From Ritual to Romance | Page 9

the attacks directed
against the 'Vegetation' theory, the sarcasms of which it has been the
object, and the criticisms of what is held in some quarters to be the
exaggerated importance attached to these Nature cults. But in view of
the use made of these cults as the medium of imparting high spiritual
teaching, a use which, in face of the document above referred to, can no
longer be ignored or evaded, are we not rather justified in asking if the
true importance of the rites has as yet been recognized? Can we
possibly exaggerate their value as a factor in the evolution of religious
consciousness?
Such a development of his researches naturally lay outside the range of
Sir J. G. Frazer's work, but posterity will probably decide that, like
many another patient and honest worker, he 'builded better than he
knew.'
I have carefully read Sir W. Ridgeway's attack on the school in his
Dramas and Dramatic Dances, and while the above remarks explain my
position with regard to the question as a whole, I would here take the
opportunity of stating specifically my grounds for dissenting from
certain of the conclusions at which the learned author arrives. I do not
wish it to be said: "This is all very well, but Miss Weston ignores the
arguments on the other side." I do not ignore, but I do not admit their
validity. It is perfectly obvious that Sir W. Ridgeway's theory, reduced
to abstract terms, would result in the conclusion that all religion is
based upon the cult of the Dead, and that men originally knew no gods
but their grandfathers, a theory from which as a student of religion I
absolutely and entirely dissent. I can understand that such Dead
Ancestors can be looked upon as Protectors, or as Benefactors, but I see
no ground for supposing that they have ever been regarded as Creators,
yet it is precisely as vehicle for the most lofty teaching as to the Cosmic
relations existing between God and Man, that these Vegetation cults

were employed. The more closely one studies pre-Christian Theology,
the more strongly one is impressed with the deeply, and daringly,
spiritual character of its speculations, and the more doubtful it appears
that such teaching can depend upon the unaided processes of human
thought, or can have been evolved from such germs as we find among
the supposedly 'primitive' peoples, such as e.g. the Australian tribes.
Are they really primitive? Or are we dealing, not with the primary
elements of religion, but with the disjecta membra of a vanished
civilization? Certain it is that so far as historical evidence goes our
earliest records point to the recognition of a spiritual, not of a material,
origin of the human race; the Sumerian and Babylonian Psalms were
not composed by men who believed themselves the descendants of
'witchetty grubs.' The Folk practices and ceremonies studied in these
pages, the Dances, the rough Dramas, the local and seasonal
celebrations, do not represent the material out of which the
Attis-Adonis cult was formed, but surviving fragments of a worship
from which the higher significance has vanished.
Sir W. Ridgeway is confident that Osiris, Attis, Adonis, were all at one
time human beings, whose tragic fate gripped hold of popular
imagination, and led to their ultimate deification. The first-named cult
stands on a somewhat different basis from the others, the beneficent
activities of Osiris being more widely diffused, more universal in their
operation. I should be inclined to regard the Egyptian deity primarily as
a Culture Hero, rather than a Vegetation God.
With regard to Attis and Adonis, whatever their original character (and
it seems to me highly improbable that there should have been two
youths each beloved by a goddess, each victim of a similar untimely
fate), long before we have any trace of them both have become so
intimately identified with the processes of Nature that they have ceased
to be men and become gods, and as such alone can we deal with them.
It is also permissible to point out that in the case of Tammuz, Esmun,
and Adonis, the title is not a proper name, but a vague appellative,
denoting an abstract rather than a concrete origin. Proof of this will be
found later. Sir W. Ridgeway overlooks the fact that it is not the tragic
death of Attis-Adonis which is of importance for these cults, but their

subsequent restoration to life, a feature which cannot be postulated of
any ordinary mortal.
And how are we to regard Tammuz, the prototype of all these deities?
Is there any possible ground for maintaining that he was ever a man?
Prove it we cannot, as the records of his cult go back thousands of years
before our era. Here, again, we have the same