Custom and Myth

recrudescence as from a corruption?  Professor Max Muller has still,
moreover, to explain how the process of corruption which introduced the
same fetichistic practices among Samoyeds, Brazilians, Kaffirs, and the
people of the Atharvana Veda came to be everywhere identical in its
results.

Here an argument often urged against the anthropological method may be
shortly disposed of.  'You examine savages,' people say, 'but how do you
know that these savages were not once much more cultivated; that their
whole mode of life, religion and all, is not debased and decadent from an
earlier standard?'  Mr. Muller glances at this argument, which, however,
cannot serve his purpose.  Mr. Muller has recognised that savage, or
'nomadic,' languages represent a much earlier state of language than
anything that we find, for example, in the oldest Hebrew or Sanskrit
texts.  'For this reason,' he says, {218} 'the study of what I call
_nomad_ languages, as distinguished from _State_ languages, becomes so
instructive.  We see in them 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 freaks.'  Yes, adds the anthropologist, and for
this reason the study of savage religions, as distinguished from State
religions, becomes so instructive.  We see in them what we can no longer
expect to see even in the most ancient Sanskrit or Hebrew faiths.  We
watch the childhood of religion with all its childish freaks.  If this
reasoning be sound when the Kaffir tongue is contrasted with ancient
Sanskrit, it should be sound when the Kaffir faith is compared with the
Vedic faith.  By parity of reasoning, the religious beliefs of peoples as
much less advanced than the Kaffirs as the Kaffirs are less advanced than
the Vedic peoples, should be still nearer the infancy of faith, still
'nearer the beginning.'

We have been occupied, perhaps, too long with De Brosses and our apology
for De Brosses.  Let us now examine, as shortly as possible, Mr. Max
Muller's reasons for denying that fetichism is 'a primitive form of
religion.'  The negative side of his argument being thus disposed of, it
will then be our business to consider (1) his psychological theory of the
subjective element in religion, and (2) his account of the growth of
Indian religion.  The conclusion of the essay will be concerned with
demonstrating that Mr. Max Muller's system assigns little or no place to
the superstitious beliefs without which, in other countries than India,
society could not have come into organised existence.

* * * * *

In his polemic against Fetichism, it is not always very easy to see
against whom Mr. Muller is contending.  It is one thing to say that
fetichism is a 'primitive form of religion,' and quite another to say
that it is 'the very beginning of all religion.'  Occasionally he attacks
the 'Comtian theory,' which, I think, is not now held by many people who
study the history of man, and which I am not concerned to defend.  He
says that the Portuguese navigators who discovered among the negroes 'no
other trace of any religious worship' except what they called the worship
of feiticos, concluded that this was the whole of the religion of the
negroes (p. 61).  Mr. Muller then goes on to prove that 'no religion
consists of fetichism only,' choosing his examples of higher elements in
negro religion from the collections of Waitz.  It is difficult to see
what bearing this has on his argument.  De Brosses (p. 20) shows that
_he_, at least, was well aware that many negro tribes have higher
conceptions of the Deity than any which are implied in fetich-worship.
Even if no tribe in the world is exclusively devoted to fetiches, the
argument makes no progress.  Perhaps no extant tribe is in the way of
using unpolished stone weapons and no others, but it does not follow that
unpolished stone weapons are not primitive.  It is just as easy to
maintain that the purer ideas have, by this time, been reached by aid of
the stepping-stones of the grosser, as that the grosser are the
corruption of the purer.  Mr. Max Muller constantly asserts that the
'human mind advanced by small and timid steps from what is intelligible,
to what is at first sight almost beyond comprehension' (p. 126).  Among
the objects which aided man to take these small and timid steps, he
reckons rivers and trees, which excited, he says, religious awe.  What he
will not suppose is that the earliest small and timid steps were not
unaided by such objects as the fetichist treasures--stones, shells, and
so forth, which suggest no idea of infinity.  Stocks he will admit, but
not, if he can help it, stones, of the sort that negroes and Kanekas and
other tribes use as fetiches.  His reason is, that he does not see how
the scraps of the fetichist can appeal to the feeling of the Infinite,
which feeling is, in his theory, the basis of religion.

After maintaining (what is readily granted) that negroes have a religion
composed of many elements, Mr. Muller tries to discredit the evidence
about the creeds of savages, and discourses on the many minute shades of
progress which exist among tribes too often lumped together as if they
were all in the same condition.  Here he will have all scientific
students of savage life on his side.  It remains true, however, that
certain elements of savage practice, fetichism being one of them, are
practically ubiquitous.  Thus, when Mr. Muller speaks of 'the influence
of public opinion' in biassing the narrative of travellers, we must not
forget that the strongest evidence about savage practice is derived from
the 'undesigned coincidence' of the testimonies of all sorts of men, in
all ages, and all conditions of public opinion.  'Illiterate men,
ignorant of the writings of each other, bring the same reports from
various quarters of the globe,' wrote Millar of Glasgow.  When sailors,
merchants, missionaries, describe, as matters unprecedented and unheard
of, such institutions as polyandry, totemism, and so forth, the evidence
is so strong, because the witnesses are so astonished.  They do not know
that anyone but themselves has ever noticed the curious facts before
their eyes.  And when Mr. Muller tries to make the testimony about savage
faith still more untrustworthy, by talking of the 'absence of recognised
authority among savages,' do not let us forget that custom ([Greek]) is a
recognised authority, and that the punishment of death is inflicted for
transgression of certain rules.  These rules, generally speaking, are of