V
OF THE RELIGION OF THE FIRST MEN
WHEN, AFTER a number of ages, several societies were formed, it is credible that there was some religion, a kind of rustic worship. Man, at that time entirely occupied with providing the necessaries of life, could not soar to the Author of life; he could not be acquainted with the connections of the various parts of the universe, those innumerable causes and effects, which to the wife proclaim an eternal architect.
The knowledge of a God, creator, requiter, and avenger, is the fruit of cultivated reason, or of revelation.
All people were therefore, for ages, what the inhabitants of the several coasts of Africa, of several islands, and half the Americans, are at present. Those people have no idea of a sole God, creator of all things, omnipresent, and existing of himself to all eternity. They should not, however, be called atheists in the usual sense; for they do not deny a supreme being; they are not acquainted with him; they have no idea of him. The Caffres take an insect for their protector, the negroes a serpent. Among the Americans, some adore the moon, others a tree. Several have no worship whatever.
The Peruvians, when they became polished, adored the fun. Either Mango Capac had made them believe that he was the son of that planet, or a dawn of reason made them think they owed some acknowledgment to the planet which animated nature.
In order to know how these different doctrines and superstitions gained ground, it seems to me necessary to follow the career of human understanding left alone without a guide. The inhabitants of a village, who are little better than savages, perceive the fruits which should nourish them perish: an inundation carries away some cabins: others are destroyed by thunder. Who has done them this mischief? It could not be one of their fellow citizens, for they have all equally suffered. It is therefore some secret power that has afflicted them, and must therefore be appeased. How is it to be effected? by using it as they do those whom they are desirous of pleasing; in making it some small presents. There is a serpent in the neighborhood; it is very likely the serpent: they offer him milk near the cavern, whither he retires; from that time he becomes sacred: he is invoked when they are at war with the neighboring village, who, on their side, have chosen another protector.
Other little colonies find themselves in the same situation. But there being no object near them to excite their terror and adoration, they call in general the being whom they suspect has done them mischief, the master, the lord, the chief, the ruler.
This idea being more conformable than the others to the dawn of reason, which increases and strengthens with time, possesses every one’s head, when the nation is become more numerous. Thus we find that many nations have had no other god than their master, their lord. Such was Adonai among the Phenicians, Baal, Milkom, and Adad, with the people of Syria. All these names signify nothing more than the Lord, the Powerful.
Every state, then, had in time its tutelar divinity, without knowing even what was a god, or being able to imagine that the neighboring state was not equally furnished as themselves, with a real protector. For how could they think, when they had a lord, that others had not one also? The only thing to be known was, which among so many matters, lords, and gods, would be victorious, when the nations fought against each other.
This was doubtless the origin of that opinion, which so generally and so long prevailed, that every people was really protected by the divinity they had chosen. This idea was so deeply rooted in men, that in after-times, it was adopted by the Jews themselves. Jephtha said to the Ammonites, “Do you not possess by right, what your lord Chamos has given you? suffer us, then, to possess the land which our lord Adonai has promised unto us.”
There are two other passages equally strong, which are those of Jeremiah and Isaiah, where it is said, “what reason had the lord Melkom to take possession of the land of Gad?” It is evident by these expressions, that the Jews, though servants to Adonai, acknowledged, nevertheless, the lord Melkom and the lord Chamos.
Still farther: nothing was more common than to adopt strange gods. The Greeks acknowledged those of the Egyptians; I do not mean Apis’s bull and Anubis’s dog, but Ammon and the twelve great gods. The Romans adored all the gods of the Greeks. Jeremiah, Amos, and St. Stephen, assure us, that the Jews for forty years in the desert acknowledged no other than Moloc, Remphan, and Kicim; that they made no sacrifice, and presented no offering to the lord Adonai, whom they afterwards adored. It is true that the Pentateuch speaks of nothing but the golden calf, which no prophet mentions: but this is not the place to clear up this great difficulty; it is sufficient that they equally revered Moses, Jeremiah, Amos, and St. Stephen, who seem to contradict one another, and yet are reconciled.
I shall observe only, that, except in time of war and bloody fanaticism, which extinguished all humanity, and which rendered the manners, laws, and religion of a people, the objects of horror to another people, all nations were very well satisfied that their neighbors had their own particular gods; and that they frequently imitated the worship and ceremonies of strangers.
The Jews themselves, though they looked with horror upon the rest of men, which detestation increased with time, imitated the circumcision of the Arabs and Egyptians; like the last they accustomed themselves to make a distinction of meats; borrowed from them ablutions, processions, and sacred dances, the hazel goat, and red cow. They often adored the Baal and Belphigor of their neighbors; so much do nature and custom prevail over law, particularly when that law is not generally known to the people. Thus Jacob, grandson to Abraham, made no difficulty of wedding two sisters, who were what we call idolaters, and daughters to an idolatrous father. Moses himself espoused the daughter of an idolatrous Midianite.
Those same Jews, who made such an outcry against strange worships, called, in their sacred books, Nabuchodonosor, the anointed of the lord; and the idolater Cyrus, also the anointed of the lord. One of their prophets was sent to the idolater Ninevus. Elisha allowed the idolater Naaman to go into the temple of Remnan. But to avoid anticipation; we know well enough that men constantly run-counter to the laws by their manners. Let us not lose sight of the subject we were considering, but continue to observe how different religions were established.
The most polished people of Asia, on this side the Euphrates, adored the planets. The Chaldeans, before the time of Zoroaster, paid homage to the sun; as did afterwards the Peruvians in another hemisphere. This error must be very natural to man, as it has had so many followers in Asia and America. A small and half savage nation has but one protector. Does it become more numerous? the number of its gods is increased. The Egyptians began by adoring Isheth or Iris, and they at last adored cats. The first homage the rustic Romans paid was to Mars; that of the Romans, masters of Europe, was to the goddess of marriage and the god of thieves. Nevertheless, Cicero, all the philosophers, and those initiated, acknowledge a supreme and omnipotent God. They were all brought back to that point of reason, from whence savage men had departed by instinct.
The apotheosis could not have been devised till long after the first kinds of worship. It is not natural immediately to make a god of a man whom we saw born like ourselves, suffer like us maladies, chagrin, the miseries of humanity, subject to the same humiliating wants, die and become food for worms. But this is what happened to almost all nations, after the revolutions of several ages.
A man who had done great things, who had been serviceable to human nature, could not in truth be looked upon as a god, by those who had seen him tremble with the ague, and seek for clothing: but enthusiasts persuade themselves that, being possessed of eminent qualities, he had them from a god. In the same manner gods produced children all over the world; for without enumerating the dreams of so many people who preceded the Greeks, Bacchus, Perseus, Hercules, Castor, and Pollux, were sons of Gods. Romulus was a son of God, Alexander was proclaimed a son of God in Egypt; one Odin, with us northern nations, was a son of God; Mango Capac was son of the sun in Peru. The historian of the Moguls, Abulgazi, relates that one of the grandmothers of Gingiskan, named Alanku, when a girl, was impregnated by a celestial ray. Gingiskan himself passed for the son of God. And when Pope Innocent sent brother Asulin to Batoukan, grandson to Genghis, this monk, who could not be presented but to one of the viziers, said he came from the vicar of God; the minister replied, is this vicar ignorant that he should pay homage and tribute to the son of God, the great Batoukan his master?
With men fond of the marvelous, there is no great distance between a son of God and God. After two or three generations, the son partakes of the father’s dominion. Thus temples were raised to all those who were supposed to be born from the supernatural correspondence of the divinity with our wives and daughters.
Volumes might be written upon this subject; but all these volumes might be reduced to two words, which are that the majority of mankind were for a long time in a state of insensibility and imbecility, and that, perhaps, the most insensible of all were those who wanted to discover a signification in those absurd fables, and ingraft reason upon folly.