$Unique_ID{bob00781} $Pretitle{} $Title{History Of Religions Preface} $Subtitle{} $Author{Foot Moore, George} $Affiliation{} $Subject{religions history religion peoples volume chapters civilisation english higher india} $Date{1913} $Log{} Title: History Of Religions Book: Introduction Author: Foot Moore, George Date: 1913 Preface The plan of this work embraces only the religions of civilised peoples. What are miscalled "primitive" religions are a subject for themselves, demanding another method, and much too extensive to be incidentally despatched in the prolegomena to a History of Religions. Nor is an investigation of them necessary to our purpose; the phenomena which occur in the higher religions as survivals are just as intelligible in Babylonia or in Greece as in Africa or Australia. The present volume comprises the religions of China, Japan, Egypt, Babylonia and Assyria, India, Persia (Zoroastrianism), Greece, and Rome (including the religions of the Empire). A second volume will be devoted to Judaism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism - three religions so intimately related in origin and history as to constitute a natural group. In the presentation of the several religions, the endeavour is made, as far as the sources permit, to show their relation to race and physical environment and to national life and civilisation, to trace their history, and to discover the causes of progress and decline and the influences that have affected them from without. Prominence is given to religious conceptions, as they are implicit in myth and ritual or are thought out by poets, philosophers, and prophets; and particularly to the higher developments in theology, ethics, and religious philosophy, especially where, as in India and in Greece, these developments are of great intrinsic interest and of abiding consequence. In the case of the Greeks there is another reason for fuller exposition: Christian, Jewish, and Moslem theology are so largely in debt to Greek philosophy that these chapters lay the foundation for much of the second volume. The limitations of space forbid the multiplication of illustrative extracts and of citations from the sources or from modern writers, as well as the discussion at length of controversial points. The annotated bibliography may be taken in partial compensation. To facilitate comparison of institutions, observances, and ideas in different religions, the index has been prepared with especial reference to this use (see, e.g., such entries as "Eschatology," "Ethics," "God," "Sacrifice," "Salvation"). All the peoples with whom this volume deals emerge upon our knowledge in a relatively advanced stage of development, when compared with ancient or modern savages. The days are past when the "Juventus Mundi" was pictured for us from the pages of Homer, and the Hymns of the Rig-Veda were thought to lisp the "parler enfantin" of religion. ^1 Most of the religions appear upon the scene of history as national polytheisms, to a considerable degree moralised; what went before that lies as completely beyond the horizon of history as the beginnings of civilisation. But they carry on many survivals of a prehistoric stage of culture, embedded in the ritual and myth of public religions, or as superstitions among the masses. These features persist with the tenacity of an organic inheritance; in times of demoralisation or decadence they revive and prevail. At bottom they are all alike, being in fact the one inextirpable religion of the race, entailed by remote ancestors. Such phenomena enable the historian to prolong his vision beyond the confines of history: in these survivals he recognises antecedents and divine origins. Their inveteracy explains, too, the inertia with which the progress of higher ideas has to contend, the violence of reaction against reforms, the swiftness of decadence. But only in so far are these elements the object of the historian's concern; their origin and affinities belong to the anthropologist with the religions of modern savages. [Footnote 1: This characteristic phrase is Max Muller's.] Upon the higher plane of the natural polytheisms, also, there is much that is common. But on this level national individuality begins to count for more in all spheres of culture, and in religion it becomes more distinct with every step of progress. In this respect there are wide differences among religions of comparable advancement: some have developed independently, according to their own genius, while others early came under the influence of higher civilisations by which the native development was arrested or turned into new channels. Such fusion has occurred repeatedly - Rome and Japan at once present themselves as instances. In the Hellenistic and Roman world a massive syncretism, favoured by political and social causes and cultivated by pantheistic philosophies, is the signature of the age. In religions as in civilisations it is not the generic features but the individual characteristics that give them their highest interest and, we may say, value. It has accordingly been the author's aim, without exaggeration, to bring into relief the individuality of the several religions as it expresses itself in their history. In the religions of India and Persia, for example, the background of common Indo-Iranian cult and myth is of great moment to the student of Indo-Germanic origins; but in the historical religions themselves the striking and instructive thing is the diametrically opposite directions of the development, notwithstanding the close kinship of the two peoples and their common inheritance. The student who attentively surveys the whole field can hardly fail to discern a unity in the diversity, a general trend of evolution, which warrants the more comprehensive conception of a history of religion. Local and natural religions fuse in national polytheisms; the progress of civilisation in varying degrees moralises religion; mythology and nascent philosophy take up the problem of cosmogony, and are led to unify the creative power or the first principle; the demand for unity in the moral order of the world also tends toward monotheism; vague notions of continuance after death give place to more vivid imaginations; the lot of mortals appears more dismal in contrast to that of the gods; the belief in divine retribution or in the inexorable consequence of deeds is extended beyond this life; man struggles to escape his destiny, and demands of religion that it shall show him the way and give him the assurance of deliverance. Thereupon a new kind of religion arises in which men ask, not to be satisfied with the good things of this life, but to be exalted above the limitations of humanity or to be saved from the consequences of deeds, and, positively, to share the blessedness of the gods or to attain to union with the godhead. Salvation may be sought - to adopt the Indian analysis - by the way of works, or of knowledge, or of faith; and the methods vary accordingly. Religions of this type address themselves to the individual, and are therefore, logically, ways of salvation for all men, without distinction of nation or race; they often form organised religious communities and spread by missionary effort; the teachings of the founders are collected in a canon of authoritative scriptures and systematised in a body of doctrine, practical or philosophical. The great religions of this class have their beginnings in the centuries from the eighth to the fifth before the Christian era. This is the age of Taoism in China; of the Upanishads, of Buddhism, and of the precursors of Hinduism in India; of Zoroaster in Iran; of the Orphic-Pythagorean movement in Greece; and of the Hebrew prophets. The coincidence is more than curious; it is an instance of that simultaneity in progress and decline, comparable to geological epochs of upheaval and subsidence, of which the history of civilisation has other striking examples - we think of the centuries about 3000 B. C. in Egypt, Babylonia and Elam, Crete, and China, the first maximum in this strange and unexplained periodicity. In like manner, whatever the cause, the eighth to the fifth centuries B.C. witnessed a maximum in the tides of religion. The religions of civilised peoples in our own time are almost all of this type - Buddhism and Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - though the actual religion of the peoples who profess these faiths contains large survivals of earlier stages, down to the level before the dawn of civilisation. The field of this volume is much too wide to be covered with first-hand knowledge by any one scholar. Most recent works of similar scope are consequently the cooperative product of several authors, each of whom writes on that part of the subject with which he is especially qualified to deal by knowledge of the language, literature, and history of the people, and sometimes by actual observation of their living religion. The advantages of such a division of labour are too obvious to need a word. But it is difficult, not to say impossible, in this way to secure unity either in method of treatment or - what is more important - in point of view. The result is almost inevitably a series of monographs, individually, perhaps, of high authority, but related to one another only by being bound in the same covers. A general history of the religions of civilised peoples can, in the nature of the case, be only an introduction to the subject; for more extensive and detailed knowledge of any particular religion recourse must be had to works on a larger scale written by scholars of special equipment. And for the uses of such an introduction, unity of method and of point of view, and the wider outlook gained by the comparative study of many religions, may perhaps to some extent offset the greater independence and authority obtained by collaboration. To enable the reader to pursue the study of individual religions or of special aspects of them, the literature has been given with some fulness and to many of the titles brief notes are appended, indicating the scope and character of the work. One of the minor perplexities of a volume like this is how to spell the foreign words, especially proper names, from a variety of languages. The principle adopted is to give familiar names in the most common English form, and to write the rest in a way approximating as nearly to the pronunciation as our alphabet permits; the refinements of diacritical points are intelligible only to the scholar, who does not need them. The vowels are meant to have their so-called continental sounds; the consonants are to be pronounced as in English, with one or two exceptions: In Indian and Persian words c is pronounced like English ch, and c nearly as English sh; the German ach sound is represented by kh. In Chinese words the aspirate, which is often distinctive, is written with a turned apostrophe ('); e (as in Chuang-tsze) is a very short neutral vowel. In the chapters on Buddhism some difficulty is made by the fact that many names have become established in English in the Sanskrit, or artificially Sanskritised forms of the texts in which the Buddhist scriptures were first known, and Sanskrit forms are still generally given in versions from the Chinese, while the Pali forms of the southern canon are preferred by many recent scholars. It is believed that the compromises adopted will be easily understood; in some less obvious cases the identification is made in the index. Convenience has throughout been given precedence over consistency. In conclusion I wish gratefully to acknowledge the counsel and assistance I have received in the long course of these studies from many scholars; and in particular to Mr. E. B. Drew, of Cambridge, formerly Commissioner of Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs, who was kind enough to read the chapters on China and lend me his aid about Chinese names; to Professor A. V. Williams Jackson, of Columbia University, who gave the chapters on Zoroastrianism the benefit of his most competent criticism; and to my colleague, Professor Charles R. Lanman, to whose wide and exact learning I have often appealed - never in vain - and who was so good as to submit the chapters on India to his pains-taking scrutiny, and to suggest numerous improvements. I am much indebted also to Mr. Albert H. Moore, of Washington, D.C. who assisted me throughout in the preparation of the manuscript, and whose close observation detected many inaccuracies and obscurities which might otherwise have escaped me, and to my wife, who has helped me in many ways both in making the book and in carrying it through the press. Cambridge, Mass., October 12, 1913.