Meanwhile there has been developing the ghost theory. In all but the
rudest groups the double of a deceased man, propitiated at death and
afterward, is conceived as able to injure the survivors. Consequently,
as fast as the ghost theory becomes established and definite, there
grows up another kind of check on immediate satisfaction of the
desires--a check constituted by ideas of the evils which ghosts may
inflict if offended; and when political headship gets settled, and the
ghosts of dead chiefs, thought of as more powerful and relentless than
other ghosts, are especially dreaded, there begins to take shape the
form of restraint distinguished as religious.
For a long time these three sets of restraints, which their
correlative sanctions, though becoming separate in consciousness,
remain co-extensive, and do so because they mostly refer to one
end--success in war. The duty of blood-revenge is insisted on even
while yet nothing to be called social organization exists. As the
chief gains predominance, the killing of enemies becomes a political
duty; and as the anger of the dead chief comes to be dreaded, the
killing of enemies becomes a religious duty. Loyalty to the ruler while
he lives and after he dies is increasingly shown by holding life at
his disposal for purposes of war. The earliest enacted punishments
are those for insubordination and for breaches of observances which
express subordination--all of them militant in origin. While the divine
injunctions, originally traditions of the dead king's will, mainly
refer to the destruction of peoples with whom he was at enmity, and
divine anger or approval are conceived as determined by the degrees in
which subjection to him is shown, directly by worship and indirectly by
fulfilling these injunctions. The Fijian, who is said on entering the
other world to commend himself by narrating his successes in battle,
and who, when alive, is described as sometimes greatly distressed if he
thinks he has not killed enemies enough to please his gods, shows us
the resulting ideas and feelings, and reminds us of kindred ideas and
feelings betrayed by ancient races.
To all which add that the control of social opinion, besides being
directly exercised, as in the earliest stage, by praise of the brave
and blame of the cowardly, comes to be indirectly exercised with a
kindred general effect by applause of loyalty to the ruler and piety
to the god. So that the three differentiated forms of control which
grow up along with militant organization and action, while enforcing
kindred restraints and incentives, also enforce one another; and their
separate and joint disciplines have the common character that they
involve the sacrifice of immediate special benefits to obtain more
distant and general benefits.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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