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development process from ideation, concept and product development to
product launch. It covers the analytic methods and procedures that are
deployed to screen ideas, concepts and products, at each phase of the NPD
process.
Part IV is all about advertising. It covers the theories of advertising,
how new media is transforming the way brands engage with consumers,
digital marketing, and research methods for copy testing and advertising
tracking.
Part V deals with price, promotion and market mix modelling. It covers
a variety of pricing research methods, and techniques for promotions
evaluation. The chapter Market Mix Modelling deals with statistical
methods of analysis of historical data, to assess the impact of various
marketing activities on sales.
The concluding part, retail, covers retail tracking, retail analytics, sales
and distribution, and category management. It focusses on the use of
metrics and analytic techniques to develop sales and distribution plans, and
manage categories.
The text also includes seven case studies that have been crafted to
facilitate a deeper understanding of the subject.
For more information on the topics covered in the various chapters and
appendices, visit the book’s website at:
http://bizfaculty.nus.edu/site/bizakc/MarketingAnalytics.
At this site you can access lecture presentations, and soft copies of
tables and charts pertaining to the cases in the book. It also serves as the
location for introducing fresh content and revisions to the text.
I wrote Marketing Analytics with the practitioner in mind. It is
intended to impart a thorough understanding of research methods and
analytic techniques, to guide you as you craft market strategies, and
execute your day to day tasks. I hope that you enjoy reading it, and that it
serves you well.

8
Acknowledgement
My love for marketing grew at what was then a small newly created
department at Hindustan Lever. There I had access to a wealth of
information in an environment that was conducive to learning. It was in
this department, and subsequently at Nielsen, that I acquired the
knowledge that made it possible for me to write this book.
I remain indebted to several individuals during my years in the
industry, and particularly my team at Nielsen for their support, and to the
Nielsen Company for nurturing and rewarding me for 16 years.
Not many years back, academia was unknown territory, and I am
immensely grateful to prof. S. Vishwanathan for persuading and
encouraging me to teach. A close friend, in some respects, Vish
understood me better than I did myself, and he took me down a path that
led me to where I am today.
I am greatly indebted to Mr. Chua Hong Koon from World Scientific
Publishing, for his guidance and support. I also thank his colleague, Ms. Li
Hongyan, for her considerable assistance and patience in editing this text.
For most of my life my mother and father have been my source of
strength and stability. It is their unconditional love, sacrifice and faith that
gave me an immense advantage in life, and it is to them that I dedicate this
book.

9
Author

Ashok Charan

Associate Professor, NUS Business School, National University of

Singapore (ashokcharan.com)

Ashok is the creator of Destiny©, an advanced FMCG business simulator,

which he uses for teaching marketing courses to business students and
marketing practitioners.
A marketing veteran, he has over 25 years of industry experience in
general management, corporate planning, business development, market
research and marketing. Prior to joining the NUS Business School, Ashok
worked with Nielsen and Unilever. At Nielsen, he assumed a number of
roles including Managing Director for Singapore, and Regional Area
Client Director – Asia Pacific. His experience spans both business and
consumer marketing, and he remains active in consulting in the areas of
market research, analytics and data integration.
Ashok is an engineering graduate from the Indian Institute of
Technology, Delhi, and a post-graduate in business management (PGDM)
from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta.

10
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgement
Author

PART I BRAND
Chapter 1 Brand and Brand Image
Pink Diamonds?
Lesson from the Summer of 1985
Brand
Positioning
Brand Image Tracking
Image Profiling
Perceptual Mapping

Chapter 2 Brand Equity

ZEN versus iPod
Benefits of Brand Equity
The Loyalty Pyramid
Net Promoter Index and Net Advocacy Index
Brand Equity Models
Computing the Brand Equity Index
Data Interpretation and Analysis
Drivers of Brand Equity
Brand Image
Case Inulas
Overview — Brand Equity Model
Case I Shopper Trends — Food and Grocery Shopping in Singapore

11
PART II CONSUMER
Chapter 3 Segmentation
Schizophrenic Consumers
Need-States
Segmentation
A Priori Segmentation Methods
Post hoc Segmentation Methods
Segmentation Analysis
Targeting

Chapter 4 Qualitative Research

Difference between Qual and Quant
Consumer Generated Media and Conventional Market Research
Applications of Qualitative Research
Exploratory
Explanatory or Diagnostic
Evaluative
Qual with Quant Research
Product Development
Creative Development
Motivational Research, Semiotics, Usage & Attitude
Packaging Development
The Qualitative Advantage
Watchouts
Modes of Data Collection
Group Discussions
Interviews
Observation
Online Qual
Research Design and Preparation
Projective and Enabling Techniques
Word Association
Third Party Questioning
Sentence Completion
Personification
Brand Mapping
Drawing and Collage
Bubble Drawings

12
 Role-Playing
Laddering
Body Language
Guidelines for Moderating Groups
Analysis and Interpretation

Chapter 5 Quantitative Research

Problem Definition
Research Design
Questionnaire Design
Information Needs
Sampling
Data Collection
The Analysis Process
Interpretation and Recommendation

Chapter 6 Customer Satisfaction and Customer Value

Impact of Retention and Attrition
Evolution of Customer Satisfaction
Customer Satisfaction and Employee Satisfaction
Customer Loyalty
Customer Satisfaction Research
Transaction Survey
Relationship Survey
Drivers of Customer Loyalty and Satisfaction
Interpretation and Recommendation
The Kano Model
Customer Value
Customers’ Purchasing Philosophy
Value-in-Use Analysis
Value Assessment
Overview — Customer Value Management

Chapter 7 Consumer Panels

Background on Consumer Panels
Research Methodology
Width and Depth of Purchase
Buyer Groups
Profile Analysis

13
 Brand Loyalty (Behavioural)
Trial and Repeat Purchase
Overlap
Basket
Gain–loss
Case Example — Johnson’s Body Care

Chapter 8 Consumer Analytics and Big Data

Big Data
Data Management Tools and Technologies
Consumer Analytic Techniques
Machine Learning Techniques
Data Mining
Sourcing from Social Media
Optimization/Analysis Techniques
Visualization
Cognitive Systems — the 3rd Age of Computing
Benefits
People
Applications
Case II Vizag
Case III Hectomalt

PART III PRODUCT

Chapter 9 New Product Development
Change
Innovation
New Product Development Process
Ideation
Knowledge Immersion
Consumer Immersion
Generating Insights
Generating Ideas
Concept Development
Product Development
Product Launch

14
Chapter 10 Product Design
IBM 360
Sensory Research
The Kano Model and Conjoint Analysis
Conjoint Analysis
House of Quality

Chapter 11 Product Validation

Moments of Truth
Launch Validation Methods
Simulated Test Markets
BASES
Controlled Store Test
Product Launch Evaluation
Parfitt–Collins Model
The Bass Diffusion Model
Case IV Hecto Grow

PART IV ADVERTISING
Chapter 12 How Advertising Works
Tradition of Great Advertising
Advertising through the Ages
Advertising Mechanisms
Salience
Persuasion
Likeability
Symbolism
Relationship and Involvement
Emotion
Measurement Issues

Chapter 13 New Media

The Old Order Changeth
Uprisings
Lessons for Marketers
New Media

15
 New Rules, New Perspectives
Levelling the Marketing Playing Field
The Advent of Co-creation
Permission Marketing
Riding the Long Tail
Inbound and Outbound Marketing
Turning Point for Television
Consumer Trends — Media Consumption
Online Video Distribution Trends
Interactive Television
Internet Basics

Chapter 14 Digital Marketing

What Works Online
Building Online Assets
Websites
Blogs
Internet Forums
Social Media
Content is King
Personalization
Advertising on the Net
Challenge Facing Low Involvement Categories
Challenge of Reaching the Masses
Digital Advertising Formats
Search
Search Engine Optimization
Web Analytics
Web Traffic Data
Web Intelligence
Controlled Website Tests

Chapter 15 Advertising Research

Copy Testing (Pre-Testing)
Testing Advertising Online
Advertising Tracking (Post-Testing)
Gross Rating Points
Audience Measurement
Continuous Interviewing versus Dipsticks

16
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 Tracking Questionnaire
Advertising Research Imperatives
Branded Memorability
Persuasion
Uniqueness
Likeability
Image and Symbolism
Involvement
Emotion
Communication
Awareness Index Model

PART V PRICE AND PROMOTION

Chapter 16 Price
At What Price Should We Sell Our Product?
Basics of Pricing Research
Importance of Realism in Pricing Research
Price Elasticity of Demand
Factors Affecting Consumers’ Sensitivity to Price
Pricing Research Methods
Gabor–Granger
Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Meter
Brand Price Trade-off
Conjoint Analysis
Discrete Choice Modelling
Case Example — Rationalizing Brand

Chapter 17 Promotion
In-Store Promotion and Media
Types of Promotions
Trade Promotion
Consumer Promotion
The Need to Rationalize Promotions
Promotion–Commotion–Demotion
Promotion Evaluation — Metrics
Basic Assessment of Sales Promotions
Market Modelling

17
Chapter 18 Market Mix Modelling
Design Considerations
Sales Response Function
Interaction Effects
Competitive Effects and Market Share Models
Dynamic Effects
Long Term Effect (Advertising)
Baseline and Incremental Volume
Promotions Response Model
Model Validity: How Good is the Fit?
Watchouts and Guidelines
Interpretation and Analysis
Discount Elasticity
Cannibalization
Displays and Cooperative Advertisement
Sales Decomposition and Due-To analysis
What-if Analysis
Case V Yakult

PART VI RETAIL
Chapter 19 Retail Tracking
Founding of the Nielsen Company, and the Nielsen Code
Applications of Retail Tracking
Where to Measure Sales?
Retail Measurement Services
Define Universe
Retail Census
Sample Design and Recruitment
Data Collection
Data Processing
Data Projection
Analysis and Interpretation

Chapter 20 Retail Analytics

Outlet Group Analysis Using Tracking Data
Case Example — Wheel and Nirma Pricing Analysis

18
 Analysis Using Transaction Data
Customer Profile Analysis
Loyalty and Propensity
Assortment Analysis
Case Example — Evaluation of Opening of New Petrol Station

Chapter 21 Sales and Distribution

Interdependence of Demand and Supply
Components of Sales — Width and Depth
Measures for Distribution (Width)
Sales and Distribution Priorities
Distribution Network — Basics
Right Channels, Right Chains
Right Assortment
Managing Assortment
Battle for Shelf Space
Measures of Assortment
Number of Items Stocked
Sales per Point of Weighted Distribution
Share in Handlers
Average Sales per Store
Rate of Sales (Adjusted Average Sales per Store)
Cash Rate of Sales, Rate of Gross Profit
Portfolio Analysis
Fragmentation Analysis
Securing Retailer Support
Managing Stock in trade
Allocation of Shelf Space (Forward Stock)
Cost of Stockouts

Chapter 22 Category Management

Category Management Overview
Partnership between Retailers and Manufacturers
Trade Marketing
Origins of Category Management
Trade Formats — FMCG
Categories
Category Roles
Category Strategies

19
 Review
Retail Mix
Price
Promotion and In-Store Media
Space Management
Execution
Benefits of Category Management
Case VI Little People
Case VII Inulas

APPENDICES
Appendix A: Sampling
Sampling Methods
Probability Sampling
Simple Random Sampling
Systematic Sampling
Stratified Sampling
Non-Probability Sampling
Sample Weighting
Sample Size
Central Limit Theorem
Sampling Standards in Retail Measurement
Sample Size — Random Sampling
Sample Size — Stratified Sampling
Population Proportions
Sample and Non-Sample Errors

Appendix B: Gain–loss Algorithms: Assumptions/Limitations

Standard Gain–loss Algorithm
Nested Gain–loss
Hierarchical Gain–loss
Conclusion

References
Subject Index

20
Company and Product Index
People and Place Index

21
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 The gifts which accompanied the rite were in the nature of
offerings. Ceremonies of lustration and purification, in which the
sacred elements, fire and water, took a prominent part, were
general, and the relationship established was in its essence one of
religious significance, and not one of mere secular import.
5. Relating to Death.—An attractive writer, Professor Frank
Granger, remarks in a recent volume: “The first attitude of primitive
man to his dead seems to have been one of almost unmixed
terror.”[255] Would that we could give primitive man so much credit!
But we cannot. The evidence is mountain-high that in the earliest
and rudest period of human history the corpse inspired so little
terror that it was nearly always eaten by the surviving friends![256]
We can look back clearly through the corridors of time to that
stage of development when death and the dead inspired no more
terror or aversion in man than they do to-day among the carnivorous
brutes.
Throughout the whole of the palæolithic period of culture we
discover extremely faint traces of any mode of sepulture, any
respect for the dead.
The oldest cemeteries or funeral monuments of any sort date from
the neolithic period. Then the full meaning of Death seems to have
broken suddenly on man, and his whole life became little more than
a meditatio mortis, a preparation for the world beyond the tomb.
What Professor Granger says of the ancient Romans applies to very
many primitive tribes: “In the belief of the Romans, the right to live
was not estimated more highly than the right to receive proper
burial.”[257]
The funeral or mortuary ceremonies, which are often so elaborate,
and so punctiliously performed in savage tribes, have a twofold
purpose. They are equally for the benefit of the individual and for
that of the community. If they are neglected or inadequately
conducted, the restless spirit of the departed cannot reach the realm
of joyous peace, and therefore he returns to lurk about his former
home and to plague the survivors for their carelessness.
It was therefore to lay the ghost, to avoid the anger of the
disembodied spirit, that the living instituted and performed the burial
ceremonies; while it became to the interest of the individual to
provide for it that those rites should be carried out which would
conduct his own soul to the abode of the blessed.
These were as various as were the myths of the after-world and
the fancies as to the number and destiny of the personal souls.
Most common of them all was some sort of funeral feast. The
disagreeable suggestion is close, that this was a survival of the habit
of eating the corpse itself. Up to a very recent date that habit
prevailed among the Bolivian Indians; and so desirable an end was it
esteemed that the traveller D’Orbigny tells of an old man he met
there whose only regret at embracing Christianity was that his body
would be eaten by worms instead of by his relations!
The later theory, however, was that then the soul itself was
supplied with food. It partook spiritually of the viands and thus, well
fortified for its long journey, departed in good humour with those it
left behind. The same notion led to the world-wide custom of
providing it with many articles by placing them in the tomb or
burning them on the funeral pyre. This extended not only to
weapons, utensils, ornaments, and clothing, but not infrequently to
companions. On the coast of Peru the wives of a man were burned
alive with his dead body, and among the Natchez they were knocked
on the head and interred under the same mounds.[258] I have seen
the mummy of a woman from the Cliff Dwellers of Arizona, holding
in her arms the body of her babe which had been strangled with a
cord, still tightly stretched around its little neck. Plainly the
sympathetic survivors had reflected how lonely the poor mother
would be in the next world without her babe, and had determined
that its soul should accompany hers. Elsewhere, slaves or
companions in arms were slain or slew themselves that they might
accompany some famous chieftain to his long home.
 In these funeral rites the disposal of the corpse depended upon
ethnic traits, ancestral usage, or the instructions of the priests.
Perhaps the earliest was simple exposure. The body was left in the
forest for the beasts and birds to consume, as among the Caddo
Indians and others; or it was sunk in the waters that the fish should
perform the same office; the usual object being to obtain the bones
with the least trouble. The oldest of all burials yet discovered, those
in the caves in the south of France, were of this character, simple
“seposition” as it is called. The body was merely laid in a posture of
repose on the cave floor, with the weapons and ornaments it had
used during life.[259]
Next in point of time doubtless came inhumation, the interment of
the body in the ground or covering it, laid on the surface, with
stones and earth,—the burial mound. Homeric Greeks, American
Indians, and tribes of all continents practised this method in different
ages, and the barrows or tumuli thus erected remain in thousands to
this day to attest the religious earnestness of those early peoples.
The vast monuments which at times they constructed for their dead,
the pyramids, dolmens, and teocalli, have never since been equalled
in magnitude or cubical contents.
Another and significant funeral rite of high antiquity is that of
cremation or incineration. It was symbolic in character, the body
being given to the flames in order that the spirit, by their purifying
agency, should promptly be set free and united with the gods. This
method also prevailed extensively among the American race, and
was quite in consonance with their opinions of the after-life. “It is
the one passion of his superstition,” writes Mr. Powers of the
Californian Indian, “to think of the soul of his departed friend as set
free, and purified by the flames; not bound to the mouldering body,
but borne up on the soft clouds of the smoke toward the beautiful
sun.”[260]
Other peoples entertained the opinion that the body as it is, in all
its parts, must be preserved in order that it might be again habitable
for the soul, when this ethereal essence should return to earth from
its celestial wanderings. Therefore, with utmost care they sought for
means to preserve the fleshly tenement. In Virginia, in some parts of
South America, on the Madeira Islands, the aboriginal population
dried the corpse over a slow fire into a condition that resisted decay;
while elsewhere, the nitrous soil of caves offered a natural means of
embalming. The Alaskan and Peruvian mummies, like those of
ancient Egypt, were artificially prepared and swathed in numerous
cerecloths. In all, the same faith in the literal resurrection of the
flesh was the prevailing motive.
More generally, the belief was held that the soul remained
attached in some way to the bones. These were carefully cleaned
and either preserved in the house, or stored in ossuaries. Frequently
they were kept as amulets or mascots, in the notion that the friendly
spirit which animated the living person would continue to hover
around his skeleton or skull, and exert its amicable power. The
Peruvians held that the bones of their deceased priests were
oracular, speaking good counsel, and the missionaries were obliged
to break them into small fragments to dispel this superstition[261];
though they themselves continued to hold it heretical to doubt the
efficacy of the bones of the saints! A tribe on the Orinoco was wont
to beat the bones of their dead into powder and mix it with their
cassava bread, holding that thus their friends and parents lived
again in the bodies of the eaters!
After cremation, the ashes were left upon the altar, and the whole
covered with earth; or they were preserved in urns with the
fragments of the bones; or, as with a tribe of the Amazon, they were
cast upon the waters of the great river and floated down to the
limitless ocean.
Thus closed the last scene in the existence of the primitive man.
From birth to death he had been surrounded and governed by the
ceremonies of his religion; and on his passage out of this life, he
confidently looked to another in which he should find a
compensation and a consolation for the woes of his present
condition.
Following these funerary functions came the customs of mourning.
They were often excessively protracted and severe, involving self-
mutilation, as the lopping of a finger or an ear, scarification,
flagellation, fasting, and cutting the hair. These were shared by the
friends and relatives of the deceased, and at the death of some
famous chief “the whole tribe will prostrate themselves to their woe.”
The psychic explanation of these demonstrations is not wholly
clear. By some they have been interpreted as a commutation for
cannibalism, and by others as an excuse for not accompanying the
corpse into the other world. One writer says: “Barbarism, abandoned
to sorrow, finds physical suffering a relief from mental agony.”[262]
On the other hand, a recent student of the subject claims that in
these rites we perceive “the oldest evidence of active conscience in
the human race; the individual laid hands on himself in order to
restore the moral equilibrium.”[263] Need we go farther than to see
in them merely exaggerated forms of the same emotional outbursts
which lead nervous temperaments everywhere to wring the hands
and tear the hair in moments of violent grief?
 LECTURE VI.
The Lines of Development of Primitive
Religions.
 Contents:—Pagan Religions not wholly Bad—Their Lines of
Development as Connected with: 1. The Primitive Social Bond
—The Totem, the Priesthood, and the Law; 2. The Family and
the Position of Woman; 3. The Growth of Jurisprudence—The
Ordeal, Trial by Battle, Oaths, and the Right of Sanctuary—
Religion is Anarchic; 4. The Development of Ethics—Dualism
of Primitive Ethics—Opposition of Religion to Ethics; 5. The
Advance in Positive Knowledge—Religion versus Science; 6.
The Fostering of the Arts—The Aim for Beauty and Perfection
—Colour-Symbolism, Sculpture, Metre, Music, Oratory,
Graphic Methods—Useful Arts, Architecture; 7. The
Independent Life of the Individual—His Freedom and
Happiness—Inner Stadia of Progress: 1. From the Object to
the Symbol; 2. From the Ceremonial Law to the Personal
Ideal; 3. From the Tribal to the National Conception of
Religion—Conclusion.

It has always been, and is now, the prevailing belief in

Christendom that pagan or heathen religions cannot exert and never
have exerted any good influence on their votaries.
This opinion has also been defended by some modern and
eminent authorities in the science of ethnology, as, for example, the
late Professor Waitz.[264] It is a favourite teaching in missionary
societies and in works of travellers who are keen observers of the
shortcomings of others’ faiths.
I have never been able to share such a view. The lowest religions
seem to have in them the elements which exist in the ripest and the
noblest; and these elements work for good wherever they exist.
However rude the form of belief in agencies above those of the
material world, in a higher law than that confessedly of solely human
enactment, and in a standard of duty prescribed by something loftier
than immediate advantage,—such a belief must prompt the
individual, anywhere, to a salutary self-discipline which will steadily
raise him above his merely animal instincts, and imbue him with
nobler conceptions of the aims of life.
 When he feels himself under the protection of some unseen, but
ever near, beneficent power, his emotions of gratitude and love will
be stimulated; and when he recognises in the ceremonial law a
divine prescription for his own welfare and that of his tribe, he will
cheerfully submit to the rigours of its discipline.
The various lines of development which were thus marked out and
pursued through the influence of early religious thought, and which
reacted to develop it, deserve to be pointed out in detail, since they
have so generally been overlooked or misunderstood.
For convenience of presentation they may be examined under
seven headings, as they were connected with: 1. The primitive social
bond; 2. The family and the position of woman; 3. The growth of
jurisprudence; 4. The development of ethics; 5. The advance in
positive knowledge; 6. The fostering of the arts; and 7. The
independent life of the individual.
These are the main elements of ethnology; and as they
progressed to higher forms and finer specialisations, partly through
the influence of religion, they in turn reflected back to it their
brighter lustre, and the symmetrical growth of a richer culture was
thus secured.
1. The first to be named should be the construction of the
primitive society. This was essentially religious. I have already
emphasised how completely the savage is bound up in his faith, how
it enters into nigh every act and thought of his daily life. This may be
illustrated by its part in four very early and widely existing forms of
social ties—the totem, the sacred society, the priesthood, and the
ceremonial law.
The totemic bond I have previously explained. It existed in many
American and Australian tribes and relics of it can be discerned in
the early peoples of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Its constitution was
avowedly religious. The supposed or “eponymous” ancestor of the
totem was a mythical existence, a sort of deity. He was known only
through a revelation, either in visions, or, through the assertions of
the elders of the clan, in which latter case the myth was the origin of
the relationship. Theoretically, all members of the totem were
kinfolk, “of one blood,” and the numerous rites connected with the
letting of blood were generally to symbolise this teaching.[265]
In various tribes, as among the Sioux and in Polynesia, the totem
did not prevail. Its place was taken by societies, sacred in character,
the members of which were bound closely together by some
supernatural tie. As our Indians say, all the members “had the same
medicine.” The relation these societies bear to the tribe is not
dissimilar to that elsewhere held by totems.
In nearly all primitive peoples the priesthood exerts a powerful
influence in preserving the unity of the tribe, in presenting an
immovable opposition to external control. This is well known to the
Christian missionaries and bitterly resented by them. These shamans
and “medicine-men” are the most persistent opponents of civilisation
and Christianity; but it must be remembered that the same
conservatism on their part has for centuries been the chief
preventive of tribal dissolution and decay. While we regret that they
should resist what is good, we must recognise the value of their
services to their people in the past.[266]
The ceremonial law belongs, as I have elsewhere said, to the
primary forms of religion. It is in full force, as among the Mincopies
and Yahgans, where it is difficult to perceive any other form of
religious expression. It is deemed by all to be divine in origin,
imparted in dreams or visions by supernatural visitors, transcending
therefore all human enactments. It defines the proper conduct of the
individual, and prescribes what is allowed and what is forbidden to
him. Obedience to it is constantly inculcated under the threat of the
severest penalties.
These are the main forces which moulded the earliest human
societies known to us, and may be said to have first created society
itself. They are all distinctly religious, and their consideration obliges
us to acknowledge the correctness of the statement of a
distinguished Italian, Professor Tito Vignoli,—“There is no society,
however rude and primitive, in which all the relations, both of the
individual and of the society itself, are not visibly based on
superstitions and mythical beliefs.”[267]
2. Earlier, perhaps, than any definite social organisation was the
family bond which united together those of one kinship. This rested
upon marriage, the religious character of which in even the rudest
tribes I dwelt upon in the last lecture. I then explained the
matriarchal system prevalent in so many savage peoples.
Necessarily, this exalted the position of woman, by conferring upon
her the titular position of head of the house, and often the actual
ownership of the family property.
It is a general truth in sociology that we may gauge the
tendencies of a given society towards progressive growth by the
position it assigns to woman, by the amount of freedom it gives her,
and by the respect it pays to her peculiar faculties. Religions which,
like Mohammedanism, reduce her to a very subordinate place in life,
wholly secondary to that of the male, have worked detrimentally to
the advancement of the peoples who have adopted them.
In some savage tribes, the woman is a mere chattel or slave,
denied actual participation in religious rites. But that is by no means
the case with all. Among the Hottentots, for example,—who were,
when first discovered, a people of respectable culture,—a man can
take no higher oath than to swear by his eldest sister; and such is
the respect inculcated through his religion, that he never speaks to
her unless she addresses him first.[268]
The more delicate nervous organisation of women adapts them
peculiarly to the perception of those sub-conscious states which are
the psychic sources of inspiration and revelation. Very widely,
therefore, in primitive religions they occupied the position of
seeresses and priestesses, and were reverenced in accordance
therewith. Among the Dyaks of Borneo, in former days, all the
recognised priestly class were women. Their bodies were supposed
to be the chosen residence of the Sangsangs, beautiful beings,
friendly to men. These inspired women, called Bilians or Borich, were
subject to theoleptic fits, in which they gave advice, foretold the
future, recited rhythmic songs, etc. They were under no restraint of
conduct, as what they did, it was held, was the prompting of the
god. So firm was their influence that, when, in modern days, the
men also became priests, they were obliged to wear the garb of
women.[269]
The Siamese also entertain this opinion. Their gods speak through
the mouth of some chosen woman. When she feels the visit of the
spirit to be near, she arrays herself in a handsome red silk garment,
and as the deity enters her, she discourses of the other world, tells
where lost objects are to be found, and the like. The assembled
company worship her, or rather the god in her. On recovering from
her theopneustic trance, she professes entire unconsciousness of
what has taken place.[270]
The American Indians very generally concede to their women an
exalted rank in their religious mysteries. The Algonquins had quite as
famous “medicine-women” as medicine-men, and the same was true
generally. Mr. Cushing tells me that there is only one person among
the Zuñis who is a member of all the sacred societies and thus
knows the secrets of all, and that person is a woman.
When Votan, the legendary hero of the Tzentals of Chiapas, left
them for his long journey, he placed his sacred apparatus and his
magical scrolls in a cave under the charge of a high priestess, who
was to appoint her successor of the same sex until his return. The
secret was faithfully kept and the successors appointed for more
than a hundred and fifty years after their conversion to Christianity;
until, in 1692, on the occasion of the visit of the Bishop to the
hamlet where the priestess lived, she disclosed the story, and the
holy relics were burned.[271]
Twenty years later, as if to avenge this, the Tzentals revolted in a
body, their leader being an inspired prophetess of their tribe, a girl
of twenty, fired with enthusiasm to drive the Spaniards from the land
and restore the worship of the ancient gods.[272]
It is quite usual to find in early religions many rites, such as
dances and sacrifices, which women alone carry out, and to which it
is tabu for any man to be admitted. This naturally arises in those
cults where the deities are divided sexually into male and female.
Such in their origin were the Bacchanals of ancient Greece,
participated in at first by women and girls only, celebrated in
devotion to the productive powers of nature, which were held to
belong more especially to the female sex.[273] The “wise women” of
many primitive faiths formed a close caste by themselves, no male
being admitted, in imitation of their mythological prototypes in the
heavens. The “witches” of the Middle Ages were lineal successors of
the Teutonic priestesses, who took as their model the “swan-
maidens” or “wish-women” of Odin.[274]
Another form of early institutions was that of the societies of
virgins, such as that which from primitive Italic times kept alive the
holy fire of Vesta, goddess of the hearth and home. Extensive
associations of a similar nature were found by the European
explorers in Mexico, Yucatan, Peru, and elsewhere.
A curious teaching of several wide-spread cults was that women
alone were endowed with immortality. Such was the opinion of the
natives of the Marquesas Islands, and in Samoa the myth related
that the god Supa (paralysis) ordained in the council of creation that
the life of a man should be like a torch, which, when blown out,
cannot be again lighted by blowing; but that a woman’s soul should
live always.[275]
No one can doubt that in thus assigning a high and often the
highest place in the religious mysteries to woman, many primitive
religions surrounded her with a sacredness which was constantly
recognised, and thus aided in the improvement of her social
relations. The value of virtue and purity was increased, mere animal
desires were subjected to religious restraint, and the relations of sex
came increasingly to be regarded as instituted by divine wisdom for
special purposes.
3. Although the specifications of the ceremonial law were often
capricious and absurd, and sometimes positively hurtful, yet it
developed the habit of obedience and the respect for authority. In
this manner it potently aided the evolution of jurisprudence—that is,
of those rules of conduct which grow out of the habit of men living
together and which are necessary to preserve amicable relations.
These had their origin in other than religious considerations, but
when once consciously recognised as beneficial, the religion of the
tribe generally adopted them, claimed their creation, and threw
around them the garb of its own protective power. Religion then
actively aided in the fulfilment of purely social duties, as these were
understood by the tribe.
In primitive conditions, all laws are God’s laws. As we would say,
there is no separation of the civil and criminal from the canon law.
To the Mohammedan, the Koran is the source of all jurisprudence.
This is a survival from early thought.
From this it followed that the punishment of crime and the
decisions between litigants were, properly, judgments of God. This
universal opinion is reflected in a number of traits in jurisprudence,
some of which are still in vogue in civilised lands. The most
noteworthy are the ordeal, trial by battle, oaths, and the privilege of
sanctuary.
Ordeals were universal. They all rested on the belief that the gods
would rescue the innocent man from danger. He might be required
to hold red-hot iron in his hands; he might be plunged long under
water; swallow poison; or in any other way expose himself to pain or
death; if he were unjustly accused, the invisible powers would
protect him.[276]
The trial by battle involved the same opinion. “If the Lord is on my
side, why should I fear?” is the confident belief at the basis of every
such test of skill and strength.[277]
 These forms of decision have disappeared, but the oath remains
as vigorous as ever in our law courts. It is, however, as has been
pointed out by the able ethnologist and lawyer, Dr. Post, originally
and in spirit nothing else than an ordeal. The false witness, the
perjurer, is believed to expose himself to the wrath of God and to
suffer the consequences in this or another life.[278]
The rite of sanctuary was distinctly religious. The criminal among
the Hebrews, who could escape to the temple and cling to the horns
of the altar, must not be seized by the officers of justice. The
Cherokee Indians, like the Israelites, had “cities of refuge,” which
they called “white towns.” With the Acagchemem, a Californian tribe,
the temples were so purifying that the evil-doer, were he guilty even
of murder, who could reach them before he was caught, was
cleansed of his sin and absolved ever after from any punishment for
it.[279]
In these vital relations we see how religion entered deeply into
civil life, and became a guide and director of its most essential
procedures. Its development grew with its responsibilities and with
the intimacy it cultivated with practical affairs.
The codes of statutes instituted by ancient legislators, usually
personified under some one famous name, as Moses, Manu, Menes,
or the like, obtained general adoption through the belief that they
emanated directly from divinity, and were part of the ceremonial law.
Under favour of this disguise, they worked for the good of those who
followed them, and gained a credence which would not have been
conceded to them, had it been thought that they were of human
manufacture.
Toward merely human law the religious sentiment is in its nature
and derivation in frequent opposition. It claims a nobler lineage and
a higher title. In theory, the Church must always be above the State,
as God is superior to man. Religion, when vital and active, is ever
revolutionary and anarchic. It ever aims at substituting divine for
human ordinances.
 This has been from earliest times its constant tendency. It has
been a potent dissolvent of states and governments and of such
older religious expressions as have become humanised by usage and
formality.
In this manner it has been the most powerful of all levers in
stimulating the human mind to active enterprise and the use of all its
faculties. Man owes less to his conscious than to his sub-conscious
intelligence, and of this religion has been the chief interpreter.
4. The severest blows have been dealt at primitive or pagan
religions on account of the inferiority of their ethics. It has often
been asserted that they do not cultivate the moral faculties and
benevolent emotions, but stifle and pervert them. They are,
therefore, considered to be distinctly evil in tendency.
This important criticism cannot be disposed of by a mere denial.
There is no doubt that the ethics of barbarism is not that of a high
civilisation. But if we understand the necessary conditions of tribal
life in the unending conflicts of the savage state, we can see that the
highest moral code would find no place there.
All tribal religions preach a dualism of ethics, one for the members
of the tribe, who are bound together by ties of kinship and by union
to preserve existence; and the other, for the rest of the world. To the
former are due aid, kindness, justice, truth and fair dealing; to the
latter, enmity, hatred, injury, falsehood, and deceit. The latter is just
as much a duty as the former, and is just as positively enjoined by
both religion and tribal law.[280]
The state of barbarism is one of perpetual war, in which each
petty tribe is striving to conquer, rob, and destroy its neighbours.
The Patagonians and Australians wander about their sterile lands in
small bands, naked and shelterless, owning nothing but the barest
necessities. But whenever two of these bands approach each other,
it is the signal for a murderous struggle, in order to obtain
possession of the wretched rags and trumperies of the opponent.
 For this reason, the development of ethics must be studied on
inclusive lines, as to what extent they were cultivated between
members of the same social unit, the totem or the tribe. The duty of
kindness to others extended to a very limited distance, but, within
that area, may have been, and generally was, punctually observed.
The devotion of members of the same gens to each other, even to
the sacrifice of life, has been often noted among savages. The duties
involved by this connection were frequently onerous and dangerous,
as in the common custom of blood revenge, where a man, at the
imminent peril and often at the loss of his own life, felt constrained
to slay the murderer of a fellow-clansman.
The character of the early gods was, as a rule, non-ethical. They
were generally neither wholly good nor wholly bad. They were more
or less friendly toward men, but rarely constantly either beneficent
or malignant. They were too human for that.[281]
Hence the religions which were founded upon such conceptions
were not in their prescriptions of conduct chiefly ethical, but rather
ceremonial. Moral conduct was of less importance than the
performance of the rites, the recitation of the formulas, and the
respect for the tabu.[282]
I may go farther, and say that in all religions, in the essence of
religion itself, there lies concealed a certain contempt for the merely
ethical, as compared with the mystical, in life. That which is wholly
religious in thought and emotion is conscious of another, and, it
claims, a loftier origin than that which is moral only, based as the
latter is, on solely social considerations. I have heard from the
pulpits of our own land very gloomy predictions of the fate of the
“merely moral man.”[283]
5. That which we call “modern progress” is due to the increase of
positive knowledge, the enlargement of the domain of objective
truth. To this, religion in its early stages made important
contributions. The motions of the celestial bodies were studied at
first for ceremonial reasons only. They fixed the sacred year and the
periods for festivals and sacrifices. Out of this grew astronomy, the
civil calendar, and other departments of infantile science.
The rudiments of mathematics were discovered and developed
chiefly by the priestly class, and at first for hieratic purposes; and
the same is true of the elements of botanical and zoölogical
knowledge. The practice of medicine owes some of its most useful
resources to the observations of the “medicine-men” or shamans of
savage tribes.
While this much and more may justly be stated concerning the
contributions of Religion to Science, there can be no question of the
irreconcilable conflict between the two. They arise in totally different
tracts of the human mind, Science from the conscious, Religion from
the sub- or unconscious intelligence. Therefore, there is no common
measure between them.
Science proclaims that man is born to know, not to believe, and
that truth, to be such, must be verifiable. Religion proclaims that
faith is superior to knowledge, and that the truth which is intuitive is
and must be higher than that which depends on observation.
Science acknowledges that it can reach no certain conclusions; its
final decisions are always followed by a mark of interrogation.
Religion despises such hesitancy, and proceeds in perfect confidence
of possessing the central and eternal verity. Science looks upon the
ultimate knowable laws of the universe as mechanical, religion as
spiritual or demonologic.
These differences have always existed, and have, in the main,
resulted in placing religions at all times in antagonism to universal
ethics, to general rules of conduct, and to objective knowledge.
Everywhere, the religious portion of the community have entertained
a secret or open contempt for “worldly learning”; everywhere they
have proclaimed that the knowledge of God is superior to the
knowledge of his works; and that obedience to his law is of more
import than the love of humanity.
 We may turn to the American Indians, the tribes of Siberia or the
Dyaks of Borneo, and we shall find that the ordinary “doctor” who
cured by a knowledge of herbs, of nursing, and of simple mechanical
means, was far less esteemed than the shaman who depended not
on special knowledge but on the possession of mysterious powers
which gave him control over demons[284]; or we may take that
Protestant sect of the Reformation, who opposed anyone learning
the alphabet, lest he should waste his time on vain human
knowledge[285]; or a thousand other examples; and the contrast is
always the same.
The conclusion, therefore, is that early religion did assist the
development of the race along these lines, but only incidentally and,
as it were, unwittingly; while it was, at heart, unfriendly to them.
6. It is otherwise when we turn to Art, especially esthetic Art. Its
aim is the realisation, the expression in the object, of the idea of the
Beautiful. This idea does not belong to the conscious intelligence. It
cannot be expressed in the formulas of positive knowledge. The
esthetic, like the religious, emotions, send their roots far down into
the opaque structure of the sub-conscious intelligence, and hence
the two are natural associates. What Professor Bain says of Art may
be extended to Religion: “Nature is not its standard, nor is
[objective] truth its chief end.”[286]
It has been seriously questioned whether the idea of the beautiful
existed among primitive peoples, apart from a desire for mere gaudy
colouring or striking display. No one would doubt its universal
presence could he but free his judgment from his own canons of the
beautiful, and accept those which prevail in the savage tribe he is
studying. Darwin, in his work on the Descent of Man, collected
evidence from the rudest hordes of all continents to prove that all
were passionate admirers of beauty, as measured by their own
criteria; and he reached also the important conclusion that their
completest expression of it was to be found in their religious art. “In
every nation,” he says, “sufficiently advanced to have made effigies
of their gods, or of their deified rulers, the sculptors no doubt have
endeavoured to express their highest idea of beauty.”[287]
We should also remember that the same great teacher says: “It is
certainly not true that there is in the human mind any universal
standard of beauty;” and this is so, both of the human form and of
those expressions of the beautiful which appeal to the ear and the
touch. The music and the metre of one race generally displease
another; and there is no one norm by which the superiority of either
can be absolutely ascertained.
In their own way, however, Art and Religion have this in common,
that they make a study of Perfection, and aim to embody it in
actuality; whereas Science or positive knowledge confines itself to
reality, which is ever imperfect.
Perfection is, however, an unconditioned mode of existence, not
measurable by our senses, and hence outside the domain of
inductive research. The tendency of organic forms and cosmic
motions is always toward it, but they always fall short of it.[288] We
are aware of it only through the longings of our sub-conscious
minds, not through the laws of our reasoning intelligence. Yet so
intense is our conviction, not only that it is true, but that final truth
lies in it alone, that it has ever been and will ever be the highest and
strongest motive of human action.
Beginning with those arts which are avowedly the expression of
beauty in line, colour, or form, it is easy to show how they were
fostered by the religious sense. The inscribed shells and tablets from
the mounds of the Mississippi Valley present complex and
symmetrical drawings, clearly intended for some mythical being or
supernatural personage.
Among the Salishan Indians of British Columbia, when a girl
reaches maturity she must go alone to the hills and undergo a long
period of retirement. At its close, she records her experiences by
drawing a number of rude figures in red paint on a boulder,
indicating the rites she has performed and the visions she has had.
[289] Such rock-writing, or petroglyphs, nearly always of religious
import, are found in every continent, and offer the beginnings of the
art of drawing.
It is possible that the oldest known examples, scratched with a
flint on the bones of reindeers dug up in the caves of southern
France, may represent the totems or deified heroes of the clan.
Certain it is that a class of symbolic figures, which recur the world
over, often dating from remote ages, such as the crescent, the cross,
the svastika, the triskeles, the circle, and the square, were of
religious intention, and conveyed mystic knowledge or supernatural
protection in the opinion of those who drew them.
The early cultivation of painting in religious art arose chiefly from
the symbolism of colours, to which I previously made a passing
allusion. Its origin was in the effect which certain hues have upon
the mind, either specifically or from association. Colour-symbolism,
indeed, forms a prominent feature in nearly every primitive religion.
The import of the different colours varies, but not to the degree
which excludes some general tendencies. The white and the blue are
usually of cheerful and peaceful signification, the black and the red
are ominous of strife and darkness. In many tribes the yellow bore
the deepest religious meaning. The Mayas of Yucatan assigned it to
the dawn and the east; and when the Aztecs gathered around the
dying bed of one they loved, and raised their voices in the paean
which was to waft the soul to its higher life beyond the grave, they
sang: “Already does the dawn appear, the light advances. Already do
the birds of yellow plumage tune their songs to greet thee.”
These symbolic colours are those with which the early temples
were tinted and the rude images of the gods stained. They were
rarely harmonious, but they were effective, and appealed to the
people for whom they were intended. Their preparation and their
technical employment were improved, and, as the art advanced, it
reacted on the religion, directing its conceptions of divinity into
higher walks and toward nobler ideals.
 Art in line and colour is of vast antiquity, probably preceding that
in shape or form, carving or sculpture. But this, too, we find was
fairly understood by the cave-dwellers of France and Switzerland at
a time when the great glacier still covered a good part of the
European continent, and there is scarcely a savage tribe to-day that
does not make some rude attempts at carving the images of its
deities.
A natural object which has a chance resemblance to a man or
beast is chosen as a fetish, and the worshipper by chipping or
rubbing increases slightly the likeness. This is the infancy of the
sculptor’s art, and it is usually for a religious purpose that it is
exercised. Soon it is developed, and in stone, or bone, or wood, in
baked clay, or rags, or leaves, we find thousands of effigies in use to
represent the tutelary deities and the other denizens of the
supernatural world.
So prominent was the early progress of religious art in this
direction that it gave the name to early religion itself. It was
distinctly “idolatry,” or “image worship,” the objective expression
overwhelming the inward sentiment.
Its excess in this direction led to reactions and protests as long
ago as the dawn of history. “Thou shalt not make to thyself any
graven image, nor the likeness of anything,” was a command taken
so literally that it has swept away ever since in some of the Semitic
peoples all interest in plastic or pictorial art, whether sacred or
secular. It was believed that the contemplation of a divinity not
represented by any visible object would maintain and develop a
higher conception than if portrayed under tangible form, no matter
how beautiful or how symbolic.
This opinion would not and did not exclude the cultivation of the
beautiful under non-sensuous forms, such as appeal to the ear
rather than to the eye. I refer to metre and music, to oratory and
literary composition.
 From some cause which it might be difficult to explain
satisfactorily the natural expression of religious emotion in language
is universally metrical. The rites of every barbarous tribe are
conducted in or accompanied by rude chants or songs, which both
stimulate the religious feelings and give appropriate vent to them.
Many of these chants are mere repetitions of phrases, or refrains,
destitute of meaning, but they answer the purpose, and are the
germs from which, in appropriate surroundings, have been
developed the great poems of the race, the inspirations of its
immortal bards.
Hundreds of examples of these primitive religious chants have
been collected of recent years, when, for the first time, their
ethnologic importance has been understood. They present a striking
similarity, whether from the Polynesian Islands, the desert-dwellers
of Australia, or the Navahoes and Sioux of our own reservations.
Many of them are scarcely more than inarticulate cries, but even
these have a certain likeness, containing the same class of vowels,
and often leading, through this physiological correlation of sound to
emotion, to similar words in the religious language of far-distant
peoples.
Everywhere we find these metrical outbursts controlled by the
sense of rhythmical repetition; and it was to accentuate this that
instruments of music were first invented. Their rudest forms may be
seen in the two flat sticks which the Australians use to beat time for
their singing in their corroborees, or festal ceremonies; or in the
hollow log, pounded by a club, which some Central American tribes
still employ. All the native American musical instruments appear to
have been first invented for aiding the ritual; and tradition assigns
with probability the same origin for most of those in the Old World.
Uniform rhythmic motion is a powerful means of intensifying
collective suggestion; and its action is the more potent the more we
yield our minds to the control of their unconscious activities,—the
realm in which the religious sentiment is supreme.
 In the initiation ceremonies of the Australians—called the Bora—
the youth are obliged to listen to long speeches from the old men,
containing instructions in conduct and the ancestral religious beliefs.
Such customs as this,—and in one or another form they are
universal in primitive religions—led to the development of the art of
Oratory. It was cultivated assiduously in primitive conditions. We
have several volumes largely filled with the prolix addresses of the
Aztec priests and priestesses on various solemn occasions, as birth,
entering adult life, marriage, etc.[290] To learn these long formulas
by heart was one of the duties, and not an easy one, of the
neophytes.
In most tribes they are couched in forms apart from those of daily
use, the words being unusual, with full vowels and sonorous
terminations. Some of these peculiarities survive in the “pulpit
eloquence” of our own day, testifying to the influence of religious
thought on the development of the modes of dignified expression.
It was in this connection and under this inspiration that man
invented the greatest boon which humanity has ever enjoyed,—a
system of writing, a means of recording and preserving facts and
ideas. Our present alphabet is traced lineally back to the sacred
picture-writing of ancient Egypt; and the less efficient method
employed by the natives of Mexico and Central America originated in
devices to preserve the liturgic songs and religious formulas. For
generations, in both areas, its chief cultivation and extension lay
with the priestly class: although its final application to the uses of
daily life was due to merchants rather than to scholars.
This discovery made possible such a treasure as a literature; and
that we find its beginnings and oldest memorials chiefly of religious
contents is ample testimony to this incalculable debt we owe to the
religious sentiment. The papyri of Egypt, the codices of Central
America, the Sanscrit Rig Veda, and the Persian Vendidad testify to
the diligence with which the ancient worshippers sought to preserve
the sacred chants and formulas.
 We discern the same anxiety among rude savages to pass down in
their integrity the liturgies of their worship; and in the “meday
sticks” of the Chipeways and the curiously incised wooden tablets of
Easter Island, we have the beginnings of written literature,—always
the purpose being religious in character.
It is unnecessary to dwell in detail upon the fostering influence of
early religion on the useful arts. In their numerous applications to
the ritual and the objective expression of the religious sentiment,
they were constantly stimulated by it and by the reward it was ever
prepared to offer, both in this world and that to come.
But one art of utility was so pre-eminently religious in its source
that it merits especial comment, that is, building or architecture.
Nearly all the great monuments of the ancient world, most of the
important structures of primitive tribes everywhere, have in them
something religious in aim, or are avowedly so. We know little or
nothing of the builders of the mysterious “megalithic monuments,”
the dolmens and cromlechs which to the number of thousands rise
on the soil of France and England; but their arrangement and
character leave no doubt that they were for some religious purpose.
So the mighty piles which excite our astonishment in the valley of
the Nile or the Euphrates, or on the highlands of Mexico, or in the
tropical forests of Yucatan, reveal the same inspiration.
In his altars and temples, in his shrines and funerary monuments,
his fanes and cathedrals, man has at all times expended his efforts
and his means with a prodigality lavished on no other edifices. The
orders of architecture arose from his desire to erect dwellings worthy
of the god who should inhabit them. No beauty of line, no majesty
of proportion, no abundance of decoration, was too great to secure
this purpose. Such surroundings in time imparted dignity and
permanence to the cult, and embellished the religious sentiment
through noble artistic associations.
7. Let us now turn from these considerations of a general nature
to the more pointed one, whether primitive religions exerted an
improving influence on the independent life of the individual; for that
is the test to which all institutions should finally be brought.
The savage is not the type of a free man, although in popular
estimation he is generally so considered. He is, in fact, tyrannically
fettered by traditional laws and tribal customs. He is merged in his
clan or gens, against whose rules, often most painful and arbitrary,
he dares take no step. As an individual, he cannot escape from their
invisible chains.[291]
His only avenue to permitted freedom is through the higher law of
his personal religion. If he pleads that his own tutelary spirit has
ordered him to an act contrary to custom, or that his own magical
powers enable him to defy established usage, his disregard of it will
be condoned.
In savage life, the inspired and the insane are always ranked in
the same category as above the law. Among the Kamschatkans, if a
man declares that his personal divinity has in a dream commanded
him to unite with some woman of the tribe, it is her duty to obey, no
matter what her position or relationship.[292]
Although at times this freedom was doubtless abused, it secured
for the individual a degree of personal liberty which he could have
attained in no other manner. By recognising a law for the single
conscience above that of either ancestral usage or popular religion,
it paved the way to the development of the individual, free from all
restraints other than his clear judgment would lay upon himself.
He who possessed the hidden knowledge, the esoteric gnosis, was
by that knowledge released from bondage to his fellow-men. As the
poet Chapman so well says:

“There is no danger to a man who knows

What life and death is; there’s not any law
Exceeds his knowledge: neither is it lawful
That he should stoop to any other law.”
 This sense of superiority to all surroundings is disclosed
everywhere in mystic religions. A Hindu prophetess was a few years
ago imprisoned by the English civic judge for violation of the local
laws and disturbing the peace. Her only statement in defence was:
“Years ago, when a girl, I met in the jungle, face to face, the god
Siva. He entered into my bosom. He abides in me now. My blessing
is his blessing; my curse his curse.”[293] The Malay, when he “runs
amuck,” regards himself exonerated from all restraint, moral or
social; and that custom and belief are not confined to his race.[294]
It was held among the ancients that those who are “born of God,”
that is, inspired by the divine afflatus, are not only above human
law, but “are not subject even to the decrees of Fate.”[295]
The ceremonial law, so powerful in primitive condition, must have
exerted a beneficial influence on the training of the individual. Its
severe restrictions, its minute and ceaseless regulations of his life,
taught him self-control and self-sacrifice. His first duty was not to
himself but to the other members of his clan or totem. Obedience
and systematic restraint were useful lessons inculcated on him from
earliest childhood. The Congo Negro, the Andaman Islander, the
American Indian, for whom his sponsors had taken vows at his birth,
grew up to consider the fulfilment of these the chief end of his life.
Their violation would entail disaster and disgrace not merely on
himself but on his people. His religious education, therefore,
cultivated in him some of the finest qualities of perfected manhood,
—self-abnegation and altruism; for, as Professor Granger well says,
“The primitive idea of holiness implies as its chief element, relation
to the communal life.”[296]
If, therefore, with some writers, we must concede that in primitive
conditions the individual was ever conceived with reference to the
gens or community, on the other hand, we must recognise the
potency of the religious element occasionally to separate him from
others as one of “the elect”; to train him in self-realisation and self-
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