The Martyrdom of Man by Winwood Reade (mini ebook reader .TXT) ๐
The Egyptians were islanders, cut off from the rest of the world by sand and sea. They were rooted in their valley; they lived entirely upon its fruits, and happily these fruits sometimes failed. Had they always been able to obtain enough to eat, they would have remained always in the semi-savage state.
It may appear strange that Egypt should have suffered from famine, for there was no country in the ancient world where food was so abundant and so cheap. Not only did the land produce enormous crops of corn; the ditches and hollows which were filled by the overflowing Nile supplied a harvest of wholesome and nourishing aquatic plants, and on the borders of the des
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in the course of my inquiries. It is impossible to measure a tributary and
to estimate its value with precision except by comparing it with the other
affluents, and by carefully mapping the main stream. In writing a history
of Africa I am compelled to write the history of the world, in order that
Africaโs true position may be defined.
And now, passing to the general questions discussed in this chapter, it
will be observed that war is the chief agent of civilisation in the period
which I have attempted to portray. It was war which drove the Egyptians
into those frightful deserts in the midst of which their Happy Valley was
discovered. It was war which under the Persians opened lands which had
been either closed against foreigners or jealously held ajar. It was war
which colonised Syria and Asia Minor with Greek ideas, and which
planted in Alexandria the experimental philosophy which will win for us
in time the dominion of the earth. It was war which united the Greek and
Latin worlds into a splendid harmony of empire. And when that ancient
world had been overcome by languor and had fallen into Oriental sleep;
when nothing was taught in the schools which had not been taught a
hundred years before; when the rapacity of tyrants had extinguished the
ambition of the rich and the industry of the poor; when the Church also
had become inert, and roused itself only to be cruelโthen again came
war across the Rhine and the Danube and the Alps, and laid the
foundations of European life among the ruins of the Latin world. In the
same manner Asia awoke as if by magic, and won back from Europe the
lands which she had lost. But this latter conquest, though effected by
means of war, was preserved by means of religion, an element of history
which must be analysed with scientific care. In the next chapter I shall
explain the origin of the religious sentiment and theory in savage life. I
shall sketch the early career of the three great Semitic creeds and the
characters of three menโMoses, Jesus, and Mohammedโwho, whatever
may have been their faults, are entitled to the eternal gratitude of the
human race. Then, resuming the history of Africa, I shall follow the
course of Islam over the Great Desert into the Sudan, and shall describe
its progress in that country by means of the sword and of the school,
something of which I have seen and studied under both forms.
Religion
When the poet invokes in his splendid frenzy the shining spheres of
heaven, the murmuring fountains, and the rushing streams; when he calls
upon the earth to hearken, and bids the wild sea listen to his song; when
he communes with the sweet secluded valleys and the haughty-headed
hills as if those inanimate objects were alive, as if those masses of brute
matter were endowed with sense and thought, we do not smile, we do not
sneer, we do not reason, but we feel. A secret chord is touched within us:
a slumbering sympathy is awakened into life. Who has not felt an
impulse of hatred, and perhaps expressed it in a senseless curse, against a
fiery stroke of sunlight or a sudden gust of wind? Who has not felt a
pang of pity for a flower torn and trampled in the dust, a shell dashed to
fragments by the waves? Such emotions or ideas last only for a moment;
they do not belong to us; they are the fossil fancies of a bygone age; they
are a heritage of thought from the childhood of our race. For there was a
time when they possessed the human mind. There was a time when the
phrases of modern poetry were the facts of ordinary life. There was a
time when man lived in fellowship with nature, believing that all things
which moved or changed had minds and bodies kindred to his own.
To those primeval people the sun was a great being who brightened them
in his pleasure and who scorched then in his wrath. The earth was a
sleeping monster: sometimes it rose a little and turned itself in bed. They
walked upon its back when living; they were put into its belly when they
died. Fire was a savage animal which bit when it was touched. The birds
and beasts were foreigners possessing languages and customs of their
own. The plants were dumb creatures with characters good or bad,
sometimes gloomy in aspect, malignant in their fruit, sometimes
dispensing wholesome food and pleasant shade.
These various forms of nature they treated precisely as if they had been
men. They sometimes adorned a handsome tree with bracelets like a girl;
they offered up prayers to the fruit trees, and made them presents to coax
them to a liberal return. They forbade the destruction of certain animals
which they revered on account of their wisdom, or feared on account of
their fierceness, or valued on account of their utility. They submitted to
the tyranny of the more formidable beasts of prey, never venturing to
attack them for fear the nation or species should retaliate, but making
them propitiatory gifts. In the same manner they offered sacrifices to
avert the fury of the elements, or in gratitude for blessings which had
been bestowed. But often a courageous people, when invaded, would go
to war, not only with the tiger and the bear but with powers which to
them were not less human-like and real. They would cut with their
swords at the hot wind of the desert, hurl their spears into the swollen
river, stab the earth, flog the sea, shoot their arrows at the flashing clouds,
and build up towers to carry heaven by assault.
But when through the operation of the law of growth the intellectual
faculties of men become improved, they begin to observe their own
nature, and in course of time a curious discovery is made. They ascertain
that there is something which resides within them entirely independent
and distinct from the body in which it is contained. They perceive that it
is this mind, or soul, or genius, or spirit, which thinks and desires and
decides. It commands the body as the chief commands the slave. While
the body is asleep it is busy weaving thoughts in the sleeperโs brain, or
wanders into other lands and converses with people whom he, while
awake, has never seen. They hear words of wisdom issuing from the
toothless mouth of a decrepit old man. It is evident that this soul does not
grow old, and therefore it does not die. The body, it is clear, is only a
garment which is in time destroyed, and then where does its inmate go?
When a loved one has been taken she haunts the memory of him who
weeps till the image imprinted on the heart is reflected on the curtain of
the eye. Her vision appears not when he is quite asleep, as in an ordinary
dream, but as he is passing into sleep. He meets her in the twilight land
which divides the world of darkness from the world of day. He sees her
form distinctly; he clasps it in his arms; he hears the accents of her sweet
and gentle voice; he feels the pressure of her lips upon his own. He
awakes, and the illusion is dispelled; yet with some it is so complete that
they firmly believe it was a spirit whom they saw.
Among savages it is not love which can thus excite the imagination and
deceive the sense, but reverence and fear. The great chief is dead. His
vision appears in a half-waking dream: it threatens and it speaks. The
dreamer believes that the form and the voice are real, and therefore he
believes that the great chief still exists. It is thus that the grand idea is
born. There is life after death. When the house or garment of the body is
destroyed the soul wanders forth into the air. Like the wind it is unseen;
like the wind it can be soft and kind; like the wind it can be terrible and
cruel. The savage then believes that the pains of sickness are inflicted by
the hand which so often inflicted pain upon him when it was in the flesh,
and he also believes that in battle the departed warrior is still fighting
with unseen weapons at the head of his own clan. In order to obtain the
goodwill of the father-spirit, prayers are offered up to him and food is
placed beside his grave. He is, in fact, still recognised as king, and to such
phantom monarchs the distinctive title of god is assigned. Each chief is
deified and worshipped when he dies. The offerings and prayers are
established by rule; the reigning chief becomes the family priest; he
pretends to receive communications from the dead, and issues laws in
their name. The deeds of valour which the chiefs performed in their
lifetime are set to song; their biographies descend from generation to
generation, changing in their course, and thus a regular religion and
mythology are formed.
It is the nature of man to reason from himself outwards. The savage now
ascribes to the various forms of matter souls or spirits such as he
imagines that he has discovered in himself. The food which he places at
the grave has a soul or essence, and it is this which is eaten by the spirit
of the dead, while the body of the food remains unchanged. The river is
not mere water which may dry up and perish, but there dwells within it a
soul which never dies; and so with everything that lives and moves, from
the blade of grass which shivers in the wind to the star which slowly
moves across the sky. But as men become more and more capable of
general ideas, of classing facts into systems and of arranging phenomena
into groups, they believe in a god of the forests, a god of the waters, and a
god of the sky, instead of ascribing a separate god to every tree, to every
river, and to every star. Nature is placed under the dominion of a
federation of deities. In some cases the ancestor gods are identified with
these; in others their worship is kept distinct. The trees and the animals,
which were once worshipped for themselves from love or fear, are now
supposed to be objects of affection to the gods, and are held sacred for
their sake.
These gods are looked upon as kings. Their characters are human, and
are reflected from the minds of those who have created them. Whatever
the arithmetical arrangement of the gods may beโsingle or triune, dual
or pluralโthey are in all countries and in all times made by man in his
own image. In the plural period some of the gods are good and some are
bad, just as there are good and evil kings. The wicked gods can be
softened by flattery and presents, the good ones can be made fierce by
neglect. The wicked gods obtain the largest offerings and the longest
prayers, just as in despotic countries the wicked kings obtain the most
liberal presentsโwhich are merely taxes in disguise.
The savage has been led by indigestion and by dreams to believe in the
existence of the soul after deathโor, using simpler language, to believe
in ghosts. At first these souls or ghosts have no fixed abode; they live
among the graves. At a later period the savage invents a world to which
the ghosts depart and in which they reside. It is situated underground. In
that world the ghosts live precisely as they lived on earth. There is
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