Ancient Faiths And Modern. Thomas Inman
was made in philosophy, and, throughout Europe, the fourteenth century was as barbarous, if not indeed more so, than the first of our era; and to such a dark age there is a strong clerical party in Great Britain which desires us to return.
* A man who had travelled much once said to me—"I will
tell you the main difference between a Yankee and an
Englishman. If you inform the latter of some new discovery—
or propose the use of some recent invention for his own
benefit—he will tell you either that the thing is old, or
worthless. On the other hand, if you recount to the former
what you have told the latter of, his rejoinder will be, I
can improve upon that." This is true, and we are now
repeatedly adopting from the United States discoveries of
various kinds, which we rejected when offered to us in the
first place.
Yet, notwithstanding the propensity of cultivated nations to remain quiescent, there do appear, from time to time, individuals who, being discontented with things as they are, endeavour to bring about improvements in the arts, the sciences, and the general conditions of life. The recognition of a want, is an incentive to a thoughtful mind to supply the exigency. Whenever an individual endeavours to attain a definite end, he exercises his mind, not only in what he has been already taught, but what he can observe beyond that; he rakes up, if possible, the experience of others, studies their proceedings, and experiments with a definite object, and ponders upon the affinities, nature, and the like, of every substance which he surmises may be of service to him. When, by these means, he has obtained his purpose, he will repeatedly find that he has done no more than rediscover a something which was known thousands of years before his time. Without a doubt, much of the philosophy, science, art, religion, &c., of the present day, is due to a close observation and an attainment to the knowledge possessed by our predecessors. "Is there any thing whereof it may be said, see this is new?—it hath been already of old time, which was before us" (Eccles. i. 10).
If this be true, even though it may only be so to a partial extent, it is clearly more philosophical to believe that some primeval men were created with a considerable amount of knowledge, rather than that all were savage, barely, if at all, superior to monkeys, and that one or more of these, gradually elevated their race, by degrees so slow, as to be imperceptible in less time than many thousand years.
This side of the argument receives corroboration when we study the history of such semi-civilized countries as China, and such barbarous regions as those of Africa and Australia. In none of these parts do we see any general propensity to advance. In the first we see a retrogression; there is now no effort to repair ancient roads which have been worn away by centuries of traffic, to restore the old temples, towers, and landmarks, erected when time was younger, or even to keep up the teachings of Confucius. A similar apathy existed amongst the Japanese—yet no sooner do the civilized nations of Europe show the rulers of China and Japan that it is necessary for them to improve, if they desire to retain their power, than they attempt to learn the arts which have enabled their rivals to overcome them. In both cases, the progress is recognized as due to the interference of a nation, superior for the time being, to that whose education has been faulty. Advance, then, in such countries, is clearly due to foreign influence, rather than to an innate propensity to general, mental, scientific, or practical development.
But, on the other side, it may be alleged that the African has been in existence from time immemorial—that he has been in contact with the civilization of ancient and modern Egypt—with Christianity—with the ancient Tyrians and Carthaginians—with the Arabs—with the Spaniards, Portuguese, and British, and yet the African tribes remain almost as savage now as when they first were known. Similar remarks apply to the inhabitants of the Andaman Isles, of the vast islands of Borneo, Celebez, Papua, New Guinea, and others.
Yet in many places, now considered barbarous, we see the remains of previous empires—and when we are able to find some comparatively authentic history which tells of the overthrow of a powerful kingdom, it is clear that the civilized people have usually been destroyed by the barbarian. The wealth of Rome tempted the hordes from the inhospitable north, just as the gold of Mexico and Peru were the causes of their decadence under the Spaniards, whose people were in themselves scarcely superior to the troops led by Alaric, Genseric, and other so called barbarians. Yet we know, as in the case of Spain herself, that decadence from civilization to comparative barbarism may be due to causes inherent in the people and its governors, wholly independent of foreign conquest. This decadence is due to the bestial propensities of man being allowed to dominate over the intellectual, and the result is the same, whether the animal passions be cultivated by a debased and degrading policy of monarch and priest, or by the indolence of each individual.
By developing the train of thought thus indicated, we imagine that the philosophical reader will conclude that amongst men, some race, family, or tribe, has been created with intelligence, as much above the rest of their kind as the elephant is superior to the hippopotamus, and the dog to the cat, and that others are generically as low as is the Australian "dingo" in the canine race. Those once perfect may deteriorate, yet carry with them the power of rising again—whilst those originally low never rise at all, no matter what example may be set them, unless force is used to make them learn. To these we must add a third set, specially to include the American, for we have no evidence whatever that the civilization of the Aztec and Peruvian was anything more than a restoration of the scientific knowledge of a more ancient people, possibly of an Aryan stock. Who that is acquainted with the Shemitic race can fail to see in its people the type of an ancient condition which has decayed, until, like a fallen gentleman, it can only show what once it was, by conserving and exhibiting a few ornaments of no value, save from their age, but whose sons may yet become princes in their paternal domains? Who that studies the negro in Africa, America, and St. Domingo, can fail to see that he is, or, at any rate has hitherto shown himself, almost wholly incapable of development as a philosophic man? And who can read the pages of Prescott without recognizing the fact that some of the ancient inhabitants of America inaugurated—unassisted, as we judge by any example from others—a style of religion and government of which the world has hardly, if at all, seen an equal? Yet it is remarkable, that both the Mexican and Peruvian traced their laws and institutions to strangers who came amongst them, as Oannes did to the Babylonians, and who taught them what arts, religion, and science they themselves had. The subject of centres of human life into which our considerations have drawn us, is by far too vast for discussion here. It involves the study of geology, of anthropology, of glossology, of navigation, of physical geography, of climate, of the laws of reproduction, of the influences of climate over animals, and of diet upon man. Into all these we dare not enter: we shall confine ourselves rather to considering the religious ideas of the lowest of the known races of mankind; and then proceed to those which have been held by what we may call the oscillating people, i.e., those vibrating repeatedly between a state of empire and one of slavery, like the people of Hindostan, Babylon, Judea, Greece, Italy, Spain, and Egypt.
When we endeavour to ascertain the religion of the negro, by which term we include all the black native tribes of Africa, we find ourselves almost in the position of a modern chemist seeking for the philosopher's stone. In no single book, and I have read very many, can I find any trustworthy evidence of the negro having any religion at all. It is true that travellers in Abyssinia, and those who are now returned from their successful expedition against Magdala, tell us that in Abyssinia there is a form of religion which is evidently a corrupt form of Christianity, but with this exception, the blacks seem to have no idea of that congeries of fact and fiction, dogma, ritual, and practice, which passes current for religion in more civilized countries. Yet though they have no definite idea of a Creator, and the way in which He works throughout the universe, they have a dread of some unseen power, and, like a number of frightened children, dread the effects of "fetish," and the power of the Obi or Obeah man. When the mind is predisposed to fear, and it is so amongst the lower animals as well as in man, it is astonishing at what contemptible objects one may stand aghast. I can vividly remember being sent, whilst a very young child, with a message from an aunt, at whose home I