COSMIC LAW IN ANCIENT THOUGHT

by T. W. Rhys Davids

Fellow of the Academy

Read November 7, 1917.

(From proceedings of the British Academy)

WHEN some fifty years ago the late Sir Edward Tylor
published his epoch-making book entitled Primitive Culture, the
study of the history of religious belief was still in its infancy.
The author defines culture in his opening sentence. It is 'that
complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals,
law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by
man as a member of society'. The work, therefore, was not
intended to be a work on religion. But the conditions of the
problem set were too strong for the author. Every one of the
subjects included in his definition was in fact, in the earliest
period of which we have any evidence, so inextricably
interwoven with religion that his work becomes practically a
work on religion; and more than half of it is devoted to an
exposition of the theory of Animism.
This, as is well known, is merely another name for the soul-
theory. But it was a great advance to replace the ambiguous
expression ‘soul’ by a new scientific word which could be used
in a definite sense, and from which an adjectival form—
Animistic—could be easily formed. It is only too possible for us,
who no longer use the word soul exclusively in its original
meaning, to misunderstand the ancient view, and to put back
into it such modern conceptions as emotion, vitality, personality,
and many others. The oldest form of the hypothesis was frankly
concrete and materialistic. It was the presence within the body
of a double—shadowy no doubt, and subtle, and impalpable—
but still a physical double of the physical body. And at the death
of the body this double—this homunculus or mannikin or
howsoever otherwise it can be called—continued to live, and to
carry on an existence of its own.
We do not know how the theory arose. Speculation has
suggested that it may have arisen from dreams. That is not
impossible. There is evidence to show that some of our own
children, and some modern savages, look upon dreams as
realities; that is to say, that what they experience in dreams
seems to them as real as what they experience in the waking
state. So it may have happened that, long long ago, a man after a
hard-fought victory, and a rude feast—perhaps on the body of
his foe—had a sort of nightmare dream; he fought the fight over
again in the familiar glades, and awoke in terror at an impending
blow, only to find that all was over, and he was safe at home.
Then it may have seemed clear enough to him that his foe had
been alive again; that there was a something, he knew not what,
but just the very image of his foe, which had survived his death,
and carried on an existence of its own. He did not perhaps
reason much about it, and certainly would not have stayed to
consider whether this horrible double was eternal or not. But he
was much too frightened to forget it. And the dread reality—as
he thought it—will have afforded to him a perfectly clear
explanation of many other mysterious things. When he awoke in
the morning, after hunting all night in his dreams, and learnt
from his companions that his body had been there all the time, it
was of course his ‘soul’ that had been away. This is all plausible
enough. But all that we know is that this soul-theory, with its
numerous applications, appears in full vigour in all our earliest
documents.
 These applications differ of course at different times and
places. Among the most important are the following. Death and
trance and deep, dreamless, sleep were ‘explained’ by the
permanent or temporary absence of the ‘soul’. If, and when, the
‘soul’ returned, motion began again, and life. Animals had
therefore souls within them. And even things had souls if these
were uncanny, or seemed to have life and motion. Thus the awe-
inspiring phenomena of nature were instinctively regarded as the
result of spirit action. Rivers, plants, and stars, the earth and air
and heavens, became full of souls, of gods, each of them in
fashion as a man, and with the passions of a man. The matter
was perfectly clear and simple. To doubt it were perverse, or
wicked.
Now on this one or two observations are necessary. In the first
place, there is no evidence that this was consciously held to be a
theory, or an hypothesis. It was regarded simply as a fact, a fact
of universal application, that whatever had life and motion had
also within it a detachable ‘soul’ in shape like a man. We may
quite rightly call this an hypothesis, and object that it is wanting
in points essential to a sound scientific hypothesis. But these
early Animists themselves regarded it apparently as a general
law of nature, that is, as what, I venture to submit, we might call
an instance of cosmic law.1
Secondly, the meaning of the word ‘soul’, as used in this
hypothesis of Animism, is quite different from the meaning
attached now in Europe to the word. Both in France and

1
The only detailed description of the soul as yet found in ancient
literatures is the one collected from passages in the Upaniṣads
(say seventh century B.C.) by the present writer Theory of Soul
in the Upanishads, J.R.A.S., 1899.
Germany the corresponding words Âme and Seele mean very
nearly what we express by ‘mind’. In English the word ‘soul’ is
used in varying and contradictory senses. We can speak of a
man as having a ‘soul for music’; and by that we mean, I
suppose, not that any mannikin within him has a good ear, but
merely that his emotional feelings respond easily to the sounds
produced in music. There is an excellent book on the Burmese
by Mr. Fielding Hall entitled The Soul of a People. It describes
the beliefs and customs of that nation. In Mr. Syme's work on
The Soul the author in his Introduction quotes Henry James as
saying that ‘the term soul is a mere figure of speech and the
thing itself a pure fiction’. After that the word does not occur
again through the whole work, which is on psychology. M.
Henri Bergson delivered in 1911 a course of four Lectures at
University College on The Nature of the Soul. They deal
exclusively with the mind. In the authorized translation of the
Bible the word soul occurs 449 times. Fifty-five times it means
person (including the body). (We were in the ship 276 souls’,
&c.2 Eighty-five times only is it used in the Animistic sense. In
306 passages it means various sorts of emotional or intellectual
states of mind. This numbered analysis of meanings is of course
good evidence only for English beliefs, and English use of
words, in the seventeenth century; but it is sufficient to show
that the vagueness now attaching both to the belief and to the
word had already, three centuries ago, more than begun. It had
left far behind the original idea of a detachable unity manifested

2
The well-known wireless message S. O. S. is thus explained, in
popular usage, as meaning ‘Save our souls’. What it really
meant to telegraphists, when it was first used, may have been
different.
(and this should never be forgotten) rather by motion and life
than by emotion and will.
If one glances over the tables of contents to the best and latest
treatises on the early religious beliefs of the four or five
countries where early records have been found—such as de
Groot on China, Hopkins on India, Jastrow on Mesopotamia, or
Breasted on Egypt—one sees that they are mainly, if not quite
exclusively, concerned with Animistic ideas or with the
applications of such ideas. In the course of my ten years’
lectures on Comparative Religion I came across quite a number
of early religious beliefs and practices which by no stretch of
ingenuity could be brought under Animism. They were not
explained in the books, and could not be explained, by the
theory of a detachable soul. I found myself forced to the
conclusion that we must seek for at least one additional
hypothesis, as far- reaching as Animism, and altogether different
from it, before we could explain all the facts. I say ‘at least one’,
for it seemed at first that more than one would be required. But
though the number of non-Animistic beliefs was very great, it
was found possible to arrange them in more or less overlapping
groups; and behind all the groups can be discerned, I venture to
think, one single underlying principle. That principle is the
belief in a certain rule, order, law. We must invent a name for
it—a name that does not imply or suggest a law-giver, and that
does not suffer from the disadvantage of being still in common
use, and liable therefore to have vague and modern connotations
wrapt up in it. Such a word is Normalism, with its convenient
adjective Normalistic. To it we can attach a specific,
scientifically exact, meaning.
What that meaning should be will be best explained by a few
simple examples. The first is one from the lower culture—from
what is sometimes, most unfortunately, called ‘primitive’
culture. Professor de Groot in his Religion of the Chinese3 tells
us that he saw a boy with a hare-lip, and that this was explained
to him (de Groot) by the father; who said that the mother of the
boy had, during her pregnancy, accidentally made a cut in an old
coat of the father’s she was mending. Professor de Groot brings
this belief under demonology. But is this really correct? There is
not a word in the story, as he tells it, about any demon. Surely
the only conclusion we are justified in drawing is that the
Chinese father believed that given x, y would follow, and it
would follow of itself. What is this but recognition of a law, a
rule? We may not agree with it. The rule may seem to us
foolishness. But we must add in simple justice to the Chinese
father that similar ideas about experiences of a pregnant mother
affecting the child are quite solemnly discussed in Europe at the
present day. And the validity of the rule is not here in question.
The point is, are we to group a belief under Animism when no
anima enters into it, when the event in question takes place
without the intervention of any soul or god?4
The argument would be much the same in the very numerous
examples of similar beliefs. But it is when we turn to the higher
culture that we begin to see the importance of this trend of
thought. The oldest documents, for instance in China, are, like
those almost everywhere else, anthologies based on still earlier
books or sayings now lost. There are traditions, more or less
untrustworthy, as to the names of some of the authors of

3
New York, 1910, p. 12.
4
Professor de Groot's views on the whole subject of Animism
are given at length in vol. iv of his larger work Religious
Systems of China.
passages inserted in those anthologies. But for the most part the
names and dates can no longer be traced. Confucius himself is
the editor of the oldest of the anthologies, and we have others,
recording his own sayings, edited by his disciples. No European
Chinese scholar has yet drawn up, so far as I know, any detailed
and critical account of the various beliefs held before the time of
Confucius. But even a scholar ignorant of Chinese can already
make, from the translations, the beginnings of such an attempt.
It is at least clear that beside the polytheism (not unlike that
which we find elsewhere in the sixth century B.C. and earlier)
there is also, and in many respects transcending it in importance,
the recognition of a cosmic order. It is on that rather than on
Animism that Confucius himself bases his teaching. But he does
not deny the soul-theory, and makes references, though only
occasional ones, to gods. His elder rival, Lao Tsü, goes much
farther. In the work attributed to him, the Tao Te Ching, he quite
ignores the soul-theory; and his deep and pregnant sayings are
concerned exclusively with the Tao, or cosmic order. It is upon
that that his ethics, religion, and philosophy are built up. And as
this point of view is regarded by both teachers as one taken as a
matter of course by all, and is expressed by them in the same
technical phraseology, it is clear that it had been widely held
long before their time, that is to say, long before the time when
our existing documents were put into their present shape. And it
continued in vogue long afterwards. Ten centuries later, Chwang
Tsü still supports this view with emphasis and without a trace of
Animism. And through all the centuries of Chinese literature the
doctrine of the Tao, and all that it implies, has been held in high
honour and esteem. Chinese poetry and drama are full of
allusions to it, and to its implications.
 It is no answer to our argument that the organized
ecclesiastical hierarchy of Taoists afterwards gave expression to
their views in Animistic language, and adopted Animistic beliefs
and practices. All over the world the same thing has happened,
and is happening now. The two principles of Animism and
Normalism are always, and must be, in opposition. In ancient
times it was a friendly opposition. We find no evidence of that
bitterness on both sides, and contempt, that so often distinguish
the modern conflict of religion and science. They had no such
words as these two, so vague and uncertain. How can the game
be fairly played when the dice are loaded, or when the very
counters used have different values to the two contending
parties? But the conflict was there, and influenced the language
then as it does to-day—and this may show us the importance,
not only of the use of colourless phrases (Animism and
Normalism raise no emotions), but of realizing the existence of
these two views of life, and taking note of their action and
interaction.
In order to do so it is quite immaterial whether either of these
two explanations—Animism and Normalism—is, from our point
of view, right or wrong. Both of them seem to be both right and
wrong. But that does not matter here. Our question is purely
historical.
When the modern European Animist inveighs against ‘nature
red in tooth and claw’ he takes up a position exactly contrary to
the doctrine of the Tao. To the Taoist ‘nature’ does not include
animals, which are classed with men. The Tao, the course of
nature, is regular, beneficent without thought of beneficence,
patient, modest, not violent in action, always trustworthy,
generous without stint, with no hope or desire of reward, seeking
no glory, undefiled by any impurity, never at war, restful, quiet,
at peace. To that should man habituate himself, like that should
his conduct be, with that should he hope and strive to live in
harmony. Whether so striking and noble a conception as this be
really truer to the facts than the opposite theory more popular in
the West is of no importance to our present argument. Different
minds may fairly think differently as to that. But the whole
theory of the Tao is clearly not Animistic; and it suggests an
aspect of nature not emphasized by theologians in Europe.
Where precisely, and when, the modern European Animist
acquired his certainty, in direct contradiction to the ancient
tradition held throughout the world, that animals have no
‘souls’, it might be interesting to inquire. The Chinese have not
advanced so far beyond the older faith; and on the other hand
they have never dared to personify the Tao.
There is yet another Normalistic theory which has been
adopted in China by all the schools of thought. It is
cosmological in origin. The primæval chaos is supposed to have
been broken up by the antagonism of two principles, namely,
expansion and contraction. They were called Yang and Yin.
Poetical feeling interpreted the former, Yang, in terms of
warmth, strength, life, light, and beauty; while it assigned cold,
weakness, darkness, death, and deformity to Yin, the latter.
These forces, acting regularly, and without the intervention of
any soul or god, are held to explain the fact of the presence or
absence in any individual of the qualities just mentioned. It is a
very ancient doctrine, older than the period of Lao and
Confucius; but the history of its earliest form and gradual
extension has not yet been considered critically. Neither of these
interacting forces has ever been personified. The Yang is held to
be the male force in all creatures, and the Yin to be the female.
As this application of the theory gives all the bad things to
women it may be conjectured that it was either added to the
oldest form by men, or if the application formed part of the
theory from the beginning, then that the theory itself was first
started when the power and influence of men had become
predominant. Similar theories of the evolution of things from
chaos by the interaction of two contending opposites were put
forward, as is well known, by early Greek philosophers, perhaps
most thoroughly and picturesquely by Empedocles in the fifth
century B. C.5 The theory is still in everyday use in China.
In India our earliest records, the thousand and more Vedic
hymns, seem at first sight to be altogether Animistic. They
consist almost exclusively in appeals to various gods. The
European books on Indian religions are concerned, when
treating of the Vedic period, with descriptions of these gods,
based on the epithets applied to them, the acts attributed to them,
and so on. But these poems make no pretension to being a
complete statement of the beliefs held by the tribes whose
priests made use of the poems. Other poems, not included in our
present collection, were doubtless extant in the community at the
time when the collection was made. Other beliefs, not
mentioned in the poems, were widely influential among the
people. What we have is not complete even as a summary of the
theosophy, or the ritual, or the mythology of the priests; and it

5
This is only one of many instances of Normalistic views held
by Greek thinkers before the time of Plato. It is much to be
desired that someone more qualified than the present writer
should collect the evidence. It seems to me better to confine
myself in this article, already too long, to matters on which I am
more competent to judge.
refers only incidentally to other beliefs, unconnected with gods,
of great importance as a factor in religion and daily life.
This conclusion might be justified as rendered necessary by a
critical consideration of the simple known facts as to the
composition of the anthology we call the Rig-Veda. It is
confirmed by the discovery in later Vedic books, especially in
the manuals of domestic rites, of customs and beliefs that must
evidently go back to the Rig-Veda period (though not referred to
in that collection), and even of one or two such cases that
certainly go back to an earlier period still. We have time here for
only one or two sample instances, and even they can only be
treated in the merest outline:
Take the case of Ṛta (pronounced Rita). The meaning of the
word would seem to have passed through some such evolution
as ‘motion, rhythmic motion, order, cosmic order, moral order,
the right’. In those slowly moving ages a long period must be
postulated for the growth and consolidation of such ideas. The
word is found, incidentally mentioned, at the end of its career, in
the Avesta and the Veda. It must have been in full use before the
Persian Aryans had separated from the Indian Aryans. The idea
may therefore with reasonable probability be traced back to the
third millennium before Christ. The use of the word died out in
India before the time of the rise of Buddhism. Of the pre-
Buddhistic Upaniṣads it occurs only in one—the Taittirīya. In
the peroration to that work Ṛta is placed above, before the gods.
The word occurs, it is true, in three or four isolated passages of
post-Buddhistic works, but these are archaisms. It has not been
traced in either the Buddhist or the Jain canonical literature.
The process of the gradual decline in the use of an abstract
word is precisely analogous to the process of the gradual decay
and death of a god.6 The word covers not one idea only, but a
number of connotations. The implications involved in it are
constantly, though imperceptibly, changing. Sooner or later one
or other phase of it over-masters the others, and some new word
or words, emphasizing some one or other of the various
connotations of the older word, come gradually into use as more
adequate or more clear. When that process is complete the older
word is dead. But it lives again in the newer word or words that
have taken its place, and would never have been born or thought
of unless the older word had previously lived. It was so with
Ṛta—a broader and deeper conception than the Greek Moira,
and more akin to the Chinese Tao. Like these, Ṛta was never
personified and it lives again in the clearer and more definite
(though still very imperfect) phrases of the Buddhist Suttantas.
The case of Ṛta is by no means unique. I have elsewhere
discussed at some length another case, that of tapas or self-
mortification, austerity.7 It was held in India from Vedic times
onwards that tapas (originally ‘burning glow’, but afterwards
used of fasting and other forms of self-mortification) worked out
its effects by itself, without the intervention of any deity. This is
only the more remarkable since it is almost certain that in India,
as elsewhere, the ecstatic state of mind which rendered such
austerity possible was originally often regarded as due to the
inspiration of a spirit. But it is, so far as I know, never
mentioned that the supernormal effects of the austerity were due
to the spirit from whom the inspiration came. The effects were
due to the austerity itself. Very often indeed there was no
question of any deity’s help in the determination to carry out the

6
See Buddhist India, p. 234.
7
Dialogues of the Buddha, i. 208–14.
self-torture—just as in the case of the pujāris at the ghats in
modern India.
Even the very sacrifice itself made to gods, supposed to give
sustenance and strength to gods, accompanied by hymns and
invocations addressed to gods was not entirely free from such
Normalistic ideas. The hymns themselves already contain
phrases which suggest that their authors began to see a certain
mystic power over the gods in a properly conducted sacrifice.
And we know that afterwards, in the Brāhmaṇas, this conception
was carried to great lengths. So also we have evidence of a
mystic power, independent of the gods, in the words, the verses
that accompany the sacrifice. It is no contradiction of this that
we find this mystic power itself afterwards deified and
becoming, indeed, in the course of centuries of speculation, the
highest of the gods. And it is significant, in this connection, that
the string of Bṛhaspati’s bow is, in the Veda, precisely Ṛta.
Many also of the minor books of the Brahmins reveal beliefs,
dealing with domestic and social habits of action or refraining
from action, because of some connection supposed to exist
between a deed and its result. Some of these are stupid enough.
If a man have erred, the wearing of a dark garment may improve
his character. Many of them may be classed under one or other
of the various meanings given by anthropologists to the
ambiguous and confusing word ‘magic’:—the ‘magic’ of names,
or numbers, or propinquity, or likeness, or association, or
sympathy, and soon. Many will also be found in the long list of
practices from which it is said in the Sīlas (one of the very
earliest of our Buddhist documents, earlier than the Piṭakas
though incorporated in them) that the Samaṇa Gotama refrains.8

8
Dialogues of the Buddha, i. 16–30.
 In the teaching of the Buddhist Dhamma—a word which itself
is often best rendered by Norm—the Normalistic idea was the
heart and essence of the Buddhist reformation in religion and
religious philosophy. Its central tenets, such as the law of
Karma, the law of causation, the code of the ‘noble eightfold
path’; and its doctrines of the immensity of the universe, of the
infinite past inherited by each individual, and of the infinite
effect on the future of his acts, are all so drawn up as to exclude
any reference to gods or souls. For a thousand years the
dominant faith of India rested on this basis; and though
Animism ultimately, after centuries of discussion, recovered its
popularity, it remained profoundly influenced by the long
struggle.
We are now coming to the end of our task. Those parts of the
world where Normalism reached its highest flights have been
considered at some length. Nearer home, both in Mesopotamia
and on the shores and islands of the Eastern Mediterranean—
from Greece round to Egypt—the traces of Normalistic beliefs
are, at present, more slight, and of minor importance from the
historian's point of view. In Mesopotamia we have very old
records reaching back to the 5th millennium B.C. But the oldest
are fragments; and coming mainly from the temples, deal
naturally with the gods. The great reformation of Zoroaster,
originating earlier than the reformations in China and India,
remained, for the most part, in the Animistic stage; and though
the other side is by no means altogether absent it is chiefly found
in conjunction with the later and more ritualistic part of the
doctrine. In Egypt also we have very old records, found almost
exclusively in tombs, and dealing therefore with the Animistic
circle of beliefs. We hear much of the wisdom of the Egyptians.
But little of it has come down to us, and the only movement that
can be called a reformation was Animistic, and of very brief
duration. In early Greek speculation, as has already been
mentioned, the Normalistic trend of thought is unmistakable.
But it is too late to-night to enter on any of these points. I hope
to be permitted on some future occasion to deal with some of
them in the necessary detail. At present we must content
ourselves with submitting to you some conclusions which would
seem to follow from what it has been possible to lay before you.
1. That not only in the lower cultures, but also in the higher
grades of religious aspiration and practice, the historian must
recognize and take account of quite a number of beliefs,
recorded by the believers themselves in early documents, which
are not Animistic, that is to say, are independent of gods and
souls.
2. That the current definitions of religion must be modified
accordingly. I have a number of such definitions; and they make
an amazing record. It is a question of method. The method
usually followed is to make such a definition as shall express
what the writer holds to be true religion, and to shut out what he
deems false religion. It is evident that in following this method
definitions of religion will be precisely, neither more nor less, as
numerous, as contradictory, and as accurate, as are the writers’
own beliefs. To give an example, Professor Max Müller
mentions ‘the broad foundations on which all religions are built
up—the belief in a divine power, the acknowledgement of sin,
the habit of prayer, the desire to offer sacrifice, and the hope of a
future life’.9 But he himself does not use the word in that sense.
He would call each of the faiths we have discussed to-night a
religion. And yet no one of them has any one of his five

9
Lectures on the Science of Religion (1873), p. 287.
essential ingredients. Now religions are constantly changing.
Wherever the word is used it is, as a matter of fact, of popular
usage, applied to each new variation; and any definition, to be
philologically and historically accurate, must be so worded as to
include all those variations. By the other method the definition
of the word becomes at variance with the use to which it is
really and habitually put, and as it is a popular, not a scientific
term, this is a pity.
3. We find in the oldest documents evidence of the existence,
at the same place and time, of both Animism and Normalism.
There is no evidence, known to me, that either of them was
anywhere anterior to the other.
4. All through the history no one calls himself either Animist
or Normalist. Both terms are invented to assist modern historical
research by differentiating between two ancient trends of
thought. They are not intended to give the names by which the
ancient (or for that matter the modern) leaders of religious
thought would themselves describe their beliefs.
5. Lastly, misunderstanding may be avoided if it is clearly
stated that this paper does not propose to deal in any way with
primitive beliefs. The word primitive is ambiguous; it may mean
‘unsophisticated’, and in that sense may rightly be applied to
some of the religious beliefs of modern savages. Or it may mean
‘earliest’ in point of time; and that is, no doubt, the more usual
impression that is connoted by the word. Now it by no means
follows either that what is old in religion is necessarily
unsophisticated, or that the religions of modern savages give a
correct picture of the oldest beliefs. We do not know what the
earliest, the most primitive religion, was. And it is quite unlikely
that we ever shall know. It is not probable that modern savage
beliefs, which have passed through millenniums of constant
change, have preserved for us unaltered any fragment of
primitive faith. But what we can do is to utilize the results of the
good work that has been done in recent years on the
investigation of modern savage beliefs to throw light on our
ancient records, and by the help of these records to study, step
by step, the changes and developments of belief during those
ages for which we have reliable evidence. Thus we may build
up, very slowly perhaps but surely, a knowledge of the main
issues in our historical inquiry. It is only as a suggestion on one
of those main issues that this paper is submitted to you today.