The shift from magic to gods: Despair and the intellectual history of belief

“ The manifestations of nature, the mystery of birth, the fear of death, the phenomena of dreams, the growth and harvesting of crops—all of these were beyond their understanding. They peopled the earth with gods to be propitiated and appeased. ”

“ But when experience dispels the nearer illusions, objects more remote are made gods; in the sun and stars he sees his controlling destinies; the number of his gods is lessened until at last all merge into one God, the author of all law, the great and only ruler of the universe. In every mythology we see this impersonation of natural phenomena; frost and fire, earth and air and water, in their displays of mysterious powers, are at once deified and humanized. ”

“ What a child may do, in the way of despair of religion, a childlike race may do. Therefore, if we find a race with magic but without religion, we cannot scientifically say that the race has never possessed a religion. ”

“ Frazer, occurs in a country where, fourteen pages earlier, he had assured us that 'nobody thinks of propitiating gods or spirits by prayer and sacrifice.' Sacrifice, happily, there is none; the Dieri have not degenerated to sacrificing human victims like the Greeks.
[Pg 64]
The scene is Central Australia, where 'the pitiless sun beats down for months together out of a blue and cloudless sky on the parched and gaping earth.' Consequently rain-making magic must perpetually prove a failure. Therefore, I presume, the Dieri have been driven into religion by discovering the fallacy of magic. ”

“ There is nothing in the classic witchcraft which does not exist to-day in the islands of savage peoples, and the methods of medicine-men in primitive forests.
Images of Wax, etc., in Sorcery.
A very widespread and ancient method of compassing a person’s death by witchcraft is that of making a figure in wax, or other plastic material, to represent the victim of the incantation. The object seems to be the concentration of will-power to effect the wishes of the user of the charm. There is an innate belief that words are creative symbols ”

“ After the seventh time burn the figure, and your victim will die. This charm obviously combines the principles of homoeopathic and contagious magic; since the image which is made in the likeness of an enemy contains things which once were in contact with him, namely, his nails, hair, and spittle. Another form of the Malay charm, which resembles the Ojebway practice still more closely, is to make a corpse of wax from an empty bees’ comb and of the length of a footstep; then pierce the eye of the image, and your enemy is blind; pierce the stomach, and he is sick ”

“ Thus an Arabic treatise on magic directs that if you wish to deprive a man of the use of his limbs you should make a waxen image of him, and engrave his name and his mother’s name on it with a knife of which the handle must be made of the same wax; then smite the limb of the image which answers to the particular limb of the man which you desire to disable; at the same moment the limb of flesh and blood will be paralysed.​ [225] The following is another extract from the same treatise: “To injure the eyes of an enemy, take a taper and fashion it into the likeness of him whom you would harm. ”

“ Thy people, reduced to despair, shorn of their felicity, will no longer acknowledge thy divine rights. In vain, then, thou wouldst sue for aid to that superstition which hath deified thee; it can avail nothing with thy people, whom sharp misery had rendered deaf; heaven will abandon thee to the fury of those enemies to which thy frenzy shall have given birth. Superstitious systems can effect nothing against my irrevocable decrees, which will that man shall ever irritate himself against the cause of his sorrows. ”

“ If the gods of nations had their birth in the bosom of alarm, it was again in that of despair that each individual formed the unknown power that he made exclusively for himself. Ignorant of physical causes, unpractised in their mode of action, unaccustomed to their effects, whenever he experienced any serious misfortune, whenever he was afflicted with any grievous sensation, he was at a loss how to account for it ”

“ That fear first created the gods is perhaps as true as anything so brief could be on so great a subject. ”

“ So when a Cora Indian {p56} of Mexico wishes to kill a man, he makes a figure of him out of burnt clay, strips of cloth, and so forth, and then, muttering incantations, runs thorns through the head or stomach of the figure to make his victim suffer correspondingly. Sometimes the Cora Indian makes a more beneficent use of this sort of homoeopathic magic. When he wishes to multiply his flocks or herds, he models a figure of the animal he wants in wax or clay, or carves it from tuff, and deposits it in a cave of the mountains ”

“ Next day the person aimed at would feel chilly, then waste away and die, unless the same wizard who had wrought the charm would consent to undo it.​ [202] If the sorcerer pulled off an arm or leg of the image, the human victim felt pain in the corresponding limb of his body; but if the sorcerer restored the severed arm or leg to the figure, the man recovered. Another mode of compassing a man’s death in Torres Straits was to prick a wax effigy of him or her with the spine of a sting-ray ”

“ Little wonder, therefore, that the practice of enchantment by means of images was familiar to the wizards of Egypt. A drop of a man’s blood, some clippings of his hair or parings of his nails, a rag of the garment which he had worn, sufficed to give a sorcerer complete power over him. These relics of his person the magician kneaded into a lump of wax, which he moulded into the likeness and dressed after the fashion of his intended victim, who was then at the mercy of his tormentor. If the image was exposed to the fire, the person whom it represented straightway fell into a burning fever ”

“ ONE of the most popular outdoor sports in Europe in the old times was witchcraft. It was brought across the Atlantic and had its vogue in New England. It was ever a popular pastime in darkest Africa. So it is not surprizing that the belief should have been firmly rooted in the new world many generations before the white men came. ”

“ The second sort of magic acts by spells which constrain spirits or gods to do the will of the magician. This magic involves itself in religion when the magical ceremonies are, so to speak, only symbolic prayers expressed in a kind of sign-language. But if the idea is to put constraint by spells on a god or spirit, then the intention is magical and rebellious. Though the official priest of a savage god may use magic in his appeal to that deity, he is not a wizard. It is the unofficial practitioner who is a witch, just as the unqualified medical practitioner is a quack. ”

“ The white can help, but not hurt. Cotta says:971 “The mention of witchcraft doth now occasion the remembrance in the next place of a sort of practitioners whom our custome and country doth call wise men and wise women, reputed a kind of good and harmless witches or wizards, who by good words, by hallowed herbes, and salves, and other superstitious ceremonies, promise to allay and calme divels, practices of other witches, and the forces of many diseases.” The last lingering remains of such wise women may be found in the poorer quarters of all our great towns as well as in country places ”

“ Every creature must fit itself to its environment or pass away. The beast fits the forest for the same reason that the river fits its bed. Life is only possible under the rare conditions in which life is not destroyed.
In such fashion we may ring the changes of the despair of philosophy. If we are to take up the threads of life by the farther end only, we shall never begin to live, for only those which lie next us can ever be in our hand. To grasp at ultimate truth is to be forever empty-handed. To reach for the ultimate end of action is never to begin to act. ”

“ On the other hand, if the principles of mechanics are only of experimental origin, are they not merely approximate and provisory? May we not be some day compelled by new experiments to modify or even to abandon them? These are the questions which naturally arise, and the difficulty of solution is largely due to the fact that treatises on mechanics do not clearly distinguish between what is experiment, what is mathematical reasoning, what is convention, and what is hypothesis. ”

“ You look pale and gaze And put on fear and cast yourself in wonder To see the strange impatience of the heavens. But if you would consider the true cause Why all these fires, why all these gliding ghosts, Why birds and beasts from quality and kind, Why old men, fools, and children calculate, Why all these things change from their ordinance, Their natures, and preformed faculties To monstrous quality, why, you shall find That heaven hath infused them with these spirits To make them instruments of fear and warning Unto some monstrous state. ”

“ Pillage is the universal law: unhappy creatures, know you not that life is but a flight? If you grieve for the death of your son, the fault lies with the time when he was born, for at his birth he was told that death was his doom: it is the law under which he was born, the fate which has pursued him ever since he left his mother's womb. We have come under the dominion of Fortune, and a harsh and unconquerable dominion it is: at her caprice we must suffer all things whether we deserve them or not. ”

“ Like aught that for its grace may be
Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.
Spirit of Beauty, that dost consecrate
With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon
Of human thought or form, where art thou gone?
Why dost thou pass away and leave our state,
This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate?
Ask why the sunlight not forever
Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain river;
Why aught should fail and fade that once is shewn;
Why fear and dream and death and birth
Cast on the daylight of this earth
Such gloom, why man has such a scope
For love and hate, despondency and hope? ”

“ Ulysses’ knees, then all his spirit was spent.
In which despair, he thus spake: “Woe is me!
What was I born to, man of misery!
Fear tells me now, that, all the Goddess said,
Truth’s self will author, that Fate would be paid
Grief’s whole sum due from me, at sea, before
I reach’d the dear touch of my country’s shore.
With what clouds Jove heav’n’s heighten’d forehead binds!
How tyrannize the wraths of all the winds!
How all the tops he bottoms with the deeps,
And in the bottoms all the tops he steeps!
Thus dreadful is the presence of our death. ”

“ But putting all this aside for the present, what I wish to establish is that uncertainty, doubt, perpetual wrestling with the mystery of our final destiny, mental despair, and the lack of any solid and stable dogmatic foundation, may be the basis of an ethic. ”

“ Alas, if despair is a fearful thing when the blood is hot, when the hair is black, when the head is erect on the body like the flame on the torch, when the roll of destiny still retains its full thickness, when the heart, full of desirable love, still possesses beats which can be returned to it, when one has time for redress, when all women and all smiles and all the future and all the horizon are before one, when the force of life is complete, what is it in old age, when the years hasten on, growing ever paler, to that twilight hour when one begins to behold the stars of the tomb? ”

“ However long the time we shall build houses, however long the time we shall put our seal to contracts, however long the time brothers shall quarrel with each other, however long the time there shall be hostility between kings, however long the time rivers shall overflow their banks, we shall not be able to portray any image of death. When the spirits salute a man at his birth, then the genii of the earth, the great gods, Mamitu the moulder of destinies, all of them together assign a fate to him, they determine for him his life and death ”

“ Fear made her devils, and weak hope her gods; Gods partial, changeful, passionate, unjust, Whose attributes were rage, revenge, or lust; Such as the souls of cowards might conceive, And, form'd like tyrants, tyrants would believe. 260 Zeal then, not charity, became the guide; And hell was built on spite, and heaven on pride. Then sacred seem'd the ethereal vault no more; Altars grew marble then, and reek'd with gore: Then first the Flamen tasted living food; Next his grim idol smear'd with human blood; With Heaven's own thunders shook the world below, And play'd the god an engine on his foe. ”

“ Nay, stranger, the gods of these lands are very different; and they demand very different sacrifices. They delight in sharp woes and agonies, in grinding pains, in dripping blood and death-sweats and cries of despair. If these woods were all cut down, and the land ploughed up, and peaceful folk lived here in quiet fields and farms, then perhaps your simple, easy-going God might come and dwell with them—but now, if he came, he would flee in terror. ”

“ No intelligent man can doubt the fact. Sacrificial offerings have prevailed in every nation and in every age. "Almost the entire worship of the pagan nations consisted in rites of deprecation. Fear of the Divine displeasure seems to have been the leading feature of their religious impressions; and in the diversity, the costliness, the cruelty of their sacrifices they 125 sought to appease gods to whose wrath they felt themselves exposed, from a consciousness of sin, unrelieved by any information as to the means of escaping its effects." ”

“ This interval, Heaven trusts him to our care
But to his native land our charge resign’d,
Heaven’s is his life to come, and all the woes behind.
Then must he suffer what the Fates ordain;
For Fate has wove the thread of life with pain!
And twins, e’en from the birth, are Misery and Man!
But if, descended from the Olympian bower,
Gracious approach us some immortal power;
If in that form thou comest a guest divine:
Some high event the conscious gods design.
As yet, unbid they never graced our feast,
The solemn sacrifice call’d down the guest ”

“ The gods with ease frail man depress or raise,
Exalt the lowly, or the proud debase.”
He spoke and sate. The prince with transport flew,
Hung round his neck, while tears his cheek bedew;
Nor less the father pour’d a social flood;
They wept abundant, and they wept aloud.
As the bold eagle with fierce sorrow stung,
Or parent vulture, mourns her ravish’d young;
They cry, they scream, their unfledged brood a prey
To some rude churl, and borne by stealth away:
So they aloud: and tears in tides had run,
Their grief unfinish’d with the setting sun ”

“ Nevertheless, there is one class of myths in which the gods themselves actually appear to undergo experiences. I refer to those sagas and poems which are concerned with the birth of the gods, and with the origin of their rulership over the world and over the world-order which they have created, namely, to the cosmogonic and theogonic myths. These myths relate solely to a world of demons and gods, and they deal, as a rule, with an age prior to the existence of man, or with one in which the creation of man is but a single episode. ”

“ Man, after acquiring a still higher development, realised these evils and made concentrated efforts to fight them and to soothe his own terrors. It is for that object that the divers religious and philosophical systems were created, in which humanity sought for consolation. Finding none there, man turned to Science, which, at first, neither solved his doubts nor eliminated his sufferings. ”

“ Faith in the power of Science and in the possibility of modifying human nature itself through Science was the foundation of the optimistic philosophy of his maturity. Thoughts full of strength and hope shine like leading stars all along his philosophical works.
“Alone, Rational Science is capable of showing humanity the true path.”
“The real goal of human existence consists in an active life in conformity with individual capacity; in a life prolonged until the appearance of the death-instinct, and until Man, satisfied with the duration of his existence, feels the desire for annihilation.” ”

“ In order to obtain a new race, one forms an ideal in relation to the organism to be modified. “In order to modify human nature, it is necessary to realise what is the ideal in view, after which every resource of which Science disposes must be taxed in order to obtain that result. If an ideal is possible, capable of uniting men in a sort of religion of the future, it can only be based on scientific principles. And if it is true, as is so often affirmed, that it is impossible to live without faith, that faith must be faith in the power of Science.” ”

“ Metchnikoff answered that theory is much nearer to life than it seems, and that many benefits have been acquired for humanity by scientific observations of an abstract order. Thus, the discovery of the great unchanging laws of Nature give to Man the consciousness of being submitted to logical laws instead of an arbitrary force, and that is a benefit. When microbes were discovered, their part in human life was not suspected, and yet this discovery was afterwards of the greatest service to human welfare since it enabled man to fight against disease. ”

“ Science has already done much to diminish the diseases which are among the chief scourges of humanity. It has thrown light upon the causes of many of them and has found preventive and curative remedies for several.
Surgery, antiseptics, serotherapy, vaccinations already yield secure results. Hygiene and prophylaxis are in course of development, and a vast prospect is open to them in the future. ”

“ The results acquired by the progress of the new medical science allow us to hope that, in a more or less distant future, humanity will be freed from the principal diseases which oppress it.
After describing the state of medical science before Pasteur, Lister, and Koch, Metchnikoff compared with it modern medicine, created by these three Founders, and showed the great horizons opened by them to the medicine of the future. ”

“ He never allowed sight to be lost of the fact that Science lights up the tortuous and painful path which leads to an issue that suffering humanity will find by gradually widening the limits of knowledge with the help of Work and of Will. ”

“ What is to be done? the doctors can do nothing, for medicine is powerless. Unhappily, it will remain so for a long time. Much work will have to be done to rid humanity of the scourge of diseases. But, surely, one day science will succeed in doing so; that will be chiefly through prophylaxis and rational hygiene. There will also be a new science—the science of death ”

“ But if action is impossible, the mood remains. And here arises the despair of the highly educated. The purpose of knowledge is action. But to refuse action is to secure time for the acquisition of more knowledge. It is written in the very structure of the brain that each impression of the senses must bring with it the impulse to act. To resist this impulse is in turn to destroy it and to substitute a dull soul-ache in its place. "Much study is a weariness of the flesh, and the experience of all the ages brings only despair if it cannot be wrought into life. ”

“ Today is your day and mine, the only day we have, the day in which we play our part. What our part may signify in the great whole, we may not understand, but we are here to play it, and now is our time. This we know, it is a part of action, not of whining. It is a part of love, not cynicism. It is for us to express love in terms of human helpfulness. This we know, for we have learned from sad experience that any other course of life leads toward decay and waste.
The Philosophy of Despair ”

“ To act and to love are the twin functions of the human body and soul. To refuse these functions is to make one's self incapable of them. It is in a sense to die while the body is still alive. To refuse these functions is to make misery out of existence, and a life of ennui is doubtless not "worth living."
The philosophy of life is its working hypothesis of action. To hold that all effort is futile, that all knowledge is illusion, and that no result of the human will is worth the pain of calling it into action, is to cut the nerve of effectiveness. ”