonymous. If, perchance, he should find himself at
the Scala Sancta, he will be impressed with the fact, as he sees
young and old slowly and laboriously climbing the stairs on hands
and knees, that almost anything can be made to have religious sig-
nificance, if only it has the sanction and approval of the group, and
that the most unmoral act can be given tremendous moral value.
The third stage in the development of ritualism is reached
when the group has added the conception of a completely social-
l*
i_º
62 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RITUALISM
;
ized God and the ideal of a completely socialized humanity
to the principle of autonomy and to the scientific attitude which
culls away any attempt to attain physical results from the
ritual. The ceremony then loses its obligatory character as
regards the deity SKIt is performed for subjective rather than
for objective results. It may at times fall away entirely. The
real object of the ritual, in case it subsists, is the attainment of
a wider, more social self. The alter, usually in the form of the
deity, is an organization of content not included in the self.” The
ritual is performed, on the one hand, to make that content one's
own. In that aspect it becomes contemplative. On the other
hand, the ritual may be performed in order to develop capacity
for moral action. Contemplation here gives way to a desire to
act—to enter into a more social relationship with other selves.
Both aspects are present in the rituals of modern Christianity.
It is not necessary, however, that the content of the aesthetic
consciousness or the stimulus to social activity be presented in the
ritualistic form. The ritual, now no longer thought to be as
essential as in primitive society, is simply a convenient instru-
ment of social control. . . . . . . . . - - -
* Strong, op. cit., p. I Io.
CHAPTER VII
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE RITUAL ILLUSTRATED
In the preceding chapter we gave a general description of
situations that produce profound changes in the social conscious-
ness, and hence tend to modify the ritual. To this we added a
sketch of the general stages through which ritualism passes in its
development. In the present chapter we will attempt to make
the point of view maintained more concrete. To this end, we
will examine the life and the ritual of the Semites, first in their
primitive or nomadic condition, and then in the various stages
of their development as exemplified in the Old Testament. From
this we will make the passage into New Testament ritualism as
manifested in the Eucharist, and trace modifications of the latter
in the Christian church. We are defending the thesis that the
ritual tends to change as the social consciousness changes, and
that profound changes in the ritual are to be attributed directly
to changes within the social consciousness.
It is not necessary to go into a detailed discussion regarding
the cradle of the Semites. Whether they originally came from
Babylonia as von Kremer, Guidi, and Hommel advocate, or from
Africa as Jastrow, Brinton, Palgrave, and Keane believe, or were
indigenous to Arabia as Sayce, Sprenger, and others maintain, is
of no special importance for this study. If the Semites were not
originally at home in Arabia, their migration to it took place very
early. “Any statement of it in years is a mere guess.” It is cer-
tain that “the peculiar conditions of life which the Arabian desert
and oases have presented for millenniums are the matrix in which
Semitic character as it is known to us was born.” Barton in his
Semitic Origins has called attention to the central place of the
palm tree in the semi-agricultural nomadic life of the clans. The
influence and sanctity of the oases is probably preserved in the
“high places” so peculiar to Semitic religious worship in widely
separated localities.
* George Aaron Barton, A Sketch of Semitic Origins (New York, 1902),
chap. i.
* Ibid., p. 28.
63
64 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RITUALISM
From Arabia migrations took place into lands occupied by the
Semites during the historical period. The Babylonians, Aramaeans,
and Canaanites first departed for new fields. They probably first
settled in Babylonia and the neighboring regions. Later this body
of emigrants was divided by further migrations, the Canaanites
settling in Palestine, where the Israelites later found them, and the
Assyrians choosing what was later known as Assyria. The main
body in Central Arabia also lost clans through migration southward,
when a portion of them crossed into Africa and settled in
Abyssinia.
The early Semites were essentially nomads. As the Israelites
were Semites, we have no reason for viewing them in any way
essentially different from all the rest of their kinsmen. They,
too, were nomads with manners, customs, and disposition like the
others. The chief care of the ancient Semitic nomads was their
flocks. Some sort of social organization was indispensable to
insure safety from marauders and wild animals, and to secure
co-operation in obtaining food. The clan, both W. Robertson
Smith and George Aaron Barton are agreed, was the earliest social
unit,” and was organized for the purpose of protection and co-
operation. There is a reason to believe that this is a justifiable
position, not only for historic times but also far back into pre-
historic times. The nucleus of such a clan was generally a group
of brothers and sisters who constituted a household and were
bound together either through a tie of actual blood relationship or
through a blood covenant.* The god of the group, who was really
° W. Robertson Smith, The Religion of the Semites, p. 35; Barton, op. cit.,
p. 3O.
* H. Clay Trumbull in his book The Blood Covenant (New York, 1885),
pp. 5 f., describes a later development of the rite as it was consummated in a
village at the base of the mountains of Lebanon. Two young men wished to
enter into a covenant relation. Relatives and friends were congregated in the
open place at the village fountain. Public announcement of the purpose and
reasons for entering into this compact was made by the young men, and dupli-
cate copies were made of these declarations and one was given to each. These
having been duly signed by themselves and several witnesses, one of the young
men opened a vein in the arm of the other with a small knife and by means of
a quill inserted into the wound sucked the living blood. The blood which had
adhered to the knife-blade was wiped on one of the duplicate covenant records.
The same ceremony was then performed by the other party and the knife wiped
on the other paper. Each blood-marked paper was folded separately and sewed
up in a small amulet, to be worn by the covenant brothers.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE RITUAL ILLUSTRATED 65
a totem, was the common ancestor of the clan.” The clan was
made up of its god, the members of the group, and their animals,
“all of whom were akin to one another.” Each member of the
clan had this one god as his own, though the reality of other gods
was not denied. The link between the god and his clansmen was
of the strongest character.
The primitive Semitic clans were small and continually at war
with one another. In their various enterprises the god joined with
them. Their wars were his wars; and when any of them were
injured or slain, he assisted in the necessary act of retaliation." In
return for this, he had indisputable claim to the reverence and serv-
ice of the community. The relationship existing between god and
worshiper was interpreted on the analogy of human relationships.
In the fifth chapter we have noted that primitive man's con-
ception of nature is dominantly social. He views everything as
living. The Semites were in this respect no different from other
primitive peoples. They believed that they were surrounded by
jinn or spirits, as is shown in the account of Jacob's dream. What
is more, the gods of the primitive Semitic community had a definite
relation to some material objects. They were thought to have their
home at certain fixed sanctuaries; and their power and authority
were believed to be restricted to circumscribed areas. Thus in the
case of Jahwe, Sinai, in the land of the Kenites,” where Moses first
met him, was his dwelling-place. The dwelling-place of the god
was called a “high place.” Here the goddess, for the Semites were
extremely interested in sexual life, also had her abode. Barton
suggests that the origin of god and goddess is to be traced to the
culture of the date palm in the oases, which would mean that
primitive Semitic religion was organized on the analogies of the
life of the community.” The deities were believed to be the source
of fertility and life (plant, animal, and human). They were not
ubiquitous, but were confined to definite areas and particular
groups.
* Menzies, History of Religion, p. 158; Semitic Origins, p. 35.
* Semitic Origins, p. 81. * Menzies, op. cit., p. 158.
* Semitic Origins, p. 267. The Kenites are also known as Midianites. The
relation of Moses to the Midianites is well known to every Bible student. His
wife was a Midianite, and it was among them that Moses found refuge after he
had slain the Egyptian.
* Ibid., p. 83.
66 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RITUALISM
. Such, with minor variations, was the social consciousness of
the early Semites. The community consisted of god, goddess, the
actual members of the group, and the animals belonging to the
group. All were bound together in one social bond. The relation-
ship was not that of an outraged and angry god to a disloyal and
depraved community, but rather one of fellowship and co-opera-
tion in the affairs of life.
What type of ritual, let the reader ask himself, would be natural
under such circumstances? Is it reasonable to expect that a high
sense of sin and unworthiness be revealed? Manifestly not, for
the god is just as much a member of the community as any human
being, nor is it conceivable that he could be completely alienated
from it. The normal type of sacrifice under such circumstances
would be an expression of fellowship, and of the intimacy of the
bond existing between the god and his clansmen. The precise
nature would depend upon environment and the techniques ac-
quired. That this is true to fact is abundantly evidenced by the
result of modern scholarship. Subjoined is what Menzies finds:
Sacrifice is not domestic but takes place at the spot where the god is
thought to reside, or where the symbol stands which represents him. Usually
this was an upright monolith, such as is found in every part of the world,
and the central act of the sacrifice consisted in applying the blood of the
new-slain victim to this stone. The blood was thus brought near to the
god, the clansmen also may have touched the blood at the same time; and
the act meant that the god and the tribesmen, all coming into contact with
the blood, which originally perhaps was that of the animal totem of the
clan, declared that they were of the same blood and renewed the bond
which connected them with each other. A further feature of early Semitic
sacrifice is also that the slaughter and the blood ceremony are succeeded
by a banquet, at which the god is thought to sit at table with his clients,
his share being exposed before him on the stone or altar. . . . . . Many
examples may be collected in the early historical books of the Old Testa-
ment of sacrifices which are at the same time social and festive occasions;
in fact, in early Israel every act of slaughter was a sacrifice, and every
sacrifice a banquet. The people dance and make merry before their god,
of whose favour they have just become assured once more by the act of
communion they have observed. The undertaking they have on hand is
hallowed by his approval, so they can boldly advance to it; the corporate
spirit of the tribe is quickened by renewed contact with its head; all thoughts
of care are far away; the religious act makes the worshippers simply and
unaffectedly happy, if it does not even fill them with an orgiastic ecstasy.”
* Menzies, op. cit., pp. 162 f.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE RITUAL ILLUSTRATED 67
Karl Marti has called attention to the fact that the religion of
the Old Testament passed through four periods, which he distin-
guishes as the Nomad religion, the Peasant religion, the religion of
the Prophets, and the Legal religion. In the first or nomadic period,
religion corresponded in all its essentials to the description given
above. We have simply the expression in rites and ceremonies of
the social consciousness of the early Semites. If, now, in order
to have something as definite and concrete as possible along the
line of Semitic development, we turn our attention specifically to
the Israelites, we find that a profound change took place in their
manner of living and their view of the world when they made the
transition from a pastoral to an agricultural stage of culture.”
This was effected when they took possession of Canaan. Under
the leadership of Moses at the foot of Mount Sinai, the various
tribes which had been in bondage in Egypt were bound together into
one organization. They accepted as their god the Kenite Jahwe,
whom they believed to be their deliverer. As the Kenites were a
clan whose origin was more directly Arabian, the Israelitish clans
were thus brought under the direct influence of early Semitic
ideas, and under such circumstances the tendency would be not
away from but in the direction of primitive institutions. The
religion they had under the leadership of Moses was nomadic.
When they entered Canaan they immediately came into con-
tact with a people who spoke a language similar to their own. The
tribes of Canaan were originally nomadic like themselves, but had
long since advanced to agriculture and the building of cities. The
Babylonian cuneiform writing was known to them, and elements
of Egyptian civilization had also been assimilated.” Their religion
was no less different from that of the Israelites than their civiliza-
tion. The change from a nomadic to an agricultural life had made
a reconstruction of religion inevitable. They carried on the wor-
ship of Baal, the male god, and of a female deity in the “high
places” scattered over Palestine, where were found an upright
stone called “Massebah” and a massive tree trunk with some of its
branches intact called “Ashera.” These were thought to be the
abode of the male and the female deities.” The name Baal is not
* Vide chap. vi., p. 57, of this thesis.
* Karl Marti, The Religion of the Old Testament (New York, 1907), pp.
74 f.
* Menzies, op. cit., p. 166.
68 THE PSYCHIOLOGY OF RITUALISM
to be construed as a proper name: its original meaning was simply
lord or master. There were many Baals, therefore, of which each
particular one was the lord of the soil belonging to the worshiping
community, as well as the author of its fertility. The goddess
represented the principle of increase.
The act of worship was distinguished by its “cheerful and festal
nature. The offerings were fruits of the soil—corn, wine, oil,
fruits, etc., which constituted the feast at which, in accordance
with the old Semitic custom, the worshipers were seated around
the festive board—the god their honored guest.” He was to
enjoy the rich blessings but as lord of the fields and not as clansman.
It is evident from the above sketch that in the course of time
the Canaanites had introduced into their ritual many elements
from their agricultural life. This may seem like so much veneer
on old forms; but in the realm of the psychic one layer cannot be
superimposed on another without profoundly affecting both. Ves-
tiges of the old continue to survive, but they are rewoven and
reconstructed. When the Canaanite feasted his god on corn, wine,
and fruits, he was dealing with articles not generally in the hands
of nomads. The typical nomadic sacrifice was that of an animal.
Moreover, the sacrifices of the early nomadic Semites was an act
of sacramental communion. The group met with its god “and all
eating and drinking together, assurances were given and received
that the good understanding still continued which bound the tribes-
men to their god and to each other.” When the Canaanites
became prosperous agricultural people and the Baals lords of the
land and the sky, the relation between the worshiper and the god was
entirely different. A profound change had taken place within the
social consciousness. The farmers felt the necessity of being on
good terms with the givers of corn, wine, and other produce of the
field. The continuation of these favors from the deity depended
upon a friendly relationship on the part of the god. A poor year
would produce an emotional effect of a profound nature on the
farmers by making them feel that the controlling deity had with-
held the increase; and as a result sacrifices would be increased and
the conception thereof be changed. The sacrifice, no longer a sacra-
mental communion, became a gift to which the deity was entitled.
“With conceptions such as these many rites and ceremonies will
* Hiram C. Brown, The Historical Basis of Religion (Boston, 1906), p. 175.
* Menzies, op. cit., p. 179.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE RITUAL ILLUSTRATED 69
have come into use, on the due performance of which depended
the enjoyment of the fruits of the earth.” -
Such was the nature of the people with whom the Israelites
came into contact when they took possession of Canaan. We ask:
What was the effect? A long and bloody conflict was waged with
the occupants of the land, out of which the Israelites came forth as
victors. This was not, however, accomplished by partially exter-
minating the people and for the rest destroying every vestige of
former times. The social consciousness of the Israelites them-
selves was profoundly changed. Israel overcame the Canaanite
religion by taking over the religion of the conquered and fusing it
with its own. “The nomad religion became a peasant religion and
Jahwe the God of Israel, the Lord of Palestine.” What is more,
Jahwe in this new capacity became the deity of a typical agricul-
tural people. He was honored with the cultus of the early Baal
worship. The “high places” became his places of worship. Surely
our thesis that the ritual tends to change with the changed social
consciousness has proven to be true in this instance. Jahwe has
moved from his original home on Mount Sinai to the “high places”
of Baal. He is still the god of the Israelites, but in the capacity
of lord of the land. Not communion and fellowship, but the pay-
ment of a just obligation, was the great thought back of the ritual.
The Israelitish peasant had no more right to appear before Jahwe
without the sacrificial gift than he had before any human poten-
tate. In fact, no better figure can be applied to Jahwe during the
period when Israel was a kingdom than that of king. Religion was
strictly a community affair. The deity took no special interest in
the individual: the welfare of the nation was his concern. When
the individual needed counsel or comfort, he sought the wizard and
the soothsayer, and like every other primitive man believed im-
plicitly in magical ceremonies and influences. -
In the eighth century B.C. we have a period of protest against,
and of reconstruction of, old conceptions. Though the movement
as a whole was not successful in its pre-exilic aspects, it shows
that socialization of the deity, and the emergence of an effort to
secure proper evaluation of the individual experience, tend to break
down old ceremonies.” I refer to the prophets whose teachings
* Marti, op. cit., p. 94.
* Ibid., p. 99.
* Discrimination is here setting in. Vide chap vi, p. 60, of this thesis.
7o THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RITUALISM
stand out in sharp contrast to the popular religion of Israel. The
prophets were not foretellers, nor were they soothsayers and
wizards. They were forth-tellers, intensely practical men, “en-
lightened and devoted patriots, social and ethical reformers,
spiritual teachers.” They made the passage from monolatry to
monotheism. Theirs was the first real monotheism that appeared
in the history of Israel and, with the exception of the Egyptian
monotheism in the time of Pharaoh Amenhotep IV, probably the
first in the world. There is this great difference between Chuen-
aten's and that of the prophets, that the former was produced
through syncretism of Egypt's various deities, whereas the prophet's
monotheism was ethical. Jahwe of the prophets took no delight
in multiplicity of sacrifices. An ethical god, a social god who had
risen above the mere humoring of a people whose cultus made
room for drunkenness and license, needed no sacrifice. “I hate, I
despise your feasts, and I will take no delight in your solemn
assemblies,” was the message he sent through Amos. “To what
purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the
Lord ; . . . . bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomina-
tion unto me; the new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assem-
blies, I cannot away with ; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting.”
“What doth the Lord require of thee,” cried Micah, “but to do
justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”
That type of social consciousness, if once it had become dominant,
would have brought to an end the peasant ritual. The purpose of
the deity was conceived as the establishing of righteousness and
goodness on earth. It could not be tied up arbitrarily with the
welfare of the Israelites, for he was the God of all men. His high
ethical purpose was individual and universal. The individual was
responsible for his own conduct. Salvation was for all. “Look
unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God
and there is none else.” *
The prophetic ideals did not become popular before the exile.
The prophets suffered much persecution; for the mass of the
people was still clinging to old institutions, and was unable to dis-
cern deep ethical and social values. The prophets gathered about
* Charles Foster Kent, The Origin and Permanent Value of the Old Testa-
ment (New York, 1906), p. 1 13. Vide chap. vi., p. 57, of this thesis.
* Amos 5: 21. * Micah 6:8.
* Isaiah I : I I, 13. * Isaiah 45:22.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE RITUAL ILLUSTRATED 7I
them little groups of faithful adherents and of persons more or
less interested. Just what would have come out of this movement
no one can estimate, for a great calamity befell the Hebrews.
They were vanquished in war and led off to Babylon by Nebuchad-
nezzar. As it is, we must seek for its influence in any reconstruc-
tion that might emerge out of the calamity. In passing, this fact
is noticeable, that the very nature of the prophetic message was
such that a sympathizer would find vindication of its truth in the
calamity itself. That Jahwe should allow his own nation to be led
off into captivity would indicate that he did not really consider
himself as inseparably bound to one people, or that he was too
weak and inefficient to hold his own. The latter was inconceivable
from the Hebrew point of view.
That a reconstruction would follow as closely as possible in the
wake of Israel's captivity was to be expected. The spirit of the
prophets was not dead. The Babylonian exile was more than a
crisis. It was short, but not too short to effect a fundamental
transformation in the political, social, and religious character of
the Jews.” What the masses refused to do while they were pros-
perous in Palestine, they now gladly did. The calm and leisure
of the exile gave them time to meditate and opened their ears to
the messages of their prophetic teachers. “Torn from their old
associations, they no longer felt the spell of the high places and
heathen customs.” They began to look upon the captivity as
Jahwe's punishment for their sins, and longed to be reinstated in
his favor. No keen analysis is needed to see that such a type of
social consciousness is the matrix out of which piacular sacrifices
are born. Add to this the fact that the Babylonians were con-
stantly offering propitiatory sacrifices to their deities,” and that the
Jews knew and saw this, and the typical situation for the operation
of suggestion is present. Ritual and religion would crowd all else
from the focus of attention to the fringe of consciousness. Atone-
ment, absolution, expiatory sacrifice, would hold the center.
In the fifth century, with the return of the Jews to Jerusalem,
the evolution was complete. Under the protection of the Persian
government, Nehemiah introduced the law or Torah. Thereby the
will of Jahwe was accepted as reduced to writing, and the Torah
* Charles Foster Kent, A History of the Jewish People (New York, 1899),
p. 93.
* Ibid., p. 95.
72 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RITUALISM
became strictly regulative. From now on the Jews had a book
religion; they were under the yoke of the law. The individual was
not supposed to think for himself and by so doing to determine
right and wrong conduct. The Torah was proclaimed to be a
perfect and complete revelation, and matters of conduct were de-
cided by reference to it. Legal rather than ethical conduct was
thus attained. Jewish life, as anyone can easily see for himself by
reading Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, was limited on
every hand by ritual. In all this such conceptions as sin, unclean-
ness, atonement, stood out in proportion far beyond all else.
The fundamental notion upon which the ceremonial law was
based is that in the domain of Israel, Jahwe's own people, every-
thing without exception belonged and was thus consecrated to him
alone. This held good, accordingly, of all space and time and of
all property and life.” Had this thought been carried out to its.
logical consequences, it would have meant that all life should be
brought to Jahwe in sacrifice, and thereby the continued existence
of Israel woud have been made impossible. In the Torah, Jahwe
ordained that only a portion be given to him, but by this due
(terumah) symbolical expression was given to the confession that
Jahwe was lord of everything. E. Kautzsch has traced out this
situation with reference to holy places, \holy times, holy persons,
and the hallowed character of Israel’s things.” Under the last
the life of each individual was included.
The sacrificial system with its sacred history took the central
place in the Torah. Of sacrifice there were three kinds: the burnt-
offering, the peace-offering, and the piacular sacrifice. The under-
lying thought was, that for all the blessings of life man should be
grateful to Jahwe who gave them, and that, where the good will
of the deity had departed from the individual because of trans-
gression of the divine laws, the individual should give his very
best to bring about a renewal of the covenant fellowship with his
God. The Levitical system assigned the greatest importance to
the piacular sacrifice. This was preceded
by a verbal confession of guilt, uttered by the worshiper leaning upon the
victim's head. The chief feature, however, was the ceremonial sprinkling
of the blood at the spots to which belonged different degrees of sanctity,
* E. Kautzsch, “The Religion of Israel,” art. in Hastings’ Dictignary of the
Bible (extra vol.; New York, 1904), p. 716.
* Ibid., pp. 717 f.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE RITUAL ILLUSTRATED 73
implying different stages of nearness to God. . . . . In the case of the sin
offering, it was solemnly sprinkled either on the horns of the altar or
(when carried into the “Holy of Holies” on the Day of Atonement) upon
and before the mercy seat. . . . . The offender relied for renewal of cove-
nant fellowship with God on the blood (i.e. on the life) of the victim
which Jahveh accepted as substitute for the life of the offerer.”
The social consciousness out of which such rituals emerged was
radically different from that of the nomadic and peasant religions.
The sense of sin and guilt was everywhere in evidence. The deity,
far from being an ancestor, was a powerful god so much to be
feared that his name must not be spoken. The most that the indi-
vidual and the community could hope for was to secure and hold
his good will by sacrificing according to the method prescribed by
himself.
When a religion becomes stereotyped in laws reduced to writing
and regarded as strictly regulative, changes take place very slowly,
if at all. Within the religion itself it is next to impossible to pass
into anything higher. The laws are so apt to have a restraining
influence upon the development of a higher type of social con-
sciousness that nothing but force of circumstances can bring about
any change whatever. This is precisely the condition in which the
Jews were and are with their legal religion. Their religion today
testifies to the powerful influence of the Torah. In case an influ-
ential individual breaks away from the formalism of the prescribed
religion and gathers a group of disciples about him, reform and
change may take place in spite of legalism.
Such an individual was Jesus of Nazareth. His so-called Ser-
mon on the Mount and other declarations show him forth as radi-
cally opposed to the petty regulations of the law. He seized upon
the prophetic movement and emphasized love, righteousness, and
purity, as over against a ritualistic religion. “Be ye therefore
perfect even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” For
him God was a kind and beneficent father who “maketh his sun
to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just
and on the unjust,” and who is “kind unto the unthankful and
evil.”31 The greatest of all commandments, those on which the
* R. L. Ottley, The Religion of Israel (Cambridge, 1905), p. 143.
* Matt. 5:48.
* Matt. 5:45. * Luke 6:35.
74 THE PSYCHIOLOGY OF RITUALISM
Law and the Prophets hang, are, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy
God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul and with all thy
mind,” and “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” The work
of Jesus was in the direction of completely socializing God, and
placing this God as the ideal which man should strive to realize.
On the night before his crucifixion, Jesus ate a meal with his
twelve disciples in a room in Jerusalem. At this his last meal with
them, knowing that the crisis was at hand, he “took bread, and
gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them saying, This is my
body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me.”
That in this act he wished to institute a ceremony like the present
Lord's Supper is not at all clear, especially when we remember his
anti-ritualistic attitude; but that it resulted in the sacrament is
generally conceded. Harnack holds that “Jesus instituted a meal
to commemorate his death.”
It is probable that in the early days of Christianity every meal
at which Christians met was hallowed by eucharistic acts.” In
these times a solemn remembrance of the death of Jesus and the
interpretation of that death as sacrificial were the chief things in
the eucharistic act. This would indicate that the chief reference, in
addition to the immediate one of the death of Jesus, was backward
to the sacrificial element in the legal religion. Jesus was viewed
as the great sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. It is but
natural that with the sacrificial system still in vogue in the temple,
the death of Jesus should be related in some way to the sacrificial
act. In so far, then, as the conception of an angry God had not
been outgrown, a sacrifice of that kind seemed natural; on the
other hand, in so far as this God was a real father, he had sent his
own son to consummate the salvation. The situation is, of course,
paradoxical, and shows that the God had not yet become fully
socialized.
At first, the eucharistic act and the Agape were held together.
There was probably a daily celebration of both.” We may consider
* Luke 22: 19, 20. -
* G. Wanchope Stewart, “Harnack, Jülicher and Spitta on the Lord's Sup-
per,” E4'positor (Fifth Series), III, 43–61, 86–1 oz ; see p. 48.
*J. A. Robinson, “Eucharist,” art. in Encyclopaedia Biblica (New York,
1901), II, col. 1424.
* “Lord's Supper,” art. in Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Eccle-
siastical Literature (New York, 1891), V, 511.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE RITUAL ILLUSTRATED 75
it simply as a common meal with emphasis upon it as love feast
and Eucharist. The Agape was not really a vital element in the
eucharistic act; either could exist without the other. As early as
the time of Paul the two began to be separated. The Agape became
more and more localized. Evil results were seen to come out of
it. Discouraged by bishops and forbidden by councils, it died out
almost entirely. The Lord's Supper also underwent changes. New
names—Eucharist, Sacrifice, Altar, Mass, Holy Mysteries—gath-
ered around it, and new acts were added to the rite. The celebra-
tion at the high altar of a basilica in the fourth century was so
different from the original institution that it was difficult to recog-
nize common elements.
J. A. Magni has published an article on the “Ethnological
Background of the Eucharist” in which he takes the stand that
Christianity is a marvelous synthesis of Semitic, Greek, and possi-
bly Indian thought.” It would be passing strange, he thinks, if
the mystery cults in vogue when Christianity was born and
characterized by the eucharistic act had not been at least in
part adopted by the Christians. Hatch has also called attention
to the influence of the Greek mysteries on the Lord's Supper.”
The whole is, of course, an excellent example of the subtle
influence of suggestion. Men cannot intermingle as the early
Christians did with other nations without being profoundly influ-
enced. The Eucharist in its more developed forms has not
only a reference back to Semitic sacrifice; it is an expression
of contemporaneous attitudes common to the peoples concerned.
It is not necessary for a rational explanation to go to the extreme
to which Percy Gardner has gone in his book, The Origin of the
Lord's Supper (London, 1893), when he aserts that Paul be-
came the real originator of the rite by turning a pagan cere-
mony to Christian use.” Social psychology is satisfied when
*American Journal of Religious Psychology and Education, IV (No. 1–2),
March, 1910.
* Ibid., p. Io.
* Edwin Hatch, The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Chris-
tian Church (London, 1891), pp. 300 f.
* R. R. Falconer, “Lord's Supper,” art. in Hastings’ Dictionary of Christ
and the Gospels (New York, 1908), II, 64; J. A. Magni, “The Ethnological
Background of the Eucharist,” American Journal of Religious Psychology and
Education, IV (No. 1–2), 23.
76 THE PSYCHOLOGY of Ritualism:
it has shown that the particular rite is an overt expression of the
social consciousness of the group concerned. The simple fact that
“the Mithraic sacrament consisted of elements bread and wine”
would tend to give these elements in the Lord's Supper added
value. The interpretation of one sacrament would naturally affect
the other. The point of importance for our study is that in the
course of time the simple meal instituted by Jesus in commemora-
tion of his death and celebrated as such by the early Christian
church became an elaborate rite with Semitic, Greek, Mithraic,
and doubtless other elements in it. The simple rite and the public
teaching of the early church have given way to mysteries and
“doctrines which must not be declared in the hearing of the
uninitiated.”
Hatch gives the following description of the Eucharist taken
from Dionysius Areopagites:
“All other initiations are incomplete without this. The consummation
and crown of all the rest is the participation of him who is initiated in the
thearchic mysteries. For though it be the common characteristic of all
the hierarchic acts to make the initiated partakers of the divine light, yet
this alone imparted to me the vision through whose mystic light, as it were,
I am guided to the contemplation of the other sacred things.” The ritual
is then described. The sacred bread and the cup of blessing are placed
upon the altar. “Then the sacred hierarch initiates the sacred prayer and
announces to all the holy place: and after all have saluted each other, the
mystic recital of the sacred lists is completed. The hierarch and the priests
wash their hands in water; he stands in the midst of the divine altar, and
around him stand the priests and the chosen ministers. The hierarch sings the
praises of the divine working and consecrates the most divine mysteries,
and by means of the symbols which are sacredly set forth, he brings into
open vision the things of which he sings the praises. And when he has
shown the gifts of the divine working, he himself comes into a sacred com-
munion with them, and then invites the rest. And having both partaken
and given to the others a share in the thearchic communion, he ends with a
sacred thanksgiving; and while the people bend over what are divine sym-
bols only, he himself, always by the thearchic-spirit, is led in a priestly
manner, in purity of his godlike frame of mind, through blessed and spiritual
contemplation,” to the holy realities of the mysteries.”
* J. A. Magni, op. cit., p. 13. * Hatch, op. cit., p. 293.
* Due doubtless to neo-Platonic influence.
* Hatch, op. cit., pp. 303 f. His description is taken from Dionysius Areopa-
gites, Eccles. Hier. C. 3, par. 1, §§ 1, 2, pp. 187 f.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE RITUAL ILLUSTRATED 77
Such a profound change in a simple-ritual is explicable only on
the ground that the underlying social consciousness has changed.
If our thesis is correct, the change in the rite is due to the change
in the social consciousness, and without the latter the former would
not have taken place.
We shall not attempt to describe all the changes through which
the Lord's Supper has passed, but a few more may perhaps be
mentioned with profit. It is clear from the description given above
that the celebration of the Eucharist was becoming a more and
more sacred matter. The bread and the cup were gradually becom-
ing more mysterious. An emotional value attached to them which
was sure to find overt expression. The simple meal instituted by
Jesus which every one of his disciples could celebrate was invested
with such sanctity, abstracted so far from its original purpose, and
so altered in form, that some profound change in doctrine was
inevitable. The consciousness of the group with reference to the
eucharistic act was undergoing a gradual change. The reason for
this is to be sought not only in the first contact with Greek and
Roman culture, but also in the later influence of the Barbarian
invasion and the spread of Christianity over Northern Europe.
The outcome of the situation was the dogma of transubstantiation.
The term was first used by Hildebert of Tours. In the Decre-
tum Gratiani (about II 50), it was adopted in full, and the fourth
Council of Lateran declared it an article of faith. According to the
doctrine of transubstantiation, the bread and the cup were no
longer mere symbols of the body and blood of Christ. Once con-
secrated, they were the body and the blood of Christ. They were
believed to exert a mysterious influence upon him who ate them.
We have here a reversion to a most primitive conception—the
eating of the god in order to become possessed of his virtues, or in
other words communion through eating of the deity. The under-
lying idea is no less naive than that at the root of the primitive
Semitic sacrifice. In so far as this view is held by individuals of
the present day, it indicates now, as it did then, a survival or
recrudescence of a primitive social consciousness.
That such a crude conception would continue to exist in the
long run without being challenged is inconceivable, especially in an
age in which men were philosophizing on all sorts of problems.
Subtle questions soon arose, such for instance as, “Do animals
partake of the body of Christ when they swallow the consecrated
host?” Such discussions were but foreboding what was to follow.
78 THE PSYCHIOLOGY OF RITUALISM
\.*
The Reformation brought men face to face with the irrationality
of the doctrine of transubstantiation, and resulted in a general
reconstruction of religious concepts. New foundations were laid.
The Continental reformers were of one mind in repudiating the
Roman doctrine of transubstantiation. They were not agreed
among themselves as to what interpretation should be given, but
they were certain that the pretended transubstantiation immedi-
ately after the Epiclesis did not actually take place. The Reforma-
tion, by its emphasis on freedom from the Roman hierarchy, gave
a great stimulus to the rationalization of religion and morals. The
simplification of the elaborate ritual of the Roman Catholic church
was one of its immediate effects. This return to greater simplicity
shows clearly that the idea which the Roman Catholic has of God
is quite different from that of the so-called Protestant. A good
Catholic cannot become a thorough Protestant without undergoing
a profound change of social consciousness and vice versa.
During the past few hundred years great advance has been
made in science, with the result that many old beliefs have been
overthrown and replaced by modern concepts. The science of
bacteriology has modified to a great extent the conception of the
mutual relation between man and man. With the discovery of
the fact that infectious diseases are readily transmitted from indi-
vidual to individual through bacilli of various kinds, the Lord's
Supper has become a recognized source of danger. As a result, the
common cup has been superseded by the individual cup, except in
places where the group has not awakened to the situation.
The danger of infection alone has kept many from the Lord's
Supper. When to this we add the effect of the scientific attitude in
dispelling naïveté and superstition, we realize that this rite can be
preserved in the face of such facts only by giving it an interpreta-
tion in higher social terms. Of course, in groups that are still liv-
ing on the old plane the old rite will continue to exist in the old
manner. The sine qua non of further development is a real change
in the social consciousness.
Herewith we close the discussion of the development of ritual-
ism. The various rituals are the result of man’s efforts to meet the
elemental needs of life. They have their origin in some incident
or crisis. The successful act becomes group habit, and thereby
, ceremony. Development takes place only with the changing social
consciousness of the group concerned. Of this latter fact the
present chapter has given ample evidence.
PART III
SURVIVAL OF RITUALISM
“After all, the kind of world one carries about in one's self is the important
thing, and the world outside takes all its grace, color and value from that.”—
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
CHAPTER VIII
THE SURVIVAL OF THE CEREMONY
In tracing the development of ritualism we came to the con-
clusion that changes in the ritual are dependent upon changes
within the social consciousness. and that without changes in the
Social consciousness no profound changes in the ritual are pos-
sible. The survival of ritualism, then, speaking in a very general
sense, is dependent upon keeping intact a type of social conscious-
ness that finds the ritualistic reaction a valuable method of con-
T
trol. To be more specific—just this is the object of the present
chapter—the rituals survive because they meet the needs of the
group and of the individuals of the group in a satisfactory way.
In case they fail to mediate these results for the individual, he
ceases to participate unless external factors are brought to bear
upon him. Likewise in the case of the group, ceremonial perform-
ances that have lost their practical significance, though they may
continue for a while through sheer force of habit, soon lose their
vitality and fall away.
In contrast to primitive conditions, modern civilized society is
so organized that considerable latitude is given to individuals.
According to their own preferences they may affiliate themselves
with the particular organizations that seem to them best adapted
to meet their needs. In this the influence of previous training is
powerfully operative through suggestion, but deliberate choice is
also present as a factor. Groups with very primitive standards
are not only progressively maintained in this way, but new ones
are often formed. For example, the writer, in an investigation of
the gift of tongues and related phenomena" found that the auto-
matic experience called tongue-speaking became the basis of
forming various affiliated groups in the city of Chicago.
The thing that seems practical to one individual may appear
ludicrous to another. Methods that mediate adequate control in
one group may utterly fail in another. In some individuals, the
instinct of self-display becomes a tremendous practical interest.-- *
Anything that appeals to their egotism receives their support and
* Vide “The Gift of Tongues and Related Phenomena at the Present Day,”
American Journal of Theology (April, 1909).
fe.” "
8I
82 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RITUALISM
T
most hearty indorsement. Decorations of gold, lace, and feathers,
the uniform with flashing buttons, the music and march of the ritual
are just the things they need. Without this display life would
seem incomplete. In contrast to this, other persons glory in self-
abasement. To the question of the baptism ritual, “Dost thou
*** ***. -, . -
renounce the devil and all his works, the vain pomp and glory of
)
the world with all covetous desires of the same, and the carnal
desires of the flesh so that thou wilt not follow nor be led by
them?” they respond with a hearty, “I renounce them all.” Indi-
viduals of this type consider display the very essence of evil. They
prefer rituals which apply rigorous tests of self-abasement. The
writer has known of cases in which individuals have not stopped
short of having a hole made through ice nearly two feet thick
and of being immersed in a lake of ice-water in the dead of winter.
The point that needs emphasis is that the social consciousness
varies with different groups, and that modern life has present in it
not only the conservative factors of social heredity, group educa-
tion and training so powerful among savages, but the additional
possibility of choice between various groups. In this way modern
society has room both for the continuance of old ceremonies and
for the survival of rituatism in new—some better and some more
poorly adapted—cults. Practicality is, withal, the key word to the
situation. The ritual that has lost its vitality cannot survive.
When the group apperceives its inanity, it is discarded. This may
take place in a cataclysmic way, but more commonly, owing to the
power of habit, it is a gradual process.
The rituals may also lose of their vitality through the differen-
tiation of elements which have acquired values in their own right.
Two obvious examples of this are decorations and music. In
primitive man's rituals they were vital to the ceremony and repre-
sented no value in and of themselves. They did not arise to satisfy
an already existing love of beauty but were an essential factor in
practical control. Art production was prior to art appreciation, and
was its cause rather than its effect.” Since the totemic ceremonies
of the Central Australians are probably as primitive as any now
extant, they are especially adapted to illustrate the point. The
* The Doctrines and Discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1908
(New York, 1908).
*James Hayden Tufts, On the Genesis of the Aesthetic Categories (The Uni-
, versity of Chicago Press, 1902), p. 6.
SURVIVAL OF THE CEREMONY 83
decorations employed in these instances, as we have shown in the
first chapter, represent situations out of the lives of the natives
and are introduced into the ceremony from practical motives. The
decorations and the ceremony grow up together. Decorations are
valuable because they are a part of the ceremony, and are not pro-
duced from sheer love of the beautiful. In so far as every activity
of primitive life was ritualized, we are justified in saying that
decorative art had no real place in life apart from the ceremony.
The same is true in the case of music. The chant of the Unjiamba
Totem Intichiuma ceremony was simply “a reiterated invitation to
the Unjiamba tree to flower much, and to the blossoms to be full
of honey.” The music (in genesis at least) here is also a part of
the ceremony and has value only as having a place in practical
control.
When, however, decorative art and music are appreciated qua .
decorations and music, when they begin to have a value inde-
pendent of the ceremony, when the group or the individuals of the
group enjoy them and produce them apart from the ceremony, the
way is opened for their separation from the ritual and for progres-
sive development in their own right. Their value is no longer
immediate and essential to the very upkeep of life. It has become
highly idealized and occupies a field of its own.
At this point the question is a propos as to whether modern
rituals survive by virtue of the fact that they have reabsorbed or
developed aesthetic values of recognized quality in sufficient num-
ber. In that case the value of the ceremony would have shifted
from the realm of the practical to that of the distinctively aesthetic,
and the group would attend the performance of the ceremony—
High Mass, for instance, or the Lord's Supper in any evangelical
church—from motives similar to those from which it attends a con-
cert or a drama. We are not inquiring as to whether the aesthetic
experience has a place in ritualistic observances. Miss Adams has
shown that, if human experience be regarded as “a continuous
series of attempted or achieved modes of control of behavior,” the
feeling of satisfaction that accompanies attempted control and the
“pause of satisfaction” that marks achieved control constitute the
essence of the aesthetic experience.” Since, as we have repeatedly
* The Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 184.
* Elizabeth Kemper Adams, The Aesthetic Experience: Its Meaning in a
Functional Psychology (The University of Chicago Press, 1907).
84 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RITUALISM
pointed out, the rituals are methods of controlling human experi-
ence, it is obvious that in the larger sense of the word the aesthetic
experience is a concomitant of successful participation in the ritual-
istic act. The rite is performed; control is achieved; the partici-
pants rest satisfied.
The real question is: Do any modern rituals survive, not be-
cause they are thought to be practical, but solely because of the aes-
thetic experience accompanying their performance? To the writer
the evidence so far collected by scholars, and the observations made
by himself, seem to indicate that religious ceremonies are per-
formed and services attended not primarily for the aesthetic effect,
but largely from practical motives. The aesthetic may strengthen
the appreciation of the practical, but the energizing impulses are,
as of old, the instinctive tendencies to maintain life, though, of
course, with greater elaboration and idealization.” “There is
developing a consciousness within whole nations and within man-
kind as a world-wide family and brotherhood, the inner, controlling
motive of which is the elemental craving for life, but for a life
richer and fuller and longer, in which all men everywhere may
share.” Such a type of consciousness may well appear, though
not necessarily universally, in the modern religious ceremony. But
this implies that the ritual is still considered a practical method of
control.
Hylan's investigation by means of two questionnaires has pro-
duced results in substantial harmony with our conclusions on the
point. He writes as follows:
Combining the answers to both questionnaires, the reasons for going
[to church] were as follows: Personal good was mentioned 173 times;
duty I40; example 77; habit 67; because of enjoyment 30; church society
14; because normal function Io; for music Io; fellowship 8; to keep alive
religiously 5; rest 4; because it is the proper thing 4; for variety 4; to
learn 3; love of God 3; expected to go 3; opportunity for service 2. . . . .
It would be safe therefore to say that, according to these answers, the
feeling of moral responsibility gives the strongest impulse to worship, and
that the hope of resulting good to one's self or others is the most tangible
reason.”
* Edward Scribner Ames, “The Psychological Basis of Religion,” Monist,
XX (No. 2), 254.
* Ibid., p. 262.
* John P. Hylan, Public Worship (Chicago, 1901), pp. 46 f.
*
SURVIVAL OF THE CEREMONY 85
As the persons who submitted answers to Hylan’s questionnaire
belonged to the Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, Episcopalian,
Congregational, Roman Catholic, Dutch Reformed, Universalist,
Christian, Lutheran, and a few other denominations,” and only a
small number had no creed, we may infer that some type of ritual-
ism (not the same, of course) was pretty generally represented. A
glance at the reasons for attendance at worship and figures repre-
senting answers given shows that Hylan is entirely correct in his
estimate that the desire for good to oneself and to others is the .
most tangible reason for going to church; and, we may add, for
religious practices generally, including ceremonies. While doubt-
less certain individuals, especially in isolated rural communities,
attend services merely for the sake of enjoyment—that is, for
aesthetic effect—the number is so small that it does not seem prob-
able that they would keep up the rituals; and the more as this type
of consciousness seeks variety rather than the uniformity of ritual.
James H. Leuba's investigation on “The Contents of Religious
Consciousness” also brought results confirmatory of our thesis.
The inquiry was made by means of a questionnaire sent to Protes-
tant Anglo-Saxons. Some of the questions inquired into the
reasons for religious practices. They thus covered a wider field
than mere ritualistic practices, but necessarily also included the
latter. Out of the replies received, Leuba felt himself justified in
drawing the conclusion that “life, more life, a larger, richer, more
satisfying life,” was the real thing sought in religion. His corre-
spondents testified that they used God. “He is used,” writes Leuba,
“used a good deal and with an admirable disregard of logical
consistency, sometimes as meat purveyor, sometimes as moral sup-
port, sometimes as friend, sometimes as an object of love.”
To the above we may without any hesitation add that if Leuba
found this true of Protestants, it is at least to the same degree true
of Catholics. The devout Catholic does not attend mass specifically
for the aesthetic effect. He is looking for something that will be of
practical benefit to him. He wishes to make use of his God. His
everything depends upon being on good terms with him. An inci-
dent in striking corroboration of this was related to the writer by
* Ibid., pp. 12 f.
*James H. Leuba, “The Contents of Religious Consciousness,” Monist,
XI, 536–73.
* Ibid., p. 571.
86 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RITUALISM
one of the deputy sheriffs of Cook County, Illinois. An Italian
Catholic had murdered a Swede and was arrested by the deputy
sheriff. On the way to the jail he asserted with great confidence
that his God would help him in his trouble and prevent his being
hanged. In return for more or less faithful observance of the ritual
he expected the deity to deliver him out of his difficulty.
What is true of church ceremonies holds also with reference to
those of modern fraternal organizations. The pronounced object
of such associations is the nurture of more intimate fellowship and
the rendering of mutual assistance in time of need. They are not
organizations primarily in the interest of so-called play-activities
lor for aesthetic enjoyment. Men and women join them largely
rom practical motives. Witness, for instance, the insurance inter-
sts connected with some of the orders, the motto, “Friendship, Love
and Truth,” of one that is very popular, and the promise of mutual
elp in time of trouble common to most, if not all, of them. The
nitiation ceremony and other rituals connected with them survive
ecause they are found to be a practical method of controlling cer-
tain aspects of the order. The profound emotional effect pro-
§ duced upon the neophytes continues to be an important factor in
the conservation and development of group loyalty.
We have shown that elements which in the first place existed
in the ritual in an undifferentiated state may become differentiated
and exist in their own right; and that in so far as they represent
distinct values of their own they tend to disintegrate the ritual.
It was in this way that the aesthetic categories were generated.
We found reason to conclude with reference to music and deco-
rative art of various kinds—and the same doubtless holds true of
art in general—that they are not the chief end sought by the group
in modern rituals, but that, as of old, practical motives come first.
But our real problem still remains before us. In the sixth
chapter we took the stand that the emergence of the scientific
attitude, the recognized emphasis upon individual experience, and
the attempt to socialize the world of social objects completely also
tend to destroy the value of the ritual—that is to say, make it
appear as an ineffective medium of practical control. In the face
of the fact that the above-mentioned elements may be said to be
characteristic of modern civilization, why does the ritual continue
to play so large a part in the life of certain groups? We may
answer, Because the type of social consciousness continues which
#I|
i






SURVIVAL OF THE CEREMONY 87
evaluates it highly. But that leaves the matter entirely too general.
Or we may say that the ritual continues because it seems practical.
But that is superficial psychology. To answer the question of the
survival of the ceremony in addition to showing the above, we
must probe deeper into the psychology of evaluation. º
To begin with, we need constantly to keep in mind that théſ ë
ritualistic attitude is an aspect of the normal functioning of human
life. It represents a tendency to fall back on habit. We have
abundantly shown this in the case of primitive man, but it is
equally applicable to higher stages of culture. Extemporary
prayer, which, as is well known, is to take the place of the form
prescribed in liturgical churches, is itself in constant danger of
following definite grooves. The individual, through frequent repe-
tition, becomes familiar with a particular sequence of thought and
says his prayer as automatically as though he were reading it out
of a prayer-book for the thousandth time. The churches that
started out with a lively protest against the dead ritual of the
liturgical churches have manifested a constant tendency to adopt
definite forms of worship. We may with propriety speak of the
ritual of non-liturgical churches. The members of the worshiping
group think it strange when the regular order of service is not
adhered to. They expect the singing of hymns, the prayer, the
anthem by the choir, the announcements, the sermon, and whatso-
ever else there may be, to follow the habitual order and adhere to
customary usages. Strange though it may appear, revivalism
itself has been ritualized. In camp-meetings and revival meetings
the methods and arrangement of services are the same year after
year, and the group consciousness that is developed at these gather-
ings is no less in evidence than in primitive man's great ceremonial
occasions.
Whenever a change is to take place in habitual conduct, the
odds are on the side of habit. The formation of new habits in-
volves the opening of new nerve pathways. Since the rituals are
very largely controlled by individuals who are past those years when
habits are most easily broken and new ones most readily formed, k
it follows that here we have an especially difficult situation to
change. The complexity of the problem is but increased by the
fact that those to whom the care of the ritual is given in each suc-
ceeding generation are properly constituted conservatives. In this
way a particular type of social consciousness is progressively con-
i.
88 THE PSYCHIOLOGY OF RITUALISM
served in the midst of a thousand and one changing conditions.
The technique involved is of such a nature that it is next to im-
possible for the scientific attitude, the recognition of the value of
individual experience, and a desire for a complete socialization of
the deity to take hold of the group. When they appear to be
making inroads, the conservatives are ever ready to give a warning
signal and bid halt.
This brings us face to face with a point of first significance in
the study of the psychology of value. The self is always charac-
terized by an emotional content. There may be cognitive and cona-
tive elements present in varying degrees, but the core is always
emotional. This means that in last analysis the self in each par-
ticular instance must be identified with an emotion. The emotion
is the ultimate court of reference. When the individual says,
“My,” with any consciousness an emotion is always present. But
not only is the emotional aspect important in the self; emotional
elements constitute the stuff out of which the social objects of the
individual are constructed. In a given group of individuals, any
particular individual’s consciousness of himself is at bottom emo-
tional, and all the members of his group are built up by him out
of affective elements in his consciousness. What holds true of any
individuals of the group holds true of the group as a whole. The
consciousness which an individual has of his own country, or his
own family, is characterized by an entirely different content from
that of any other country or any other family. There is a warmth,
an intimacy present in the former that is lacking in the latter. It is
a well-known fact of social psychology that the individual when
conscious of other groups tends to identify himself with the inter-
ests of his own. The uninvited outsider who attempts to mediate
in a group quarrel is always in danger of having the entire group
turn upon him. The social self of any member of a group is essen-
tially the emotional content that gathers about himself in his
various relations to the members of his group. Those are the con-
ditions which made possible the almost indefinite extension of the
blood feud in primitive society. The outsider who had injured any
member of another group thereby had irretrievably injured that
group, and at the same time had involved his entire group in the
situation. At the present time this emotional character of the
social self is at the root of patriotism, loyalty, love, class spirit,
social reform, and numerous other social phenomena. Any indi-
SURVIVAL OF THE CEREMONY 89
vidual or group that injures any member of the group with which
a particular individual has identified himself, or disturbs any of
the interests of his group, ipso facto injures the individual himself.
For the psychology of evaluation this has the significance that
in determining the value of anything the ultimate court of appeal ºf
is invariably the emotional consciousness aroused by the situation.”
Intermediate processes frequently intervene before the end is real-
ized, but they will not be set in operation until the court of emo-
tional consciousness has rendered a decision in favor of proceeding.
The economic value may be stated in dollars and cents, and thus
has the advantage over the immediate statement in terms of emo-
tion in that it is capable of exact measurement. Moreover, it may
represent the means whereby that which is valuable may be pro-
cured. As a matter of last resort, however, that which is valuable
from the economic point of view has value only by virtue of the
emotional consciousness it arouses. In evidence of this, witness the
fall of prices on old styles when the fashion changes.
The place of the emotional consciousness in the survival of
ritualism is admirably illustrated in the sacrament called the Lord's
Supper. A careful study of this ritual according to the forms used
in the Episcopal and the Methodist Episcopal churches will not fail
to bring out the fact that the ceremony serves the consciousness of
both worshipers and deity. It is arranged on a social basis. The
ego is the worshiper; the alteri are the deity and the other members
of the group. The sacramental service mediates proper control
when it reinforces or reinstates a proper friendly relationship
between the ego and the alteri and an assurance of mutual help-
fulness. g
From this point of view it is after all not so different from the
primitive common meal sacrifice; for here, too, the object was the
renewal of friendly relationship between the various members of
the group and the deity. There is actual parallelism between lower
and higher stages of culture in the matter of elemental needs.”
The situation is one that depends very largely upon the emotions
aroused. If we assume that conditions which produce peace are
desirable, it is obvious that this sacrament must be of great value
to many individuals in a disquieted and fearful mental condition.
* For a view similar to the one taken here vide Wilbur Marshall Urban,
Valuation: Its Nature and Laws (London, 1909).
* Ernest Pauli, The Tree of Life (London, 1905), pp. 26o f.
90 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RITUALISM
They come out of the service assured that since all is well between
them and their God, and between them and their fellow-men, their
welfare in the future is certain. It is in this direction that we must
look for reasons for its survival.
A description of the ceremony according to the ritual used by
the Methodist Episcopal church will add force to the above.” On
the appointed day and place, the elder standing before his congre-
gation reads several sentences from the Bible, of which the follow-
ing will serve as illustration:
Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works,
and glorify your father which is in heaven (Matt. 5: 16).
Not every one that saith unto me Lord, Lord, shall enter into the king-
dom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven
(Matt. 7:21).
Whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and
shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of
God in him P (I John 3:17).
These verses tend to bring out the relation of the worshiper
to the deity and to his fellow-men. The effect is but heightened
when the elder asks the congregation to stand and solemnly reads
the invitation,
If any man sin we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the
righteous. . . . . *.
Wherefore ye that do truly and earnestly repent of your sins, and are
in love and charity with your neighbors and intend to lead a new life,
following the commandments of God, and walking from henceforth in his
holy ways, draw near with faith, and take this Holy Sacrament to your
comfort, and devoutly kneeling, make your humble confession to Almighty
God.”
By this time the dualism of the ego and the alter is complete.
The later stands sharply defined over against the former. The ego
is the sinner and must be reconciled to the alter. The confession
follows. The worshiper acknowledges and bewails his manifold
sins and wickedness, and calls upon God to have mercy upon him.
If he is taking real part in the ceremony, he is borne along on a
wave of deep emotion. Now it is that the person and office of
Jesus are introduced with telling effect. The elder offers the
* Methodist Discipline (1908), pp. 363 f.
* Ibid., pp. 365 f.
SURVIVAL OF THE CEREMONY 9I
prayer of consecration. The bread and wine before him on the
table are consecrated in remembrance of the death and passion of
Jesus, so that the worshiper in receiving them may be partaker “of
his most blessed body and blood.”
Following the consecration, the worshipers are invited to the
altar. Devoutly kneeling, they receive the bread from the elder,
while he solemnly says: -
The body of our Lord Jesus Christ which was given for thee, preserve
thy Soul and body unto everlasting life. Take and eat this in remembrance
that Christ died for thee, and feed on him in thy heart by faith, with
thanksgiving.
A similar formula is repeated by the elder while the worshipers
drink of the wine.
By these formal acts, which have direct reference to the sacred
history of the group, the worshiper is brought into the closest
relation to the deity, and is completely reinstated in his favor. It
has been a real communion, in which the members of his group
have participated with him. They are brothers in the same house-
hold, with God as their father, and therefore all is well. The
worshiper goes on his way rejoicing. !
The rituals represent group habits. They are the º
*ſtr
favorite Wāy of reacting under given conditions. The sacred his-
tory of the group often finds expression through them. They con-
stitute some of the chief interests of the group concerned, and are
believed to be methods of practical control. In fact, they may prove .
to be very practical, as we have just seen, not only in controlling
the group as a whole, but in meeting certain needs of the indi-
viduals themselves. Who will undertake to estimate the power of
habit and of suggestion on human life? The “sick soul” readily
finds the ritual, which has proven so efficacious a medium of relief
in its own group, an acceptable and efficient method of cure for
itself. The more abrupt and striking the incursion from the sub-
consciousness into the focus of attention, the more practical and 4
wonderful it appears. It is not at all vital that it should subserve f
the original purpose. *---
These sacred and time-hallowed rituals correspond to attitudes v.
common to the group. They are positive elements in the social
consciousness of its members. Their conservation is a source of
no small pleasure, and their disintegration scarcely dreamed of.
92 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RITUALISM
Whenever a situation arises that threatens their survival, they are
at once referred to the court of final appeal of all that is valuable,
the affective consciousness. If that decides for their upkeep, and
of course it usually does, the battle between conservatism and
liberalism is on.
It is probably through some such explanation as this that we
must account for the survival of the elaborate war-dance of the
Iroquois Indians.” To the observer it may appear to be merely
play; but for the group itself it is more than play. Morgan cites
the following speech made by O-nó-să during the war-dance, which
will serve to illustrate the point:
Friends and Relatives—We have reason to glory in the achievements of
our ancestors. I behold with sadness the present declining state of our
noble race. Once the warlike yell and the painted band were the terror
of the white man. Then our fathers were strong and their power was felt
and acknowledged far and wide over the American continent. But we have
been reduced and broken by the cunning and rapacity of the white-skinned
race. We are now compelled to crave as a blessing, that we may be allowed
to live upon our own lands, to cultivate our own fields, to drink from our
own springs, and to mingle our bones with those of our fathers. Many
winters ago, our wise ancestors predicted that a great monster, with white
eyes, would come from the east, and, as he advanced, would consume the
land. This monster is the white race, and the prediction is near its ful-
filment. They advised their children, when they became weak, to plant a
tree with four roots, branching to the north, the south, the east, and the
west; and then collecting under its shade to dwell together in unity and
harmony. This tree, I propose, shall be this very spot. Here we will
gather, here live, and here die.”
This and other dances of the Indians bring to the surface a
remarkable group enthusiasm. They make the particular group
stand out in sharp contrast to all the others. They knit the mem-
bers of the group more closely together, and give to the group
courage and solidarity. The Indian feels that he is still in the
lineage of his noble ancestry. One could scarcely conceive of a
more powerful appeal to the emotions than this. Morgan men-
tions a mourning council of the Iroquois held at Tonawanda in
October, 1846, to raise up sachems. About six hundred Iroquois
were in attendance. On the second day the Great Feather dance was
* Lewis H. Morgan, League of the Iroquois (New York, 1904), chap. iv.
* Ibid., pp. 266 f. -
SURVIVAL OF THE CEREMONY 93
performed by a select group. The enthusiasm of the group knew
no bounds. “It was remarked to Da-àt'-ga-dose, an educated
Onandago Sachem, that they would be Indians forever, if they held
to these dances. He replied, that he knew it, and for that reason
he would be the last to give them up.” It would be difficult to
find a more apt illustration than this one. These Indians are keep-
ing up their ceremonies because they think that the very life of the
group depends upon them.
As long as the rituals take such a place in the life of the group,
as long as they promote the group consciousness, conserve group
values, and satisfy the needs of the individuals of the group, they
will survive. As such they may have highly idealized significance
as compared with early immediate reference; yet they remain
instruments of practical control. And it is just because the group
continues to realize these values (in varying proportion, of course)
that old rituals subsist in the midst of modern environment.
* Ibid., pp. 251 f. (footnote).
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