Modern Mythology, by Andrew Lang
CRITICISM OF FETISHISM
Mischief of Comparisons in Comparative Mythology
Not always are comparisons illuminating, it seems. Our author writes, ‘It may be said—in fact, it has been said—that there can at all events be no harm in simply placing the myths and customs of savages side by side with the myths and customs of Hindus and Greeks.’ (This, in fact, is the method of the science of institutions.)
‘But experience shows that this is not so’ (i. 195). So we must not, should not, simply place the myths and customs of savages side by side with those of Hindus and Greeks. It is taboo.
Dr. Oldenberg
Now Dr. Oldenberg, it seems, uses such comparisons of savage and Aryan faiths. Dr. Oldenberg is (i. 209) one of several ‘very thoughtful scholars’ who do so, who break Mr. Max Müller’s prohibition. Yet (ii. 220) ‘no true scholar would accept any comparison’ between savage fables and the folklore of Homer and the Vedas ‘as really authoritative until fully demonstrated on both sides.’ Well, it is ‘fully demonstrated,’ or ‘a very thoughtful scholar’ (like Dr. Oldenberg) would not accept it. Or it is not demonstrated, and then Dr. Oldenberg, though ‘a very thoughtful,’ is not ‘a true scholar.’
Comparisons, when odious
Once more, Mr. Max Müller deprecates the making of comparisons between savage and Vedic myths (i. 210), and then (i. 220) he deprecates the acceptance of these very comparisons ‘as really authoritative until fully demonstrated.’ Now, how is the validity of the comparisons to be ‘fully demonstrated’ if we are forbidden to make them at all, because to do so is to ‘obscure’ the Veda ‘by light from the Dark Continent’?
A Question of Logic
I am not writing ‘quips and cranks;’ I am dealing quite gravely with the author’s processes of reasoning. ‘No true scholar’ does what ‘very thoughtful scholars’ do. No comparisons of savage and Vedic myths should be made, but yet, ‘when fully demonstrated,’ ‘true scholars would accept them’ (i 209, 220). How can comparisons be demonstrated before they are made? And made they must not be!
‘Scholars’
It would be useful if Mr. Max Müller were to define ‘scholar,’ ‘real scholar,’ ‘true scholar,’ ‘very thoughtful scholar.’ The latter may err, and have erred—like General Councils, and like Dr. Oldenberg, who finds in the Veda ‘remnants of the wildest and rawest essence of religion,’ totemism, and the rest (i. 210). I was wont to think that ‘scholar,’ as used by our learned author, meant ‘philological mythologist,’ as distinguished from ‘not-scholar,’ that is, ‘anthropological mythologist.’ But now ‘very thoughtful scholars,’ even Dr. Oldenberg, Mr. Rhys, Dr. Robertson Smith, and so on, use the anthropological method, so ‘scholar’ needs a fresh definition. The ‘not-scholars,’ the anthropologists, have, in fact, converted some very thoughtful scholars. If we could only catch the true scholar! But that we cannot do till we fully demonstrate comparisons which we may not make, for fear of first ‘obscuring the Veda by this kind of light from the Dark Continent.’
Anthropology and the Mysteries
It is not my affair to defend Dr. Oldenberg, whose comparisons of Vedic with savage rites I have never read, I am sorry to say. One is only arguing that the method of making such comparisons is legitimate. Thus (i. 232) controversy, it seems, still rages among scholars as to ‘the object of the Eleusinian Mysteries.’ ‘Does not the scholar’s conscience warn us against accepting whatever in the myths and customs of the Zulus seems to suit our purpose’—of explaining features in the Eleusinia? If Zulu customs, and they alone, contained Eleusinian parallels, even the anthropologist’s conscience would whisper caution. But this is not the case. North American, Australian, African, and other tribes have mysteries very closely and minutely resembling parts of the rites of the Eleusinia, Dionysia, and Thesmophoria. Thus Lobeck, a scholar, describes the Rhombos used in the Dionysiac mysteries, citing Clemens Alexandrinus. {114} Thanks to Dr. Tylor’s researches I was able to show (what Lobeck knew not) that the Rhombos (Australian turndun, ‘Bull-roarer’) is also used in Australian, African, American, and other savage religious mysteries. Now should I have refrained from producing this well-attested matter of fact till I knew Australian, American, and African languages as well as I know Greek? ‘What century will it be when there will be scholars who know the dialects of the Australian blacks as well as we know the dialects of Greece?’ (i. 232) asks our author. And what in the name of Eleusis have dialects to do with the circumstance that savages, like Greeks, use Rhombi in their mysteries? There are abundant other material facts, visible palpable objects and practices, which savage mysteries have in common with the Greek mysteries. {115} If observed by deaf men, when used by dumb men, instead of by scores of Europeans who could talk the native languages, these illuminating rites of savages would still be evidence. They have been seen and described often, not by ‘a casual native informant’ (who, perhaps, casually invented Greek rites, and falsely attributed them to his tribesmen), but by educated Europeans.
Abstract Ideas of Savages
Mr. Max Müller defends, with perfect justice, the existence of abstract ideas among contemporary savages. It appears that somebody or other has said—‘we have been told’ (i. 291)—‘that all this’ (the Mangaian theory of the universe) ‘must have come from missionaries.’ The ideas are as likely to have come from Hegel as from a missionary! Therefore, ‘instead of looking for idols, or for totems and fetishes, we must learn and accept what the savages themselves are able to tell us. . . . ’ Yes, we must learn and accept it; so I have always urged. But if the savages tell us about totems, are they not then ‘casual native informants’? If a Maori tells you, as he does, of traditional hymns containing ideas worthy of Heraclitus, is that quite trustworthy; whereas, if he tells you about his idols and taboos, that cannot possibly be worthy of attention?
Perception of the Infinite
From these extraordinary examples of abstract thought in savages, our author goes on to say that his theory of ‘the perception of the Infinite’ as the origin of religion was received ‘with a storm of unfounded obloquy’ (i. 292). I myself criticised the Hibbert Lectures, in Mind; {116} on reading the essay over, I find no obloquy and no storm. I find, however, that I deny, what our author says that I assert, the primitiveness of contemporary savages.
In that essay, which, of course, our author had no reason to read, much was said about fetishism, a topic discussed by Mr. Max Müller in his Hibbert Lectures. Fetishism is, as he says, an ill word, and has caused much confusion.
Fetishism and Anthropological Method
Throughout much of his work our author’s object is to invalidate the anthropological method. That method sets side by side the customs, ideas, fables, myths, proverbs, riddles, rites, of different races. Of their languages it does not necessarily take account in this process. Nobody (as we shall see) knows the languages of all, or of most, of the races whose ideas he compares. Now the learned professor establishes the ‘harm done’ by our method in a given instance. He seems to think that, if a method has been misapplied, therefore the method itself is necessarily erroneous. The case stands thus: De Brosses {117a} first compared ‘the so-called fetishes’ of the Gold Coast with Greek and Roman amulets and other material objects of old religions. But he did this, we learn, without trying to find out why a negro made a fetish of a pebble, shell, or tiger’s tail, and without endeavouring to discover whether the negro’s motives really were the motives of his ‘postulated fetish worship’ in Greece, Rome, or Palestine.
Origin of Fetishes
If so, tant pis pour monsieur le President. But how does the unscientific conduct attributed to De Brosses implicate the modern anthropologist? Do we not try to find out, and really succeed sometimes in finding out, why a savage cherishes this or that scrap as a ‘fetish’? I give a string of explanations in Custom and Myth (pp. 229-230). Sometimes the so-called fetish had an accidental, which was taken to be a causal, connection with a stroke of good luck. Sometimes the thing—an odd-shaped stone, say—had a superficial resemblance to a desirable object, and so was thought likely to aid in the acquisition of such objects by ‘sympathetic magic.’ {117b}
Other ‘fetishes’ are revealed in dreams, or by ghosts, or by spirits appearing in semblance of animals. {118a}
‘Telekinetic’ Origin of Fetishism
As I write comes in Mélusine, viii. 7, with an essay by M. Lefébure on Les Origines du Fétichisme. He derives some fetishistic practices from what the Melanesians call Mana, which, says Mr. Max Müller, ‘may often be rendered by supernatural or magic power, present in an individual, a stone, or in formulas or charms’ (i. 294). How, asks Mr. Lefébure, did men come to attribute this vis vivida to persons and things? Because, in fact, he says, such an unexplored force does really exist and display itself. He then cites Mr. Crookes’ observations on scientifically registered ‘telekinetic’ performances by Daniel Dunglas Home, he cites Despine on Madame Schmitz-Baud, {118b} with examples from Dr. Tylor, P. de la Rissachère, Dr. Gibier, {118c} and other authorities, good or bad. Grouping, then, his facts under the dubious title of le magnétisme, M. Lefébure finds in savage observation of such facts ‘the chief cause of fetishism.’
Some of M. Lefébure’s ‘facts’ (of objects moving untouched) were certainly frauds, like the tricks of Eusapia. But, even if all the facts recorded were frauds, such impostures, performed by savage conjurers, who certainly profess {118d} to produce the phenomena, might originate, or help to originate, the respect paid to ‘fetishes’ and the belief in Mana. But probably Major Ellis’s researches into the religion of the Tshi-speaking races throw most light on the real ideas of African fetishists. The subject is vast and complex. I am content to show that, whatever De Brosses did, we do not abandon a search for the motives of the savage fetishist. Indeed, De Brosses himself did seek and find at least one African motive, ‘The conjurers (jongleurs) persuade them that little instruments in their possession are endowed with a living spirit.’ So far, fetishism is spiritualism.
Civilised ‘Fetishism’
De Brosses did not look among civilised fetishists for the motives which he neglected among savages (i. 196). Tant pis pour monsieur le Président. But we and our method no more stand or fall with De Brosses and his, than Mr. Max Müller’s etymologies stand or fall with those in the Cratylus of Plato. If, in a civilised people, ancient or modern, we find a practice vaguely styled ‘fetishistic,’ we examine it in its details. While we have talismans, amulets, gamblers’ fétiches, I do not think that, except among some children, we have anything nearly analogous to Gold Coast fetishism as a whole. Some one seems to have called the palladium a fetish. I don’t exactly know what the palladium (called a fetish by somebody) was. The hasta fetialis has been styled a fetish—an apparent abuse of language. As to the Holy Cross qua fetish, why discuss such free-thinking credulities?
Modern anthropologists—Tylor, Frazer, and the rest—are not under the censure appropriate to the illogical.
More Mischiefs of Comparison
The ‘Nemesis’ (i. 196) of De Brosses’ errors did not stay in her ravaging progress. Fetishism was represented as ‘the very beginning of religion,’ first among the negroes, then among all races. As I, for one, persistently proclaim that the beginning of religion is an inscrutable mystery, the Nemesis has somehow left me scatheless, propitiated by my piety. I said, long ago, ‘the train of ideas which leads man to believe in and to treasure fetishes is one among the earliest springs of religious belief.’ {120a} But from even this rather guarded statement I withdraw. ‘No man can watch the idea of GOD in the making or in the beginning.’ {120b}
Still more Nemesis
The new Nemesis is really that which I have just put far from me—namely, that ‘modern savages represent everywhere the Eocene stratum of religion.’ They probably represent an early stage in religion, just as, teste. Mr. Max Müller, they represent an early stage in language ‘In savage languages we see what we can no longer expect to see even in the most ancient Sanskrit or Hebrew. We watch the childhood of language, with all its childish pranks.’ {120c}
Now, if the tongues spoken by modern savages represent the ‘childhood’ and ‘childish pranks’ of language, why should the beliefs of modern savages not represent the childhood and childish pranks of religion? I am not here averring that they do so, nor even that Mr. Max Müller is right in his remark on language. The Australian blacks have been men as long as the Prussian nobility. Their language has had time to outgrow ‘childish pranks,’ but apparently it has not made use of its opportunities, according to our critic. Does he know why?
One need not reply to the charge that anthropologists, if they are meant, regard modern savages ‘as just evolved from the earth, or the sky,’ or from monkeys (i. 197). ‘Savages have a far-stretching unknown history behind them.’ ‘The past of savages, I say, must have been a long past.’ {121} So, once more, the Nemesis of De Brosses fails to touch me—and, of course, to touch more learned anthropologists.
There is yet another Nemesis—the postulate that Aryans and Semites, or rather their ancestors, must have passed through the savage state. Dr. Tylor writes:—‘So far as history is to be our criterion, progression is primary and degradation secondary. Culture must be gained before it can be lost.’ Now a person who has not gained what Dr. Tylor calls ‘culture’ (not in Mr. Arnold’s sense) is a man without tools, instruments, or clothes. He is certainly, so far, like a savage; is very much lower in ‘culture’ than any race with which we are acquainted. As a matter of hypothesis, anyone may say that man was born ‘with everything handsome about him.’ He has then to account for the savage elements in Greek myth and rite.
For Us or Against Us?
We now hear that the worst and last penalty paid for De Brosses’ audacious comparison of savage with civilised superstitions is the postulate that Aryan and Semitic peoples have passed through a stage of savagery. ‘However different the languages, customs and myths, the colour and the skulls of these modern savages might be from those of Aryan and Semitic people, the latter must once have passed through the same stage, must once have been what the negroes of the West Coast of Africa are to-day. This postulate has not been, and, according to its very nature, cannot be proved. But the mischief done by acting on such postulates is still going on, and in several cases it has come to this—that what in historical religions, such as our own, is known to be the most modern, the very last outcome, namely, the worship of relics or a belief in amulets, has been represented as the first necessary step in the evolution of all religions’ (i. 197).
I really do not know who says that the prehistoric ancestors of Aryans and Semites were once in the same stage as the ‘negroes of the West Coast of Africa are to-day.’ These honest fellows are well acquainted with coined money, with the use of firearms, and other resources of civilisation, and have been in touch with missionaries, Miss Kingsley, traders, and tourists. The ancestors of the Aryans and Semites enjoyed no such advantages. Mr. Max Müller does not tell us who says that they did. But that the ancestors of all mankind passed through a stage in which they had to develop for themselves tools, languages, clothes, and institutions, is assuredly the belief of anthropologists. A race without tools, language, clothes, pottery, and social institutions, or with these in the shape of undeveloped speech, stone knives, and ’possum or other skins, is what we call a race of savages. Such we believe the ancestors of mankind to have been—at any rate after the Fall.
Now when Mr. Max Müller began to write his book, he accepted this postulate of anthropology (i. 15). When he reached i. 197 he abandoned and denounced this postulate.
I quote his acceptance of the postulate (i. 15):—
‘Even Mr. A. Lang has to admit that we have not got much beyond Fontenelle, when he wrote in the last century:
‘“Why are the legends [myths] about men, beasts, and gods so wildly incredible and revolting? . . . The answer is that the earliest men were in a state of almost inconceivable ignorance and savagery, and that the Greeks inherited their myths from people in the same savage stage (en un pareil état de sauvagerie). Look at the Kaffirs and Iroquois if you want to know what the earliest men were like, and remember that the very Iroquois and Kaffirs have a long past behind them”’—that is to say, are polite and cultivated compared to the earliest men of all.
Here is an uncompromising statement by Fontenelle of the postulate that the Greeks (an Aryan people) must have passed through the same stage as modern savages—Kaffirs and Iroquois—now occupy. But (i. 15) Mr. Max Müller eagerly accepts the postulate:—
‘There is not a word of Fontenelle’s to which I should not gladly subscribe; there is no advice of his which I have not tried to follow in all my attempts to explain the myths of India and Greece by an occasional reference to Polynesian or African folklore.’
Well, if Mr. Max Müller ‘gladly subscribes,’ in p. 15, to the postulate of an original universal stage of savagery, whence civilised races inherit their incredibly repulsive myths, why, in pp. 197, 198, does he denounce that very postulate as not proven, not capable of being proved, very mischievous, and one of the evils resulting from our method of comparing savage and civilised rites and beliefs? I must be permitted to complain that I do not know which is Mr. Max Müller’s real opinion—that given with such hearty conviction in p. 15, or that stated with no less earnestness in pp. 197, 198. I trust that I shall not be thought to magnify a mere slip of the pen. Both passages—though, as far as I can see, self-contradictory—appear to be written with the same absence of levity. Fontenelle, I own, speaks of Greeks, not Semites, as being originally savages. But I pointed out {124} that he considered it safer to ‘hedge’ by making an exception of the Israelites. There is really nothing in Genesis against the contention that the naked, tool-less, mean, and frivolous Adam was a savage.
The Fallacy of ‘Admits’
As the purpose of this essay is mainly logical, I may point out the existence of a fallacy not marked, I think, in handbooks of Logic. This is the fallacy of saying that an opponent ‘admits’ what, on the contrary, he has been the first to point out and proclaim. He is thus suggested into an attitude which is the reverse of his own. Some one—I am sorry to say that I forget who he was—showed me that Fontenelle, in De l’Origine des Fables, {125a} briefly stated the anthropological theory of the origin of myths, or at least of that repulsive element in them which ‘makes mythology mythological,’ as Mr. Max Müller says. I was glad to have a predecessor in a past less remote than that of Eusebius of Cæsarea. ‘A briefer and better system of mythology,’ I wrote, ‘could not be devised; but the Mr. Casaubons of this world have neglected it, and even now it is beyond their comprehension.’ {125b} To say this in this manner is not to ‘admit that we have not got much beyond Fontenelle.’ I do not want to get beyond Fontenelle. I want to go back to his ‘forgotten common-sense,’ and to apply his ideas with method and criticism to a range of materials which he did not possess or did not investigate.
Now, on p. 15, Mr. Max Müller had got as far as accepting Fontenelle; on pp. 197, 198 he burns, as it were, that to which he had ‘gladly subscribed.’
Conclusion as to our Method
All this discussion of fetishes arose out of our author’s selection of the subject as an example of the viciousness of our method. He would not permit us ‘simply to place side by side’ savage and Greek myths and customs, because it did harm (i. 195); and the harm done was proved by the Nemesis of De Brosses. Now, first, a method may be a good method, yet may be badly applied. Secondly, I have shown that the Nemesis does not attach to all of us modern anthropologists. Thirdly, I have proved (unless I am under some misapprehension, which I vainly attempt to detect, and for which, if it exists, I apologise humbly) that Mr. Max Müller, on p. 15, accepts the doctrine which he denounces on p. 197. {126} Again, I am entirely at one with Mr. Max Müller when he says (p. 210) ‘we have as yet really no scientific treatment of Shamanism.’ This is a pressing need, but probably a physician alone could do the work—a physician doublé with a psychologist. See, however, the excellent pages in Dr. Tylor’s Primitive Culture, and in Mr. William James’s Principles of Psychology, on ‘Mediumship.’
Footnotes
{114} Aglaophamus, i. 700.
{115} Custom and Myth, i. 29-44. M. R. R. ii. 260-273.
{116} Custom and Myth, pp. 212-242.
{117a} Culte des Fétiches, 1760.
{117b} Codrington, Journal Anthrop. Inst., Feb. 1881.
{118a} C. and M. p. 230, note.
{118b} Rochas, Les Forces non définies, 1888, pp. 340-357, 411, 626.
{118c} Revue Bleue, 1890, p. 367.
{118d} De Brosses, p. 16.
{120a} C. and M. p. 214.
{120b} M. R. R. i. 327.
{120c} Lectures on the Science of Language, 2nd series, p. 41.
{121} M. R. R. ii. 327 and 329.
{124} M. R. R. ii. 324.
{125a} Paris: Œuvres, 1758, iii. 270.
{125b} M. R. R. ii. 324.
{126} I have no concern with his criticism of Mr. Herbert Spencer (p. 203), as I entirely disagree with that philosopher’s theory. The defence of ‘Animism’ I leave to Dr. Tylor.
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