Coming to the Hebrews, Mr. Spencer argues that 'the silence of their
legends (as to ancestor-worship) is but a negative fact, which may be as
misleading as negative facts usually are.' They are, indeed; witness
Mr. Spencer's own silence about savage Supreme Beings. But we may fairly
argue that if Israel had been given to ancestor-worship (as might partly
be surmised from the mystery about the grave of Moses) the Prophets would
not have spared them for their crying. The Prophets were unusually
outspoken men, and, as they undeniably do scold Israel for every other
kind of conceivable heresy, they were not likely to be silent about
ancestor-worship, if ancestor-worship existed. Mr. Spencer, then, rather
heedlessly, though correctly, argues that 'nomadic habits are unfavourable
to evolution of the ghost-theory.'[8] Alas, this gives away the whole
case! For, if all men began as nomads, and nomadic habits are unfavourable
even to the ordinary ghost, how did the Australian and other nomads
develop the Supreme Being, who, _ex hypothesi_, is the final fruit of the
ghost-flower? If you cannot have 'an established ancestor-worship' till
you abandon nomadic habits, how, while still nomadic, do you evolve a
Supreme Being? Obviously not out of ancestor-worship.
Mr. Spencer then assigns, as evidence for ancestor-worship in Israel,
mourning dresses, fasting, the law against self-bleeding and cutting off
the hair for the dead, and the text (Deut. xxvi. 14) about 'I have not
given aught thereof for the dead.' 'Hence, the conclusion must be that
ancestor-worship had developed as far as nomadic habits allowed, before it
was repressed by a higher worship.'[9] But whence came that higher worship
which seems to have intervened immediately after the cessation of nomadic
habits?
There are obvious traces of grief expressed in a primitive way among the
Hebrews. 'Ye shall not cut yourselves, nor make any baldness between your
eyes for the dead' (Deut. xiv. 1). 'Neither shall men lament for them,
nor cut themselves, nor make themselves bald for them; neither shall men
tear themselves for them in mourning, to comfort them for the dead' (by
way of counter-irritant to grief); 'neither shall men give them the cup
of consolation to drink for their father or their mother,' because the
Jews were to be removed from their homes.[10] 'Ye shall not make any
cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you.'[11]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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