THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG 8
that taken together they almost warrant the fiction of a new birth. This course of instruction may continue over a considerable period—among the Masai of Africa until the age of forty. And the ‘ceremonial has further value in that it requires legitimate membership in the tribe, the children of illegitimate intercourse not being eligible. It involves also a degree of economical forethought in that the parent must have sufficient property to contribute to the feast customary at the mysteries. Those who are barred by disabilities are placed in so inferior a position that the effects can hardly be appreciated by more advanced peoples. Loyalty to the elders and fellow tribesmen and self-interest combine to the perpetuation of the mysteries and the preservation of their secrets, while a useful tribal solidarity is not the least of the benefits. Qualities of real service in the way of character, amid much that is superstitious and harmful, even base, are fostered by this institution. o
Impartial study of tribal mysteries, the merest
outlines of which are sketched in the preceding paragraphs, makes clear that the entire
9. Influence social, religious, and political economy on Social of primitive life centers in them. They
Develop- are responsible for the formation of
ment. character in youth; the ideas then instilled control the domestic, social, and religious life of the adult. They are a strongly conservative force, based on a crude, empiric, yet often correct utilitarianism, which in many of its aspects is highly ethical. Individual and social morality are in the main their products. All this is true of even the crudest forms. The secret and magical fraternities,into which the primary mysteries develop influence no less profoundly the three departments of human life and are potent in the evolution of the social organism. So that from a historical standpoint alone the subject is worthy of serious attention. When it comes to be seen that the Eleusinian, Orphic, and other mysteries which dominated so large a portion of Greek life, but elaborated and philosophized upon the central ideas of the primitive variety, the historical importance of these primitive forms becomes still more evident.
II. Cultic Mysteries—1. The Eleusinia: The typical mysteries of this sort are Greek. For a thorough appreciation of their importance and relations a prerequisite is knowledge of at least the barest outlines of Greek religious his-
Bin tory as the study of the last decade
Back. has revealed it. The knowledge of grouna, Greek religion common since the dominance of Christianity is founded upon
the pantheon of Homer and the mythology systematized by Hesiod. These were reflected in the writings known as the Greek classics and are the substance on which the official cults were founded. The Homeric deities are Aphrodite, Apollo, Ares, Artemis, Athene, Hephestos, Hera, Poseidon, and Zeus, “king and ruler of gods and men.”’ But there are constant reminders, in the mention of other deities, even in the classics, that these Homeric gods were not all in whom the Greeks believed. Recent investigation has made it clear that in the folk re-
1. Greek
ligion, which had not the prestige of the state cults, these other deities had a large part. It is proved now that the members of the Homeric pantheon were invaders, not indigenous among the darkhaired pre-Homeric Greeks, and that they were the objects of worship of the “ fair-haired ’”’ hosts that beleaguered Troy. Before them there had come in other cults which had in some cases persisted, and there were indigenous nature deities whose worship and sacrifices‘ the invaders adopted or appropriated, these latter taking over the cults and the shrines of the older gods, even though the sacrifices and the mode of worship were sometimes incongruous and even inappropriate according to common Greek ideas (as when Zeus, a heaven god, in two cases received the sacrifice of a pig, which was appropriate only to a chthonic or earth-god). These earlier deities were for the most part chthonic, their concern was the produce of the earth, and to the worship of these peasants and country folk clung with a persistency that even the gorgeous temples, stately worship, and high art inspired by the new gods could not shake. As in India after the decline of Buddhism the native faiths forced a compromise with the philosophic faith of Brahmanism that resulted in Hinduism, so in Greece the control over the religious mind held by Cybele or Rhea, by Demeter, Persephone, or Ge, by Dionysus and Leto and Selene not only held firm, but in some cases forced recognition by the State. It was in connection with this group of deities, to whom must be added the prophet Orpheus, that the cultic mysteries were observed. And that the mysteries in which these deities were the foci of attention existed practically throughout the Greek world is susceptible of proof. During several centuries immediately preceding the Christian era they were syncretized or diluted or adulterated by ruder elements brought in from Asia Minor or Crete or Thrace, in all of which regions orgiastic and primitive ceremonies seem to have been cultivated with an abandon that removed them but little if at all from savage rites. But the distinction between the Greek cultic mystery and the tribal celebration is, in large, that the former crystallize about personal deities, and these deities are chthonic or concerned with the fruits of the earth (Lenormant, in Contemporary Review, 1880, i. 848-849). The deities that stand out in this relation are the ‘‘ Great Mother ” of Asia Minor, who takes form in Greece in, e.g., Demeter and Kore, and, among male gods, Dionysus, “lord of the grape and its blood-red juice.”
It may be taken as proved, however, that the Greek mysteries of the historical period are to be traced to clan celebrations probably of the same character as those described in the first part of this discussion. That the clan organization, if not upon a totemic basis at least with totemic accompaniments, existed in Greece in the prehistoric period and that it left observances which survived in the historic period are axiomatic for comparative religionists. And this clan organization implies the mystic initiation. The association of the clan mysteries with definite deities presents no difficulties. The development of ghosts into demi-
2. Origin of the Eleusinia.