THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
a nn ccnnnn ne enEEInnEnenemmmesmsneet
their sources in the same feeling, quite as the Latin word pietas was applied indifferently to reverence for the gods and to filial obedience; and, just as sacrifice survived the materialistic ideas often attached to it in the early stages and became a symbol of humility and reverence, so, according to the belief of many races, the disembodied spirits, like the gods, desire to be worshiped not only because they depend on human care for, their sustenance or comfort, but because it is an act of homage. The one never develops into the other.
Tree-worship, and more especially plant-worship, belong again to the agricultural stage. In the animistic philosophy of the savage, in his blind search
through the universe for manifestations 13. Worship of the supernatural, he came to believe, of Trees andin many widely separated lands, that Plants. trees and plants possessed supernatural powers; and, in accordance with the earlier totem-principle, he attempted to establish relations with any species which he believed to be of especial importance for his own life. Jevons dwells at some length on the history of plant-worship, attributing to it great importance for the history not only of religion but also of civilization, ‘ for it was through plant-worship that cereals and food-plants came to be cultivated, and it was in consequence of their cultivation that the act of worship received a remarkable extension”’ (ut sup., p. 210).
So far from the religious impulse having originated, as Grant Allen contends, in “ the worship of death,” it would be far truer, if either must be said, to find its source in the thought of the potency and the preciousness of life. This feeling expressed
itself in a great variety of different
14. Worship forms. One, to which too much imof Life-giv- portance has apparently been attached
ing Forces. by some modern investigators, is the
symbolic worship known as phallicism.
Phallic worship, as a separate and organized cult, is extremely rare, in spite of the temptation to use it as a cloak for unbridled excesses. It is found, to be sure, as a phase of some other cult, among many savage tribes in America and Asia (and, as has been recently pointed out, in Japan); but where it attained its greatest development, among the Semitic and Dravidian races, in Greece under Semitic influences, or connected among the Aztecs with the higher forms of nature-worship, it put on sooner or later a symbolic meaning as typifying the mysterious force which renews the earth in spring and provides for the continuance of the wonderful thing which is called life. All over the world, with rites bearing at least a superficial similarity, the deities or spirits of vegetation, on whom man was thought to depend for the food which sustained his life, were worshiped with ceremonies of which there are curious survivals, no longer understood, in the spring and harvest customs of European countries. Likewise, in the pastoral and agricultural stage, men were impressed with the need of winning the favor of the great forces of nature—streams and fountains, clouds, the sky, the sun and moon. Communion was sought, where possible, by placing the offerings of the worshiper in contact with the di-
RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Worship
vine power, as by throwing them into water; in the case of the sun, the old principle of classification suggested fire as akin to his substance.
Certainly the most wide-spread, as well as the most important, of primitive religious rites are those which set forth the public worship of the tribe or clan. Robertson Smith is inclined to regard communal worship as the only worship in very early times. ‘In antiquity,’”’ he says, “all religion was the affair of the community rather than of the individual” (op. cit., p. 236). Here, however, Daniel
G. Brinton strongly disagrees with
15. Com- him, attributing to his special re-
munal_ searches among the Semitic peoples
Worship. the general theory, which “is contra-
dicted by nearly every primitive religion known to me”; and of course it is obvious that in so far as one’s notions are unconsciously colored by records such as those of the Greek poets one will lean toward the former view—little definite record is likely to be left of the worship of the individual or of the small private group of the family in the earliest stages of its growth. Again, there is often an unconscious tendency to depend on official explanations, which are, in many cases, far later than the primitive rites for which they undertake to account, and are the work of men who were ashamed of some feature of the rite, or who were unwilling to confess themselves unable to give an authentic explanation of it. It is necessary to bear in mind that often they may give only a partial or factitious view of their subject, while quite another may be the true one, or may have been held at the same time by large numbers of people. Thus, for example, the animal-worship of Egypt was explained in several different ways. The official or priestly interpretation varied. It was said that the gods had concealed themselves in the forms of beasts during the revolutionary wars of Set against Horus; or that the adoration was directed not to the animal but to the qualities which it personified; or that the beastgods were memorials of badges (representing animals) borne by the various tribal companies in the forces of Osiris. Apollonius of Tyana is quoted as holding that the beasts were symbols of deity, not deities; and Porphyry (De abstinentia, iv. 9) asserts definitely that ‘‘ under the semblance of animals the Egyptians worship the universal power which the gods have revealed in the various forms of living nature.” But these are theories constructed by learned men long after the origin of the rites; and it is obvious that there is a grave disadvantage in having no record of what the simple peasantry thought of customs in which recent scholars have been inclined to see ‘‘ a consecration and elaborate survival of totemism.” In view of the natural inclination to concentrate the attention on public acts, it is not surprising that Pfleiderer defines religious cult as ‘‘ an utterance or manifestation of the religious consciousness by means of the representative observances of the community, whereby its aspiration for communion with the divine attains actual consummation.”’ Yet, however true the second part of his definition may be, it must not be forgotten that the religious rites practised by the individual in perfect solitude and by the father in the
midst of his immediate family are to be included in any comprehensive definition.
Also, in a period as a rule far later than the primitive (speaking generally, about the sixth century B.c.), the historian of worship is obliged to take into account the gradual formation of small associations which aimed at supplementing the public worship, or at superseding it. This tendency is found even in religions which are swayed by animism. ‘Thus
among the North American Indians 16. Associa- it led to the formation of small bands tional Cults. to which no one was admitted without
having first undergone severe tests of self-control and perseverance; their members were regarded as elevated above the rest of the tribe and in closer relation with the spirits. Among the Hebrews, at the time of the Captivity, when the old national religion seemed to have broken down, we find in the strange sacrifices of ‘‘ unclean creatures ”’ —swine, dogs, mice, and other vermin—what may be considered as the recrudescence of a cult of the most primitive totem type; though it is distinguished from the old in that it is practised now by men who desert the religion of their birtn, as a means of initiation into a new brotherhood. These obscure rites, says Robertson Smith, “‘ have a vastly greater importance than has been commonly recognized; they mark the first appearance in Semitic history of the tendency to found religious societies on voluntary association and mystic initiation, instead of natural kinship and nationality ” (ut sup., p. 339). Sects of this kind are found growing out of other higher religions, such as those of China, India, and Persia; and in a similar class may be placed the Hanifites of Arabia, the Eleusinian mysteries, the Pythagoreans, Orphics, and Neoplatonists (see NEOPLATONISM) in Greece, and the Essenes (q.v.) in Israel, with their partly Persian and partly Greek affinities; while not a few of the heretical associations of the Middle Ages—Cathari (see New Manicueans, IT.), Fraticelli, Friends of God (qq.v.), and the like—stand in exactly the same relation to the accepted cult. In the older stages of civilization, too, there is a special incentive to the formation of such voluntary associations in the fact that as a general rule women as well as children were not admitted to the tribal worship, and would thus be likely to welcome anything in which they would have more latitude (see, further, TrRrBaL AND CuLtic MYsTERiss).
But the tendency which in ancient times led people to draw together in such societies has its roots far deeper in human psychology than in a mere wish to have the distinction of belonging to something not open to the great body of the community and of possessing secrets unknown to them. Asa general
tule, the official or tribal worship was 17. Joyous of a cheerful nature. ‘‘ Worship the
Character gods with a joyous worship,” says
of Primitive Cicero; and this precept was widely
Worship. obeyed. A superficial survey of Greek
religion would give the impression that by far the larger part of it was like that which Robertson Smith describes as the type of worship prevalent among the earlier Hebrews, and characteristic of their Semitic neighbors in general: “ universal
Worship