why primitive Man’s life was filled with cults, mysteries, and beliefs.
From the materialistic point of view, the history of mankind seems to be process of progressive secularization. Still, no one has ever explained why primitive man’s life was filled with cults, mysteries, prohibitions, and beliefs. Why did he attribute life and personality to all things surrounding him such as stones, stars, rivers, and so forth? Why, on the contrary, does civilized man try to reduce everything to the inorganic and the mechanical? Already for thousands of years, we have been trying to get rid of primitive man’s nightmares, without understanding their nature and origin.
This phenomenon of inner life or staring at the sky, which is typical of man and alien to all animals, remains without a logical explanation and seems to have descended literally “from the sky.” As it is not a product of evolution, it stands principally above or outside evolution. After studying the paintings of Neanderthal man in France, Henri Simle concluded that the psychological life of primitive man differed very little from that of modern man. “Even the cave man of 70,000 years ago suffered from ‘the metaphysical giddiness,’ the illness of modern man.” Obviously, this is not the continuation of biological evolution, but one more act of the drama which was started by the “prologue in heaven.”
During the so-called zoological era, before the appearance of human beings, there is nothing that gives us any hint of the coming period of cults and primitive ethics. Even if we imagine this period to be prolonged indefinitely, the appearance of cults and taboos does not seem possible. The evolution of animals does not go toward physical and intellectual perfection, and from there toward super-intelligence and super-animal, toward Nietzsche’s superman – in fact, the perfect animal. Nietzsche’s vision of the superman was inspired by Darwin. Evolution – zoological and external in its essence – is stretched out beyond man, but this zoological evolution remains simple and logical because it stays within the limits of nature. Super-animal is the result of evolution and as such it is a creature without inner life, without humanity, drama, character, heart, and so forth. It is the Homunculus, the creation out of the test tube, which Dr. Faust produced in his laboratory, as did nature, although through a slower process.[i]
Doubtless, the Soviet poet Voznesenski had a similar picture in mind when he wrote: “The future computers will theoretically be able to do everything that man is doing, except two things: to be religious and to write poetry.”
As animals have no idea of the holy or the devil, they have no idea of the beautiful. The opinion held by some scientists that apes could paint, based on the “paintings” apes had done, proved to be quite wrong. It has been confirmed that apes only imitate man. So-called “ape art” surely does not exist. On the contrary, the cave men from Cromganon onward knew how to paint and carve. Their drawings have been found in caves of the Sahara, in Spain at Al-tamira, in France at Lascaux, and recently in Poland at Mashicka. Many of these pictures are thought to be more than 30,000 years old. Some time ago, a group of Soviet archeologists discovered a set of musical instruments, made 20,000 years ago, near the town of Chernigov in the Ukraine.
Man’s desire to adorn himself is older and stranger than his need to cover and protect his body. This fact can be traced from prehistoric times up today. Our clothes are not only a protection; they also reflect the times in which we live and the group to which we belong. Our costume becomes a picture and poetry. The furs and feathers of animals may be very beautiful, but behind this beauty is always a function. In primitive man’s songs and drama, it is not possible to distinguish between art and cult. The first stone sculpture was an idol. Religious inspiration, wrongly oriented, created those fantastic sculptures of gods and masks found in Oceania, Mexico, and on the Ivory Coast and which today are good examples of impressionistic art. All so-called plastic art is idolatrous in origin, and this is how Islam’s intolerance – and that of some less personalistic religions – of this form of art should be explained. It seems that we have to go back to prehistory to understand the roots of art in religion, and how they, together with primitive ethics, have a common source: man’s longing for a lost world.
This dissimilarity from animals can also be seen in man’s revolt. An animal does not revolt against his animal fate. Only man revolts, the only animal who refused to be so. This type of revolt is essentially human, and we also find it in well-developed societies, where civilization – zoological in its origin – tries to implement some inhumane standards of existence (order, depersonalization, general leveling and uniformity, dress of the masses, the rule of society over the individual, and so forth).[ii]
Johan Huizinga discovered yet another phenomenon: playing. Animals play, but they always have some biological need for it such as sexual play, teaching their young ones, and so on. Their play is instinctive and functional; man’s play is free and unconcerned. It always includes a consciousness of play that gives a spiritual meaning: seriousness, solemnity, “aimless purposefulness.”
A special kind of play is potlatch, a universal phenomenon of all primitive cultures. By its nature, it is typically an irrational and uneconomical (anti-utilitarian) phenomenon in the same sense as primitive art is of primitive ethics with its prohibitions, taboos, and ideas of good and evil. In the aforementioned book, Huizinga writes extensively on this subject. He finds a typical form of potlatch with the Kwakiut Indian tribe and describes it as a great festivity in which one of two groups prodigiously donates to the other. The single and therefore the necessary reciprocal favor is that the other group within a certain period of time repeats the festivity and repays the donation. The spirit of donation permeates the whole life of the tribe: their cult, their common law, their art. In a potlatch, the superiority is not manifested by the simple donation of the goods, but more strikingly by destroying them to prove that it is possible to live without them. The action always promotes a form of competition: if the chieftain breaks a little copper kettle or sets fire to a heap of blankets or breaks his cane, he rival is due to destroy some object of at least equal value, if not a higher one. Such competition, whose pinnacle of excess is in calmly destroying one’s own goods, is to be found throughout the world. Marcel Mauss described the same custom among the Malay people. In his book, Essai sur le Don, he proved that similar customs existed in the ancient Greek, Roman, and old Germainc cultures. Granet identified competitive donation and destruction of goods in Chinese traditions as well.
We find the practice of potlatch in pre-Islamic Arabia under the name of muaqara, and Mauss maintains that the Indian epic Mahabharata is nothing but the history of a giant potlatch. …It is not a world concerned with everyday life, benefits, or the acquisition of useful goods. As far I know, ethnology looks for an explanation of potlatch mostly in magic and mythical images. …Material benefit is also not in question. To destroy goods, to show indifference to useful material things, to prefer principle to things – be it only feigned – is typical for human beings. Nothing similar – not even a trace of it – can be found among animals.
For some time, Darwin’s theory was considered to be the final explanation of man’s origin, just as Newton’s cosmos theory was once thought to be final as regards the universe. But in the same way that Newton’s mechanical conception had to be disputed because it could not explain some phenomena in the universe, Darwin’s theory also has to be revitalized. The theory of evolution can neither explain in a satisfactory way the first religious phase of mankind nor the same phenomena in modern times. Why are men psychologically less satisfied when they are better off materially? Why do the number of suicides and mental diseases increase with increases standards of living and education? Why does progress not mean humanization as well? The human mind, having once accepted the clear-cut visions of Darwin and Newton, finds it difficult to reject them. Newton’s world is stable, logical, and continuous, as Darwin’s man is simple and one dimensional: he struggles for survival, he satisfies his needs and aims for a functional world. Nonetheless, Einstein destroyed Newton’s illusion and pessimistic philosophy, and the failure of civilization does so with Darwin’s image of man. Man is inexplicable, unsatisfied, tormented by fear and doubts – Einstein would say “curved.” The philosophy of man, which for a long time has been under the influence of Darwin’s straight-lined vision, now is waiting for its Einsteinian overthrow. The new conception of man, as compared with that of Darwin, will be the same as the relation between Einstein’s and Newton’s universe. If it is true that we rise through suffering and sink through enjoyment, it is because we are different from animals. Man is not tailored according to Darwin, nor is the universe tailored according to Newton.
