A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume 1 of 2: Third edition, Revised and Expanded, in two volumes — John Shaqi
A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume 1 of 2: Third edition, Revised and Expanded, in two volumesRobertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Religion
A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume 1 of 2: Third edition, Revised and Expanded, in two volumes
Robertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Free thought -- History
There are many analogous phenomena. In old Samoa, in the ritual
of mourning for the dead, the family God was first implored to
restore the deceased, and then fiercely abused and menaced. [60]
See, too, the story of the people of Niue or Savage Island
in the South Pacific, who in the time of a great pestilence,
thinking the sickness was caused by a certain idol, broke it in
pieces and threw it away (Turner, Samoa a Hundred Years Ago, 1884,
p. 306). See further the cases cited by Constant, De la religion,
1824, vol. i, ptie. ii, pp. 32-34; and by Peschel, The Races of
Man, Eng. tr. 1876, pp. 247-8, in particular that of Rastus,
the last pagan Lapp in Europe, who quarrelled with his fetish
stone for killing his reindeer in revenge for the withholding
of its customary offering of brandy, and "immediately embraced
Christianity." (Compare E. Rae, The White Sea Peninsula, 1881,
p. 276.) See again the testimony of Herman Melville in his Typee,
ch. xxiv; and that of T. Williams, Fiji and the Fijians, ed. 1858,
i, 236: "Sometimes the natives get angry with their deities, and
abuse and even challenge them to fight." Herodotos has similar
stories of barbarians who defy their own and other deities
(iv, 172, 183, 184). Compare the case of King Rum Bahadur of
Nepaul, who cannonaded his Gods. Spencer, Study of Sociology,
pp. 301-2. Also the anecdote cited by Spencer (Id. p. 160)
from Sir R. Burton's Goa, p. 167. Here there is no disbelief, no
reflection, but simple resentment. Compare, too, the amusing story
of a blasphemy by Rossini, told by Louis Viardot, Libre Examen,
6e éd. pp. 166-67, note. That threats against the Gods are possible
at a semi-civilized stage is proved by various passages in medieval
literature. Thus in Caxton's Charles the Grete, a translation from
an older French original, Charles is made to say: "O lord God,
if ye suffre that Olyver be overcome and that my ryght at thys
tyme be loste and defyled, I make a vowe that al Crystyante shal be
destroyed. I shal not leve in Fraunce chirche ne monasterye, ymage
ne aulter," etc. (Early Eng. Text Soc. rep. 1881, pp. 70-71.) Such
language was probably used by not a few medieval kings in moments
of fury; and there is even record that at the battle of Dunbar
certain of the Scots Presbyterian clergy intimated to their deity
that he would not be their God if he failed them on that day.
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