Freud - Complete Works (797 page)

   Let us try to approach the
subject from the opposite direction. We understand how a primitive
man is in need of a god as creator of the universe, as chief of his
clan, as personal protector. This god takes his position behind the
dead fathers, about whom tradition still has something to say. A
man of later days, of our own day, behaves in the same way. He,
too, remains childish and in need of protection, even when he is
grown up; he thinks he cannot do without support from his god. That
much is undisputed. But it is less easy to understand why there may
only be a
single
god, why precisely the advance from
henotheism to monotheism acquires an overwhelming significance. No
doubt it is true, as we have explained, that the believer has a
share in the greatness of his god; and the greater the god the more
reliable is the protection which he can offer. But a god’s
power does not necessarily presuppose that he is the only one. Many
peoples regarded it only as a glorification of their chief god if
he ruled over other deities who were inferior to him, and they did
not think it diminished his greatness if there were other gods
besides him. No doubt, if this god became a universal one and had
all countries and peoples as his concern, it meant a sacrifice of
intimacy, too. It was as though one were sharing one’s god
with the foreigners and one had to make up for this by the proviso
that one was preferred by him. We can make the further point that
the idea of a single god means in itself an advance in
intellectuality, but it is impossible to rate this point so
highly.

Moses And Monotheism

4947

   Pious believers, however, know
how to fill this obvious gap in motivation adequately. They say
that the idea of a single god produced such an overwhelming effect
on men because it is a portion of the eternal
truth
which,
long concealed, came to light at last and was then bound to carry
everyone along with it. We must admit that a factor of this kind is
at last something that matches the magnitude both of the subject
and of its effect.

   We too would like to accept this
solution. But we are brought up by a doubt. The pious argument
rests on an optimistic and idealistic premiss. It has not been
possible to demonstrate in other connections that the human
intellect has a particularly fine flair for the truth or that the
human mind shows any special inclination for recognizing the truth.
We have rather found, on the contrary, that our intellect very
easily goes astray without any warning, and that nothing is more
easily believed by us than what, without reference to the truth,
comes to meet our wishful illusions. We must for that reason add a
reservation to our agreement. We too believe that the pious
solution contains the truth - but the
historical
truth and
not the
material
truth. And we assume the right to correct a
certain distortion to which this truth has been subjected on its
return. That is to say, we do not believe that there is a single
great god to-day, but that in primaeval times there was a single
person who was bound to appear huge at that time and who afterwards
returned in men’s memory elevated to divinity.

   We had assumed that the religion
of Moses was to begin with rejected and half-forgotten and
afterwards broke through as a tradition. We are now assuming that
this process was being repeated then for the second time. When
Moses brought the people the idea of a single god, it was not a
novelty but signified the revival of an experience in the primaeval
ages of the human family which had long vanished from men’s
conscious memory. But it had been so important and had produced or
paved the way for such deeply penetrating changes in men’s
life that we cannot avoid believing that it had left behind it in
the human mind some permanent traces, which can be compared to a
tradition.

   We have learnt from the
psycho-analyses of individuals that their earliest impressions,
received at a time when the child was scarcely yet capable of
speaking, produce at some time or another effects of a compulsive
character without themselves being consciously remembered. We
believe we have a right to make the same assumption about the
earliest experiences of the whole of humanity. One of these effects
would be the emergence of the idea of a single great god - an idea
which must be recognized as a completely justified memory, though,
it is true, one that has been distorted. An idea such as this has a
compulsive character: it
must
be believed. To the extent to
which it is distorted, it may be described as a
delusion
; in
so far as it brings a return of the past, it must be called the
truth
. Psychiatric delusions, too, contain a small fragment
of truth and the patient’s conviction extends over from this
truth on to its delusional wrappings.

Moses And Monotheism

4948

   What follows, from here to the
end, is a slightly modified repetition of the discussions in Part
I.

   In 1912 I attempted, in my
Totem and Taboo
, to reconstruct the ancient situation from
which these consequences followed. In doing so, I made use of some
theoretical ideas put forward by Darwin, Atkinson and particularly
by Robertson Smith, and combined them with the findings and
indications derived from psycho-analysis. From Darwin I borrowed
the hypothesis that human beings originally lived in small hordes,
each of which was under the despotic rule of an older male who
appropriated all the females and castigated or disposed of the
younger males, including his sons. From Atkinson I took, in
continuation of this account, the idea that this patriarchal system
ended in a rebellion by the sons, who banded together against their
father, overcame him and devoured him in common. Basing myself on
Robertson Smith’s totem theory, I assumed that subsequently
the father-horde gave place to the totemic brother-clan. In order
to be able to live in peace with one another, the victorious
brothers renounced the women on whose account they had, after all,
killed their father, and instituted exogamy. The power of fathers
was broken and the families were organized as a matriarchy. The
ambivalent emotional attitude of the sons to their father remained
in force during the whole of later development. A particular animal
was set up in the father’s place as a totem. It was regarded
as ancestor and protective spirit and might not be injured or
killed. But once a year the whole male community came together to a
ceremonial meal at which the totem animal (worshipped at all other
times) was torn to pieces and devoured in common. No one might
absent himself from this meal: it was the ceremonial repetition of
the killing of the father, with which social order, moral laws and
religion had taken their start. The conformity between Robertson
Smith’s totem meal and the Christian Lord’s Supper had
struck a number of writers before me.

   To this day I hold firmly to this
construction. I have repeatedly met with violent reproaches for not
having altered my opinions in later editions of my book in spite of
the fact that more recent ethnologists have unanimously rejected
Robertson Smith’s hypotheses and have in part brought forward
other, totally divergent theories. I may say in reply that these
ostensible advances are well known to me. But I have not been
convinced either of the correctness of these innovations or of
Robertson Smith’s errors. A denial is not a refutation, an
innovation is not necessarily an advance. Above all, however, I am
not an ethnologist but a psycho-analyst. I had a right to take out
of ethnological literature what I might need for the work of
analysis. The writings of Robertson Smith - a man of genius - have
given me valuable points of contact with the psychological material
of analysis and indications for its employment. I have never found
myself on common ground with his opponents.

Moses And Monotheism

4949

H

THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT

   I cannot here repeat the contents
of
Totem and Taboo
in greater detail. But I must undertake
to fill up the long stretch between that hypothetical primaeval
period and the victory of monotheism in historical times. After the
institution of the combination of brother-clan, matriarchy, exogamy
and totemism, a development began which must be described as a slow
‘return if the repressed’. Here I am not using the term
‘the repressed’ in its proper sense. What is in
question is something in a people’s life which is past, lost
to view, superseded and which we venture to compare with what is
repressed in the mental life of an individual. We cannot at first
sight say in what form this past existed during the time of its
eclipse. It is not easy for us to carry over the concepts of
individual psychology into group psychology; and I do not think we
gain anything by introducing the concept of a
‘collective’ unconscious. The content of the
unconscious, indeed, is in any case a collective, universal
property of mankind. For the moment, then, we will make shift with
the use of analogies. The processes in the life of peoples which we
are studying here are very similar to those familiar to us in
psychopathology, but nevertheless not quite the same. We must
finally make up our minds to adopt the hypothesis that the
psychical precipitates of the primaeval period became inherited
property which, in each fresh generation, called not for
acquisition but only for awakening. In this we have in mind the
example of what is certainly the ‘innate’ symbolism
which derives from the period of the development of speech, which
is familiar to all children without their being instructed, and
which is the same among all peoples despite their different
languages. What we may perhaps still lack in certainty here is made
good by other products of psycho-analytic research. We find that in
a number of important relations our children react, not in a manner
corresponding to their own experience, but instinctively, like the
animals, in a manner that is only explicable as phylogenetic
acquisition.

Moses And Monotheism

4950

   The return of the repressed took
place slowly and certainly not spontaneously but under the
influence of all the changes in conditions of life which fill the
history of human civilization. I cannot give a survey here of these
determinants nor more than a fragmentary enumeration of the stages
of this return. The father once more became the head of the family,
but was not by any means so absolute as the father of the primal
horde had been. The totem animal was replaced by a god in a series
of transitions which are still very plain. To begin with, the god
in human form still bore an animal’s head; later he turned
himself by preference into that particular animal, and afterwards
it became sacred to him and was his favourite attendant; or he
killed the animal and himself bore its name as an epithet. Between
the totem animal and the god, the hero emerged, often as a
preliminary step towards deification. The idea of a supreme deity
seems to have started early, at first only in a shadowy manner
without intruding into men’s daily interests. As tribes and
peoples came together into larger unities, the gods too organized
themselves into families and into hierarchies. One of them was
often elevated into being supreme lord over gods and men. After
this, the further step was hesitatingly taken of paying respect to
only one god, and finally the decision was taken of giving all
power to a single god and of tolerating no other gods beside him.
Only thus was it that the supremacy of the father of the primal
horde was re-established and that the emotions relating to him
could be repeated.

   The first effect of meeting the
being who had so long been missed and longed for was overwhelming
and was like the traditional description of the law-giving from
Mount Sinai. Admiration, awe and thankfulness for having found
grace in his eyes - the religion of Moses knew none but these
positive feelings towards the father-god. The conviction of his
irresistibility, the submission to his will, could not have been
more unquestioning in the helpless and intimidated son of the
father of the horde - indeed those feelings only become fully
intelligible when they are transposed into the primitive and
infantile setting. A child’s emotional impulses are intensely
and inexhaustibly deep to a degree quite other than those of an
adult; only religious ecstasy can bring them back. A rapture of
devotion to God was thus the first reaction to the return of the
great father.

Moses And Monotheism

4951

   The direction to be taken by this
father-religion was in this may laid down for all time. Yet this
did not bring its development to an end. Ambivalence is a part of
the essence of the relation to the father: in the course of time
the hostility too could not fail to stir, which had once driven the
sons into killing their admired and dreaded father. There was no
place in the framework of the religion of Moses for a direct
expression of the murderous hatred of the father. All that could
come to light was a mighty reaction against it - a sense of guilt
on account of that hostility, a bad conscience for having sinned
against God and for not ceasing to sin. This sense of guilt, which
was uninterruptedly kept awake by the Prophets, and which soon
formed an essential part of the religious system, had yet another
superficial motivation, which neatly disguised its true origin.
Things were going badly for the people; the hopes resting on the
favour of God failed in fulfilment; it was not easy to maintain the
illusion, loved above all else, of being God’s chosen people.
If they wished to avoid renouncing that happiness, a sense of guilt
on account of their own sinfulness offered a welcome means of
exculpating God: they deserved no better than to be punished by him
since they had not obeyed his commandments. And, driven by the need
to satisfy this sense of guilt, which was insatiable and came from
sources so much deeper, they must make those commandments grow ever
stricter, more meticulous and even more trivial. In a fresh rapture
of moral asceticism they imposed more and more new instinctual
renunciations on themselves and in that way reached - in doctrine
and precept, at least - ethical heights which had remained
inaccessible to the other peoples of antiquity. Many Jews regard
this attainment of ethical heights as the second main
characteristic and the second great achievement of their religion.
The way in which it was connected with the first one - the idea of
a single god - should be plain from our remarks. These ethical
ideas cannot, however, disavow their origin from the sense of guilt
felt on account of a suppressed hostility to God. They possess the
characteristic - uncompleted and incapable of completion - of
obsessional neurotic reaction-formations; we can guess, too, that
they serve the secret purposes of punishment.