“ M. Frédéric de Rougemont accepts without hesitation the contents of the Old Testament
; avoiding to distinguish between the moral and religious part, and the purely historical
and geographical part,—between the divine part and the human part. In his eyes,
one and ith-e same character of inspiration consecrates all the pages of the holy book; and
the rôle of the critic reduces itself to that of a commentator. * * *
“ I shall not undertake to discuss the principles upon which M. dé Rougemont scaffolds
his edifice. I will restrict myself to consigning here one observation, viz: that, although
Protestantism is the school of free inquiry, there exist in its bosom some persons who, in
matters of biblical exegesis and criticism, show themselves much less liberal and less bold
than the Catholics are themselves. Inasmuch as the Protestants feel the lack of an
authority, and as that of a traditional dogmatic tuition is wanting to them, they cling with
earnestness to a book which is the only authority to them remaining, and they will not
issue from a literal and narrow interpretation. This system greatly injures the advancement
of a multitude of sciences,—such as ethnology, chronology, geology, &c.— that have
need of liberty and independence.
“ In order to proceed in a method truly scientific, it is necessary to clear the table [faire
table rase) of everything which has no scientific value, and consequently of everything that
is not conformable to reason. Sufficient is it to say, that the domain of faith and the
domain of science are altogether distinct: nor can they be confounded without compromising
the dignity and the rôle as well of the one as of the other. But, on the opposite
hand, science, when she stands upon her own ground, cannot, without self-abnegation,
admit that to be demonstrated and certain which is only so in respect to sentiment. The
fault of M. de Rougemont is, to have constantly mingled the two methods ; no less than to
have believed that he could, at one and the same time, satisfy purely-scientific opinions
and religious convictions.
“ It has happened to the author of this book what had occurred to the first missionaries
who went forth to preach the gospel among savages. Pre-occupied with the thought of
re-finding, in the- tales and gross imaginations of such septs, some remembrances of the
pristine fatherland whence these believed themselves to have issued, the niissionaries have
modified, often unknowingly, often'intentionally likewise, the recitals they had heard, in
order to invest them with a more biblical color. They have transformed into serious and
connected traditions that which was but the instantaneous and capricious creation of a
savage poet inspired through their own discourses; and it is such stuff which they have
presented to us as the seculary reminiscences of the savages whom they were evangelizing.
Indeed, these infantile stories did not often ascend to an epoch more ancient than the
missionaries from whom we receive them,— and already the influence of the ideas preached
by them, of the facts by themselves taught to their catechumens, made itself felt within
the very narrow circle of the conceptions of these tribes. In this manner, the apostles
of Christ only retook, under another form, that which they themselves had sown ; and they
registered, as ancient traditions, that which was naught but the fantastic envelope given to
their own teaching. This is what has incontestably occurred^#-notably on the discovery
of America, and more recently in the islands of the Indian Archipelago and of Polynesia.
It suffices to cast one’s eye upon the first accounts that the Spaniards composed about the
religion and the usages of the Indians, in order to convince oneself that the former constantly
mixed up their own beliefs with the fables which they gathered here and there
amongst the savages.”
After proving his positions — for Mexico, through D. Andres Gonzales B aroia, F rancisco
L opez de Gomara, J uan de T orquemada, F a th er L apitau, Garcilasso de la
V ega, and D. F ernando d’A lva- I xtitxoch itl — for New Zealand, through Sir George
Grey, [D unmore Lang] , J. C. P olack, Die fenbach, and Mcerenhout— and for Peru,
through the Jesuit P edro J osé de Ariaga, subjected to the recent scalpel of T. G. Müller
( Geschichte der Amerikanischen Urreligionen) — M. Maury glances over the ultra-biblical
notions of ancient Egypt, Greece, and Hindostàn ; and lastly touches upon the traditions
of the Hebrews:
“ That which comes against the suppositions of our author is,— the very trifling
development which the dogma of a future state, and of demons, had taken among the
Israelites ; whereas we see it serving as a basis to the great polytheistic religions of
antiquity. If the biblical tradition had been the foundation of pagan beliefs, how comes
it that that which was to itself the most foreign should have played amid them the principal
part? And, on the other hand, one would be compelled to recognize that these
heathen nations have been more faithful depositaries of the primitive gospel than the
elect-people itself,— because Christianity has adopted those dogmatical data which the
Greeks and the Egyptians knew a great deal better than the Hebrews. Our author really
feels the difficulty; and it is in vain that he tries to parry the objection accruing from
it against his system.
“ There is, however, one point upon which I will not combat M. de Rougemont, and
which will give me an occasion to conclude this polemic—perhaps a little too prolonged
— with a treaty of peace. The Swiss writer respects in all religions their dignity, and
that which may be called, up to a certain point, their truth. They are, indeed, the ones
as well as the others, the expression of the gratitude of man towards his Creator, towards
Nature, whose benefits sustain his existence. They constitute the more or less naïve
shape which thought puts on whilst meditating upon our destinies ; and, as such, they
have the right to be seriously studied ; as such, they must find place in the history of that
which is the noblest of our being. Beneath those errors,— natural fruits of credulity and
fear—that encircle human belief, there lives a profound and instinctive sentiment which is
bound up with all our good instincts, whensoever it be suitably directed and restrained:
—this sentiment is that of the soul feeling its weakness, which has need of the support
of the mysterious Being whence it proceeds. This sentiment consoles and strengthens:
it is the refuge of the honest man, and the motive-power of the most sublime sacrifices.
Science, far from combating it, bows before it. She accepts it as a fact as evident as the
most evident of physical and historical facts. M. de Rougemont feels these truths,with
more force than any man, because it is the excess of this sentiment that leads him astray.
He wishes, like the ancient Gnostics, to behold but the rays of which the luminous portion
becomes enfeebled in the ratio that they remove themselves farther from the Divine focus
whence they emanate; but, whatever may be said about it, matter has also had its part to
play in these creeds and these superstitions,— and the majority werç bom upon a soil that had
not been warmed by the gentle light with which he is illumined.”
Finally, those who may care about knowing what is now, in France and Germany, the
scientific stand-point as concerns such words as “ Creation,” “ Deluge,” “ Ark,” and other
Semitico-Christian traditions, have merely to turn over the leaves, for about 80 instances
sub vocibus, of Didot’s Encyclopédie Moderne, last edition.
REFERENCES AND EXPLANATIONS.
No. 31. — KTJTCHIN-INDIAN.
[“ KuicharKutchin warrior (Loucheux-Indians of Mackenzie) :”—R ic h a r d s o n , Arctic Searching
Expedition (1848-50), London, 1851 ; I, p. 381.]
For instinctive hatreds between the indigenous Indian races and the Arctic
Eskimo, compare H earne [Northern Ocean, London, 1769-72, Chap. VI),
H ooper [Tuski, pp. 272-5), and R ichardson [Op. cit., I, pp. 377-402).
No. 32. — STONE-INDIAN.
[Stone-lndian (near Cumberland House:»—F r a n k l in , Voy. to Polar Sea, London, 1823, p. 104.]
“ The 'Tinne” [as the Eskimos term the Indians], or Chippewyans=Indians,
stretch across the continent of America, meeting the Eskimos on the east, and
the Kutchin on the west of the Rocky mountains (R ic h a r d s o n , op. cit., II, pp
1-59). No two types are more distinct than American Indians and the Arctic
men.