Forlong - Rivers of Life

Ancestor Worship.
“We,” said Californians, “have no concern with the preserver of sun, moon, and stars,
and other objects of nature.” “All grew of its own accord,” said Kaffirs. “We have
never allowed ourselves to think of the subject,” said Zulus. “Heaven and earth
existed from the beginning,” said Polynesians; Mawe, “by means of a hook made
of a jawbone, fished up New Zealand,” said Maories; and “Tougan was drawn up by
Tongaloa,” said these islanders. “My ancestors made the world, and I am greater than
they,” said the Queen of Singa, in Western Africa. Thus peacefully rested the illiterate
mind, and we have not gained much on it, though we have spent great brain force,
and written and perused many thousands of volumes.
In a late review, our great physicist who electrified the religious world by his
celebrated Belfast address—much abused, much written about, but never answered—
thus expressed himself on these matters, in reply to the strictures of a Cardinal and a
pious Theist:— 1
“When I attempt to give the power which I see manifested in the universe an objective form
personal or otherwise, it slips away from me, declining all intellectual manipulation. I dare not, save
poetically, use the pronoun ‘he’ regarding it; I dare not call it a ‘mind;’ I refuse to call it even a
‘cause’—its mystery overshadows me, but it remains a mystery; while the objective frames which my
neighbours try to make it fit, simple distort and desecrate it . . . . . . . Physiologists say that every human
being comes from an egg not more than 1-20th of an inch in diameter. Is this egg matter? I hold it
to be so as much as the seed of a fern or of an oak. Nine months go into the making of it in a man.
Are the additions made during this period of gestation drawn from matter? I think so undoubtedly.
If there be anything besides matter in the egg or in the infant subsequently slumbering in the womb,
what is it? Mr. Martineau will complain that I am disenchanting the babe of its wonder, but is this
the case? I figure it growing in the womb, woven by a something not itself, without conscious parti-
cipation on the part of either the father or the mother, and appearing in due time a living miracle, with
all its organs and their implications. Consider the work accomplished during these nine months in
forming the eye alone, with its lens and humours and its miraculous retina behind. Consider the ear,
with its tympanum, cochlea, and corti-sorgan. An instrument of three thousand strings, built adjacent
to the brain, and employed by it to sift, separate, and interpret antecedent to all consciousness the sono-
rous tremors of the external world. All this has been accomplished, not only without man’s contrivance,
but without his knowledge, the secret of his own organisation having been withheld from him since his
birth in the immeasurable past until the other day. Matter I define as that mysterious thing by which
all this is accomplished. How it came to have this power is a question on which I never ventured an
opinion. If, then, matter starts as a ‘beggar,’ it is, in my view, because the Jacobs of theology have
deprived it of its birthright.”
It is this matter, mot, mother, which has perplexed all ages and nations, and perhaps
it is on this account that Sanskrit acknowledges no word from primeval creation,
and the first two bibles of men are silent even as to the idea. 2
Sir John Lubbock writes that “the lower forms of religion are almost independent
of prayer,” and that their followers often reject with scorn the idea of so exalted a Spirit
or Being heeding their requests or being moved from his law or purposes, and say they
have nothing to ask for as regards their souls or futurity. 3 Some have exclamations of
respect and hopefulness, as “may all be well,” &c. Fijians believe that some of the
1 Fortnightly Review for Nov. 1874—Professor Tyndall.
2 The Rig-Veda, Zendavesta, and Homer are here silent, says Lubbock.—Origin of Civil., p. 252.
3 Loc. Cit., p. 248.
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