William Robertson Smith Reveals that Myths Began With Rituals!

Anthropological scholar A Boskovic has written about how mythology was looked at by the founders of Anthropology with early figures like E.B. Tylor and W.R. Smith. Smith recognized that rituals were important foundations that preceded more complex and elaborated myths. First, our current context and how we get to anthropology and myths. It is common nowadays to evaluate religious accounts by stereotyping them as "myth," often part of secular and scientific materialism, or scientism. For one, Thomas Kuhn years ago had introduced the important sociohistorical notion of scientific paradigms. For another, biologist turned philosopher M. Pigliucci went from anti-theist to the "limits of science," and points out that science is a form of philosophy. Moreover, trying to take scientific philosophy outside of the lab as an exclusionary, intolerant, and monomaniacal way of life in scientific materialism is anthropologically a religious viewpoint itself, as scholar N. Smart has pointed out. Scientism is scientific philosophy in ideological form, in which gods are replaced with abstractions and assumed beliefs like "science is not merely scientific philosophy, but truth and reality itself." To reinforce the point, that is a metaphysical and philosophical assertion, not a scientific one. One angle that is key is the way ALL modern scientific disciplines and subdisciplines themselves divide into different knowledge areas, that can be called epistemologies. Einstein´s relativity shifted perceptions away from Newton´s classical mechanics according to the speed of light and mass-energy equivalence. Einstein´s ideas that were indicating quantum mechanics were quickly superseded, leaving Einstein´s own ideas to be called "old quantum theory." That represented new domains within physics alone.

The knowledge domain difference between natural philosophy and human-social-moral philosophy had already begun to be defined by Thomas of Aquinas in the 1200s as he laid out the realms of study of lawful or logical phenomena and their Laws: Natural, Human, Eternal, and Divine. As for accounts of cross-cultural information, early Christian philosophers like Clement of Alexandria in the 200s had studied Greek religion in detail. Later in the 1200s, Marco Polo´s accounts of Asia, among others like the Muslim Ibn Battuta, began to provide cross-cultural information. By the time of Descartes in the 1600s, G. Vico was noting the problem of applying the geometric and mechanistic tools of natural philosophy to the human social realm as he asserted an early version of Piaget´s later contructivism, "verum factum," the truth is what we make." In recognizing the need to understand complex symbolic human behavior, it was also an early form of antipositivism and interpretivism. Sociologists like Max Weber and Georg Simmel began establishing that distinction more clearly by the early 1900s.

Meanwhile, neurobiologists like W Cannon discovered the initial details of such systems as the sympathetic nervous system and adrenal glands by the 1930s. The emotional neural circuits began to be identified by work like Paul Broca in the 1870s, James Papez in the 1930s, and Paul McLean by 1949. Similarly, Freud´s foundations in therapeutic psychology led him to observe the relief of physical pain as the "talking cure" began to reveal the principles of psychoanalysis, abreaction emotional reconnection, cathartic relief, and the implications for trauma and emotional repression in events, often in childhood. Carl Jung led other psychologists in extending mental health and personal growth into a context related to spiritual-religious contexts with his Higher Self notion related to individuation and with the Greek god of eternity as Jung´s book title, Aion (Uranus), he wrote about the Judeo-Christian Imago Dei, and Jesus of Nazareth specifically. He had traveled to Africa and India by that time, and developed the idea of the collective unconscious. Important efforts like those of Afro-Americans Booker T Washington, WEB Dubois, Eslanda Robeson, Zora N Hurston, and Francis Sumner advanced heterodox social studies by the 1930s. However, the work of philosophers Descartes, John Locke, and Spinoza had already begun to identify related issues including the ability of introspection to gain empowering emotional awareness back in the 1600s.

Jung´s kind of cross-cultural studies in therapeutic psychology, moreover, were largely possible because of the growth and diversification of moral philosophy informed by empirical social studies. Marco Polo might have been of greatest use to someone like Christopher Columbus, but the German C. Wolff had access to Catholic missionary work about Confucius already in the 1700s. British W Jones´ efforts in India spurred scholars like A Schopenhauer´s use of Hinduism. Archeology began with the likes of efforts by A. H. Layard´s discovery of Biblical Nineveh in the 1840s. Anthropology is usually credited to EB Tylor in the 1850s, but anthropological scholar A Boskovic makes the point that Tylor was more historically focused and static. Mythology, thus was considered to be merely ancient thinking. W. R. Smith, on the other hand, thought through the issue of mythology to the underlying empirical and behavioral basis in ritual, with human interactions also leading to the term "interactional." Greek philosophers themselves had participated in the "Mystery" rituals. Personally, I recall noticing citations that Aristotle refers to the Orphic Mysteries in his writing. One small variation is the history of Socrates told by Plato. Socrates´ friend Chaerephon visited the Delphi Oracle at Apollo´s Temple, asked who the wisest man in Athens was, to which the Oracle replied "Socrates." That response spurred Socrates to pursue the wise men of Athens and develop his famous philosophical method.

More generally about establishing the empirical referent for ancient myths, Boskovic writes as follows, quoting WR Smith: "In all the antique religions, mythology takes the place of dogma; is, the sacred lore of priests and people, so far as it does not consist of mere rules for the performance of religious acts, assumes the form of stories about gods; and these stories afford the only explanation that is offered of the precepts of religion and the prescribed rules of ritual (...) This being so, it follows that mythology ought not to take the prominent place that is too often assigned to it in the scientific study of ancient faiths. So far as the myths consist of explanation of ritual, their value is altogether secondary, and it may be affirmed with confidence that in almost every case the myth was derived from the ritual and not the ritual from the myth; for the ritual was fixed and the myth was variable, the ritual was obligatory and faith in the myth was at the discretion of the worshipper. (...) As a rule the myth is no explanation of the origin of the ritual to any one who does not believe it to be a narrative of real occurrences, and the boldest mythologist will not believe that. But if it not be true, the myth itself requires to be explained, and every principle of philosophy and common sense demand that the explanation be sought, not in arbitrary allegorical categories, but in the actual facts of ritual or religious custom to which the myth attaches. The conclusion is, that in the study of ancient religions we must begin, not with myth, but with ritual and traditional usage.(Smith 1914: 17-18, passim)"

Boskovic writes, "Smith believed that ritual should be considered before myth not only in order of importance (unlike the majority of the studies of his time), but that ritual literally preceded myth in time (Beidelman 1974: 64). Actions come first, human attempts to explain and rationalize them afterwards.9 This passage can also be understood as a reaction against the generalizations on the lines of the idea of the ‘primitive science’ of the ‘savages,’ as expressed by Lang (1884, 1887, 1911). Smith obviously believed that too much attention in the works of his time was being devoted to the beliefs and ‘stories about gods,’ at the expense of the rituals. Rituals should form the basis of any serious scholarship on ‘primitive religion,’ since they are essentially social in character, and since they reaffirm places and roles of average human beings within their communities (ethnic groups or tribes). What these individuals believed (or did not believe) in was a matter of their personal choice. What they were performing or participating in was not."

What are your understandings of rituals and myths? How do you reflect on W.R. Smith´s understanding that myths like Zeus , Thor, Horus, or Noah´s Ark can be analyzed for underlying points of reference? Telling the difference between the natural sciences, i.e. natural philosophy, and social studies, has been important from Thomas of Aquinas to G. Vico to Max Weber, and the like. Carl Jung sustained a healthy viewpoint that avoided scientific materialism in his notions like "active imagination," along with his ideas of "synchronicity" and the "collective unconscious." What are your thoughts on the differences between those phenomena and knowledge domains?