the semikhāh there (Jerus. Rōsh Hash. 58b; cf. Sanh. 18c and B. Kethub. 112a). But the name of this institution and the form of the appointment had been changed. It was no longer called &mikhāh in Palestine, but minnuy (from the Aramaic word mana, Dn 15. 10). The old name had obviously an ominous ring about it in the ears of the Romans, and therefore the Jews of Palestine avoided using it. It was retained, however, in Babylon, and is still used. The laying on of hands was no longer practised (B. Sanh. 136) either for the same reason as the name had been abandoned-not to arouse too much suspicion of the Romans-or possibly because the Church had adopted this practice for the purpose of ordaining priests. The laying of hands on the pupils (Ac 66) and on Saul and Barnabas (133) need not be taken as ordination, but merely as a form of blessing like that of the priests, and, at the same time, it may have been a symbol of authority, granting them the power to be judges who would declare the law in the community. Later this became the symbol of consecration for sacerdotal office, and this very likely was the reason why the practice was discontinued by the Jews. Shortly afterwards the right of the patriarch became limited, inasmuch as he could appoint only with the concurrence of the heads of the legal tribunal, Beth Din-the judges of the Jewish court. point. He, no doubt, was consulted in a matter which affected the spiritual worship and the service of the Temple. Other high priests may have had their seat in the Sanhedrin, and one of them Rabbi Ishmael, the high priest-is always mentioned with great veneration. These new judges thus became the sharers in the authority which came down in direct succession. They became smukhim, men of authority who were ordained,' i.e. appointed,' as men upon whom the people could rely.' They exercised certain spiritual functions, for Jewish life in all its forms depended upon their interpretation of the law. Things became pure or impure, allowed or forbidden, according to their declaration, sanction, or refusal. They declared the festivals; and even on a memorable occasion, when one of the great scholars, relying on his own calculation and observation of the moon, had drawn up a different calendar, he had to submit to the decision of the patriarch Gamaliel II. and his colleagues in power and keep the Day of Atonement on the day fixed by them (Rosh Hash. 25a, b). The 'ordination,' or semikhah, was one of the means by which the oral tradition preserved its authoritative character; for, so long as there were men who were the lawful heirs of the authority of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish law had its authoritative exponent. The point which has hitherto remained obscure, viz. the disuse of the semikhah, as has been alleged, after the destruction of the Temple, will now become perfectly clear. The reason is obvious why the Roman Government punished with death any one who would continue this practice of semikhah, i.e. ordain pupils to become Rabbis; for, as soon as the chain-established a calendar upon the basis of matheof smikhāh was broken, there was no longer any central authority great and respected enough to command universal obedience, to interpret the laws, and, above all, to fix the calendar; and, as soon as the people no longer knew when to keep their Sabbaths and their festivals or how to apply the law, their spiritual dissolution was near at hand. And it is easy to understand why Judah b. Baba (Sanh. 14a) exposed himself to die by the hand of the Romans whilst granting semikhah to four pupils; he had thus re-established the legal authority for the oral law, and a proper succession for its interpretation. The Roman rule did not tolerate any Jewish civil tribunal or any Jewish magistrates who would judge the people according to the Jewish law, and therefore the practical use of the semikhāh as a regular continuous institution on a large scale had to come to an end for a time after the war of Bar Kokhba (A.D. 130). But, when the civil local government of the Jews was re-established soon afterwards under the headship of one of the descendants of the house of David, or rather the house of Hillel, under the name of 'patriarch of the Jews,' the right of smikhāh was vested in the patriarchs, though there was no longer a real Sanhedrin with its autonomous jurisdiction and unquestioned authority on all matters of political and religious life. The new judges now appointed had, however, to decide, as before, not only what was right and wrong, but also what was religiously correct or incorrect. It was now a limited form of authority that was vested in the semikhah, though it still carried with it the same spiritual authority. Any one who received the semikhah received at the same time the right to decide with the others in the fixing of the calendar. But this right was centred in Palestine. No school, no head of a college in Babylon, could ever obtain it. It was jealously guarded as a privilege of the patriarchate in Palestine. When the great scholar from Babylon, R. Eleazar b. Pedath, came to Palestine, he considered it a very great honour to have obtained The constant persecution by the Roman and then by the Byzantine emperors pressed heavily on the Jews of Palestine, and thus it came about that one of the patriarchs, Hillel or Judah in the 4th or 5th cent.-the time has not yet been definitely decided matical calculation only. It was no longer to be made dependent on the real observation of the appearance of the new moon. On the other hand, the oral law had become codified and had been further enlarged and expounded by the great schools of Palestine and Babylon, all of which became the written' Mishnah and Talmud. Thus the semikhah lost its essential character of being the only legal authority for the calendar, and for the interpretation and declaration of the oral law. With the extinction of the patriarchate the institution came practically to an end in Palestine. No Rabbi could henceforth be appointed either by 'nomination' or by 'ordination" and laying on of hands capable of exercising functions like those vested in the Sanhedrin and the patriarchate. In one form or another, and either in the name or by the hand of the college, the Rōsh Yeshibah, or Gaôn, granted by 'nomination' or in the form of a written certificate a degree of qualification for the function of teacher and judge. Much that happened in Palestine during the first centuries of the Muhammadan conquest is wrapped in obscurity. Fragments from the Genizah in Cairo, however, give us a glimpse into some movements which must have taken place in the 9th and 10th centuries, when among others a certain Ben Meir endeavoured to resuscitate the ancient power of smikhah, and claimed for himself and possibly for others in Palestine the right of again fixing the calendar by observation and, no doubt, of exercising such functions as formerly belonged to the holders of the smikhah. Saadyah entered into long polemics with Ben Meir and his associates, but very little is known about this dispute except the fact mentioned above. Again, the re-establishment of the semikhah became a burning question among the Jews of Palestine when Bê Rab in the year 1538 claimed for himself and his tribunal the right of resuscitating the ancient smikhāh. He based his claim on a statement of Maimonides which seemed to grant to the Rabbis of Palestine the right of re-establishing the semikhāh if they had all come together and had ORENDA. unanimously decided upon it. Bê Rab, who lived Orenda is a word of Iroquoian in Safet, had evidently not paid sufficient atten- origin, being an Anglicization of the Huron tion to the susceptibilities of his colleagues in Jeru- iarenda or orenda, which has cognates in the salem, the chief of whom was Levi aben Habib; a related dialects. The word signifies the inherent controversy arose between them, and the attempt power or energy which every object, in some charof Bê Rab was entirely frustrated. He emphati-acteristic degree, possesses and exerts; and, indeed, cally denied the intention of touching the calendar it is not so far removed in meaning from our own or interfering with the criminal law, but declared looser use of the term 'energy,' regarded as potenthat his aim was to create a spiritual centre for tial or active and related in kind and degree to the Judaism in Palestine, just as the patriarchate and object which it defines. That the meaning of the the Sanhedrin had been before. There was another aboriginal word is more intimately psychical than motive which may have prompted Bê Rab to this ours - orenda being conceived as indissolubly action-Messianic aspirations. The plan which bound up with desire and will-is but the natural afterwards matured under Don Joseph of Naxos, reflexion of a more primitive stage of thought; but the favourite of Selim-to create, as it were, a small it is at least a fair question whether our own use of Jewish commonwealth in Galilee with its centre in energy' does not covertly carry the same psyTiberias-may have prompted Bê Rab to this step, chical connotation. Magic power' is the phrase which was to be a preliminary step to the re- most commonly employed by J. N. B. Hewitt in gathering of the Jews in the Holy Land. translating orenda; but 'magic,' as he points out, is derogatorily associated with superstition and supernaturalism, and is not, therefore, a fair rendering of the native conception. The semikhah, shorn of its special character, is still a practice in the ordination of a Rabbi. It does not carry with it the same authority as it had in Palestine, but it is a necessary condition for the qualification of a Rabbi. When in the 12th cent. Judaism again suffered under the shock of the persecution which threatened to destroy the unity of Israel and to undermine the authority of the representatives of the law, R. Meir resuscitated the old practice in the manner and to the extent that it had been practised in the Diaspora. It was to be henceforth as a certificate for the holder, a kind of venia docendi which was granted to him by one who was a recognized authority himself and a holder of such a diploma. It was precisely the same as in olden times in so far as the authority of the giver guaranteed the qualifications of the recipient. No community would appoint a man to be the Rabbi-i.e. the judge in all matters legal and religious-who did not have the semikhah, for upon his decision alone many doubtful legal questions can be solved; he is responsible for the upholding of the written law in its entirety and for the carrying out of all the divine ordinances in conformity with the old tradition; he grants divorce; he decides all the questions of the ritual slaughter of animals; he declares the food fit or unfit for Jewish consumption; and in all questions of a legal character he is the authority upon whom the community relies. Thus the semikhah, or ordination, is still a valid principle in Judaism. It is now the token of qualification for eventual appointment as a Rabbi, who is then called mūsmākh. Among the Ashkenazic Jews the diploma is now called Hātārath Hôrääh venia docendi-i.e. he has now the permission to declare the law-whilst the Sephardic Jews and the Jews of the East have retained the old name of semikhāh. It is of interest to note that among the titles of the priests and elders of the Samaritans there is also that of samūkhāh, the one who is worthy of being relied upon, a man of authority, and also he who has been appointed to high office. The appearance of this title among those of the Samaritans shows its great antiquity and its wider use in Palestine. LITERATURE.-The chief sources are the 1st ch. in the Mishnah of Sanhedrin and the two Talmudic treatises of that name, 'By primitive man all motions and activities were interpreted as manifestations of life and will. Things animate and things inanimate were comprised in one heterogeneous class, sharing a common nature. All things, therefore, were thought to have life and to exercise will, whose behests were accomplished through orenda-that is, through magic power, reputed to be inherent in all things' (Hewitt, 21 RBEW (1903), p. 134). In another connexion Hewitt gives a number of phrases illustrative of the use of the concept in Iroquoian tongues : "When a hunter is successful in the chase, it is said, wa'thareñdoge înt', he baffled, thwarted their orenda, i.e., the orenda of the quarry; but, conversely, should the huntsman return unsuccessful, it is said, wa thorendoge fint, they (the elements are gathering and a storm is brewing, it is said, game) have foiled, outmatched his orenda; . . . when the watrendónni, it (storm-maker) is making, preparing its orenda and when the lowering storm-clouds appear to be ready, it is said, iotrendónni", it has finished, has prepared, its orenda; these two expressions and their conjugational forms are equally applicable to an animal or bird that is angry or in a rage. anything whose orenda is reputed or believed to have been instrumental in obtaining some good or in accomplishing some wealthy person is said to have money," that is, "an abundance purpose is said "to possess orenda" (ioreñdare'), just as a of money"; and if these things or portions of them be chosen and kept against the time of their use, they become what are commonly called charms, amulets, fetishes, mascots, shields, or, if you please, "medicine"" '(Amer. Anthropologist, new ser., iv. 381.). Hewitt goes on to indicate the relationship of the exercise of orenda to willing and desiring and to singing relations which he regards as of primary importance in the interpretation of the term, showing, as they do, its intimately psychical intention: 'Rotereñnónte', he is arrayed in his orenda, and roterreñnóte', he has effused or put forth his orenda, are two expressions, sentence-words, which are said in reference to a man who is exerting his orenda for the accomplishment of some purpose, this is its primary signification; the first term, roterennonte', has come to mean, as a secondary usage, he is hoping for it, is expecting it, because it was the habit to put on one's orenda to obtain what is desired; now, the second sentence-word, roterrennote, as a secondary meaning has come to signify, he is singing, is chanting, but literally, he is holding forth his orenda. Thus, singing was interpreted to signify that the singer, chanter, forth his orenda, his mystic potence, to execute his will; hence, whether beast, bird, tree, wind, man, or what not, was putting too, it comes that the shaman, when exerting his orenda, must sing, must chant, in imitation of the bodies of his environment. Let it be noted, too, that this is the only word signifying to sing, to chant, in the earlier speech of the Iroquoian peoples.' Orenda is not applied to muscular strength or to any purely mechanical force, but only to invisible powers conceived as analogous to will and intelligence, although there is a curious suggestion of emanation, or efflux, about it, that seems to bring it within the range of what are sometimes spoken of as 'telepsychic powers.' In the Onondaga version of the Iroquoian cosmology it is said of Sapling, the vegetation spirit, that so soon as he becomes old he is transformed again into a youth: Moreover, it is so that continuously the orenda immanent in his body-the orenda with which he suffuses his person, the orends which he projects or exhibits, through which he is possessed of force and potency-is ever full, undiminished, and all-sufficient; and, in the next place, nothing that is otkon or deadly, nor, in the next place, even the Great Destroyer, otkon in itself and faceless, has any effect on him, he being perfectly immune to its orenda; and, in the next place, there is nothing that can bar his way or veil his faculties (21 RBEW, p. 219). The word otkon, or otgon, which here appears as a name for hostile or malevolent orenda, is, says Hewitt (Amer. Anth., new ser., iv. 37 n.), gradually displacing orenda, for the reason, he thinks, that the malignant and the destructive, rather than the benign, manifestations' of this power produce the more lasting impressions on the mind. It is possible that this word is related to the Huron oqui or oki, which D. G. Brinton (The Myths of the New Worlds, Philadelphia, 1896, p. 64) regards as of Algonquian origin. The word oqui, and its plural ondaqui, signifies among them (.e. the Hurons) some divinity; in a word, what they recognize as above human nature' (Jesuit Relations, ed. R. G. Thwaites, Cleveland, 1896-1901, v. 257). ORGANIC SELECTION.-This is a theory supplementary to Darwinism (q.v.) according to which the course of evolution by natural selection is guided by individual organic accommodations in lines coincident with themselves. The accommodations or adjustments made by individuals against elimination, to those variations with are conceived as affording a screen or protection, which they coincide in direction; these variations, thus screened, have a chance to accumulate themselves from generation to generation until they become of independent 'selection-value.' This principle was announced independently in 1896 by three naturalists-C. Lloyd Morgan, H. F. Osborn, and J. Mark Baldwin, the last-named giving it its name and developing it in Development and Evolution (New York and London, 1902), in which the original papers of the other authorities as well as his own, and citations from others (E. B. Poulton, H. W. Conn, etc.), are reprinted. The theory of evolution founded upon organic selection has received the name of the orthophasy theory' in opposition to the 'orthogenesis theory,' which assumes determinate variations properly so called. It is held to afford a valuable supplement to that based upon Darwinian selection, in various ways. Certain striking applications of it may be briefly stated (cf. the co-operative article on this topic in Baldwin's DPhP). The term orenda is, in fact, only one of a large group of terms, members of which are found in most, if not all, Indian languages, which have the same general meaning-invisible power or energy. Hewitt (Amer. Anth., new ser., iv. 37 ff.) mentions the Siouan wakan, Algonquian manitowi, Shoshonean pokunt. W. Matthews ('Navaho Legends,' Memoirs of the American Folk-Lore Society, Boston and New York, 1897) describes the Navaho digin (p. 37). J. Swanton (Memoirs of the American (1) If this view of the directive effect of indiMuseum of Natural History, viii. [1909] 13) says of vidual accommodations is true, there is no further the Haida sga na that it is a word which my need of the Lamarckian principle of the inheritinterpreters liked to render by "power", applied ance of acquired characters,' since the 'direction' to supernatural beings, shamans, etc. F. H. Cush-secured, although ultimately due to variation, is ing (Zuñi Fetiches,' 2 RBEW [1883], p. 9) de- in lines coincident with the characters or modiscribes the Zuñi conception, in essence equivalent fications acquired in experience. The case for to the Iroquoian. Apparently the Inca word Lamarckism against Darwinism, as a theory of huaca (Garcilasso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries, evolution, is therefore greatly weakened by the London, 1871, II. iii.) is a S. American instance. 'organic selection' theory, as is quite generally admitted. The whole group of terms designate the American equivalent of what is generally known to anthropologists by the Polynesian term mana. As applied to American Indian beliefs, manitu and wakanda (Algonquian and Siouan respectively) are much the most common in use. There is the difficulty, however, that manitu is very generally used for a spirit or deity, i.e. a kind of invisible personality, which is not at all the meaning of orendaby which a spiritual attribute rather than entity (to employ a scholastic distinction) is designated. Something of the same objection extends to wakan, wakanda, which, although most commonly used in the attributive sense, is still also employed in a sort of personification of that power for which the white man has no better term than Great Spirit: 'The Wakonda addressed in tribal prayer and in the tribal religious ceremonies which pertain to the welfare of all the people is the Wakonda that is the permeating life of visible nature-an invisible life and power that reaches everywhere and everything, and can be appealed to by man to send him help. From this central idea of a permeating life comes, on the one hand, the application of the word wakonda to anything mysterious or inexplicable, be it an object or an occurrence; and, on the other hand, the belief that the peculiar gifts of an animate or inanimate form can be transferred to man. means by which this transference takes place is mysterious and pertains to Wakonda but is not Wakonda. So the media-the shell, the pebble, the thunder, the animal, the mythic monster -may be spoken of as wakondas, but they are not regarded as the Wakonda' (Alice C. Fletcher, 27 RBEW [1911], p. 599). The In view of this tendency to personify, which does not appear in the case of the Iroquoian orenda, there may be reason in adopting the latter term, as Hewitt urges, to designate the fundamental view of the world, as actuated by interplaying and invisible powers, which underlies all American Indian myth and religion (cf. art. NATURE [American]). See further art. MANA. LITERATURE. See the sources cited throughout, especially J. N. B. Hewitt, Orenda and a Definition of Religion, American Anthropologist, new ser., iv. [1902] 33-46. H. B. ALEXANDER. (2) The theory finds an interesting application in the account of the origin of animal instinct. The instincts, according to it, are functions due to accumulated variations which have been screened and protected during their immature stages by individual habits of intelligent and conscious adjustment. Under this protection-in cases such as the theory of organic selection recognizes-these functions have developed on the organic side, while the intelligent adaptations associated with them, becoming less and less necessary, have finally been superseded entirely by the instinct. This gives the look of intelligence to the instincts they have arisen as substitutes for intelligent action, by coincident variation. The Lamarckian theory of instinct developed by Spencer under the name of the lapsed intelligence' theory is thus completely replaced by the 'organic selection' theory. (3) To psychologists and students of sociology and ethics certain bearings of the theory are of extreme interest. If conscious individual accom. modations may have such a directive effect upon evolution, then a purposive or teleological factor is introduced into Darwinism. The course of organic evolution is no longer to be looked upon as haphazard, accidental, or fatalistic, but as proceeding in lines of progress marked out by intelligent adjustments. Consciousness, mind in general, becomes an efficient, though indirect, factor in biological evolution. And mental evolution takes the lead, in a sense; not, indeed, in the way of determining variation in certain directions, but in the way of controlling variation, and of securing the selection of functions and characters which subserve the purposes of mind. Moreover, the special modes of accommodation found in co-operative life, social and moral, get the same directive efficiency. The whole range of social and ethical group-activities reflects its values into the instinctive and other more plastic potencies of the individuals making up the group. The opposition beween Darwinian evolution and morality, signalized by Huxley, completely disappears.. (4) Philosophically considered, in view of these points, the Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection is very materially recast. It is no longer a theory resting exclusively upon fortuitous congenital variations. For in many important instances it is not upon such variations, taken simply for themselves, that the preserving hand of selection falls, but upon those only which show their fitness to serve the ends of conscious adaptation and of mind. Selection falls upon the variations only because it falls first upon the entire living function in which the variations are included and protected. The function which survives, and with it the anatomical characters, are those which present the successful union and joint operation of endowment (present in the variation) and experience (present in the accommodation). LITERATURE. Besides the citations made above, the following works contain accounts and critical estimates of the theory of organic selection: C. Lloyd Morgan, Habit and Instinct, London, 1896, Animal Behaviour, do. 1900; L. H. Plate, Das Selectionsprinzip und Probleme der Artbildung3, Leipzig, 1908; F. W. Headley, The Problems of Evolution, London, 1900: H. W. Conn, The Method of Evolution, New York, 1900; Y. Delage and M. Goldsmith, Les Théories de l'évolution, Paris, 1909; W. McDougall, Body and Mind, London, 1911; C. Lloyd Morgan and A. Weismann, in Darwin and Modern Science, ed. A. C. Seward, Cambridge, 1909; C. Groos, The Play of Man, Eng. tr., London, 1901; J. A. Thomson, Darwinism and Human Life, do. 1909; J. T. Gulick, Evolution, Racial and Habitudinal, Washington, 1905. J. MARK BALDWIN. ORGY.-The practice of periodic relaxation of social restraints has been followed by the majority of peoples, and is the unconscious response to a real social need. The study of the orgy as a normal phenomenon throws light on the whole mechanism of society. Primitive bursts' and modern Bank Holiday 'mafficking' fulfil an identical purpose, and their conditions are identical, though more stringent in the case of early society. Thus, of the Central Australians we are told that 'the life of a native is hedged in with arbitrary rules that must be obeyed, often at the peril of his life. To the casual onlooker the native may appear to live a perfectly free life; in reality he does nothing of the kind; indeed, very much the reverse.' 2 We may here take exception to the epithet 'arbitrary; there is little in any social organization to which it can be applied. It cannot, e.g., be applied to the orgy itself, so far as this is indulged in by normal members of the society. The orgy is to the routine of ordinary life what the religious feast is to the fast. It supplies a rest and a change, but particularly an emotional and physical expansion and discharge of energy. Excess and dissipation are almost inevitably involved, but they are not in principle essential conditions. Nor, again, is the criminality which often appears. The functions in which this neuro-muscular discharge takes place are those belonging to the general muscular system-eating, drinking, and sex. The main psychological element, relief from restraint, is connected with others the playinstinct, the pleasure of exhilaration and neuromuscular excitement, and religious enthusiasm in many cases. The economic conditions of savage life themselves suggest periodic excess. The savage hunter often practically fasts for days together. He is in ured to this, and especially capable of gorging himself when he has killed his game. This capacity indeed is part of his survival value.1 In origin an unconscious social reaction, the orgy has clearly been thus understood in later ages and accepted. 'Having a function to fulfil in every orderly and laborious civilization built upon natural energies that are bound by more or less inevitable restraints,' it has been deliberately employed in great religious ages, the rule of abstinence being tempered by permission of occasional outbursts.' 2 Possibly such regulation of excess and dissipation has assisted the general development of selfcontrol. In some cases the orgy combines all possible forms of expression, in others it is specialized in a particular direction; e.g., the dramatic element was conspicuous in the Feast of Fools, the idea of change and social inversion in the Roman Saturnalia, religious ecstasy in the Dionysiac orgy. The Hindu followers of the Sakta Tantras require at their feasts the 'five m's '-fish, flesh, wine, corn, and women. But even these Saktists seem to omit dancing and to emphasize drinking; they 'drink, drink, and drink until they fall on the ground in utter helplessness.' The Jews at Purim seem to have indulged in most forms of excess.* Various dates lend themselves to the orgy. Such are the harvest festival and other agricultural occasions of celebration, the passage from the old to the new year, and other seasonal changes. In many such instances, as in the case of feasts of firstfruits, the sudden access of a supply of food and liquor inevitably encourages an outburst. A few typical examples will illustrate the chief characteristics of the orgy. At the Pondo festival of firstfruits 'the young people engage in games and dances, feats of strength and running. After these are over the whole community give themselves over to disorder, debauchery, and riot. In their games they but did honour to the powers of nature, and now, as they eat and drink, the same powers are honoured in another form and by other rites. There is no one in authority to keep order, and every man does what seems good in his own eyes. People are even permitted to abuse the chief to his face, an offence which at any other time would meet with summary vengeance and an unceremonious dispatch to join the ancestors. During the yam-harvest feast in Ashanti the grossest liberty prevails; 'neither theft, intrigue nor assault is punishable,' and 'each sex abandons itself to its passions.'6 The New Year feast of the Iroquois formed 'a kind of saturnalia. Men and women, variously disguised, went from wigwam to wigwam smashing and throwing down whatever they came across. It was a time of general license; the people were supposed to be out of their senses, and therefore not to be responsible for what they did.'7 The Hos of N. India have a strange notion that at this period [harvest festival] men and women are so overcharged with vicious propensities that it is absolutely necessary for the safety of the person to let off steam by allowing for a time full vent to the passions.'8 This shrewd description illustrates the safety-valve function of the orgy. After eating and beer-drinking people expand in other ways; the feast is a saturnale during which servants forget their duty to their masters, children their reverence for parents, men their respect for women, and women all notions of modesty, delicacy, and gentleness; they become raging bacchantes.... Sons and daughters revile their parents in gross language, and parents their children; men and women become almost like animals in the indulgence of their amorous propensities.'9 Of the Roman Saturnalia Frazer writes: Feasting and revelry and all the mad pursuit of pleasure are the features that seem to have especially marked this carnival of antiquity. . . . But no feature of the festival is more remarkable, nothing in it 1 Westermarck, MI ii. 290, with examples. 2 H. Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, vi., Sex in Relation to Society, p. 218. 1881, i. 404 f. 3 Rajendralala Mitra, Indo-Aryans, London and Calcutta, See Frazer, GB3, pt. vi., The Scapegoat, London, 1913, p. 363 f. 5 J. Macdonald, Religion and Myth, London, 1893, p. 136 f. 6 Frazer, GB3, pt. v., Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, London, 1912, ii. 62, quoting A. B. Ellis, The Tshi-speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast, do. 1887, p. 229 f., and T. E. Bowdich, Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee, do. 1873, p. 226 f. 7 Frazer, GB3, pt. vi., The Scapegoat, p. 127. 8 Ib. p. 136. 9E. T. Dalton, Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal, Calcutta, 1872, p. 196 f. seems to have struck the ancients themselves more than the Nietzsche's Dionysiac theory and Aristotle's κd@apois license granted to slaves at this time. ... The slave might rail at his master, intoxicate himself like his betters, sit down at table with them. . . . Masters actually changed places with their slaves and waited on them at table.'1 The two days of the Jewish festival of Purim were designated as 'days of feasting and gladness, and of sending portions one to another, and gifts to the poor' (Est 922). Purim has been described as the Jewish Bacchanalia, ... and everything is lawful which can contribute to the mirth and gaiety of the festival.' The Jew must drink until he cannot distinguish between the words "Cursed be Haman" and "Blessed be Mordecai."' During the two days of the feast the Jews, we are told, in the 17th cent. 'did nothing but feast and drink to repletion, play, dance, sing and make merry; in particular they disguised themselves, men and women exchanging clothes.'2 The Christian Church in early Europe seems to have adopted folk festivals of the Saturnalian type, especially on Shrove Tuesday and New Year's day. The dramatic element and freedom of movement were prominent at the former festival: Some go about naked without shame, some crawl on all fours, some on stilts, some imitate animals.' 8 The Feast of Fools, or Kalendæ, was an ecclesiastical orgy, conspicuous chiefly for inversion of role. 'Priests and clerics may be seen wearing masks and monstrous visages at the hours of office. They dance in the choir dressed as women.. They sing wanton songs. They eat black puddings at the horn of the altar while the celebrant is saying mass. They play at dice there. They cense with stinking smoke from the soles of old shoes. They run and leap through the church without a blush at their own shame. Finally they drive about the town and its theatres in shabby traps and carts, and rouse the laughter of their fellows and the bystanders in infamous performances with indecent gestures and verses scurrilous and unchaste.'5 Chambers notes that the festival was confined to the inferior clergy, and infers it to be 'an ebullition of the natural lout beneath the cleric,' allowed as a 'reaction from the wonted restraint.' The inversion of status is especially marked by such offices as bishop, pope, and king -all examples of the mock authority common in folk-festivals. The curious title of this orgy may be due merely to the fact that the clerics played the fool, but ancient Rome had a stultorum feria on Feb. 17, the title of which is also obscure.7 The Dionysiac orgy was conspicuous for the prominence of women. Probably men dressed as women. Dancing and excessive physical exertion, drinking, and the eating of raw flesh and drinking of warm blood were features.8 Among the Central Australians an exchange of wives at the end of the Engwura ceremonies may be regarded as an orgiastic element." Farnell regards the production of exhilaration in the Dionysiac orgy by means of dancing and drinking as not only religious exaltation but a means of acquiring supernatural energy for the working of vegetation-magic. This cannot be the primary object of the orgy. 10 Frazer, in view of its frequent connexion with expulsion of evils, observes: 'When a general riddance of evil and absolution from all sin is in immediate prospect, men are encouraged to give the rein to their passions, trusting that the coming ceremony will wipe out the score which they are running up so fast. On the other hand, when the ceremony has just taken place, men's minds are freed from the oppressive sense, under which they generally labour, of an atmosphere surcharged with devils; and in the first revulsion of joy they overleap the limits commonly imposed by custom and morality. When the ceremony takes place at harvest time, the elation of feeling which it excites is further stimulated by the state of physical wellbeing produced by an abundant supply of food.' Again, in special reference to the Saturnalia of Italy, he remarks: 'What wonder then if the simple husbandman imagined that by cramming his belly, by swilling and guzzling just before he proceeded to sow his fields, he thereby imparted additional vigour to the seed?' 11 These suggestions miss the main point of the problem of the orgy, which is quite satisfactorily explained by Ellis. They refer to secondary applications of a natural, self-regarding, human need. 1 Frazer, GB3, pt. vi., The Scapegoat, p. 307. In an English hotel at the present day it is the custom at Christmas for the visitors and servants to change places. The custom seems to have originated spontaneously as an expression of fellow-feeling. This is an element of the orgy. 2 Ib. p. 363. 3 Ellis, p. 219. 4 See du Cange, Glossarium media et infimæ Latinitatis, Niort, 1883-87, s.v.; there are several other terms. 5 E. K. Chambers, The Medieval Stage, Oxford, 1903, 1. 294, translating a Latin letter of the 15th century. 6 Ib. i. 326 ff. 8 CGS v. 159-166. 7 lb. i. 334, 355. are both suggestive in the psychology of the orgy.1 ORIENTALISM.-See SYNCRETISM. ORIGEN. See ALEXANDRIAN THEOLOGY. ORIGINAL SIN.-I. THE TRADITIONAL CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE.-I. Preparation in the Old Testament. - Christian theology has identified original sin with a consequence of the Fall, and has described the sinfulness thus introduced into human life in terms of contrast with the original or unfallen state of man. The ecclesiastical doctrine of original sin, from the time of St. Paul, has been regarded as contained or implied in Gn 3, and therefore as having a foundation in OT theology. That some form of doctrine concerning original sin was exegetically derived from the Paradise story by Jewish writers before the Christian era is plain, as will presently be seen; but it seems no longer tenable that any such teaching was intended by the compiler of that narrative. Gn 3 does not assert that any corruption or dislocation of human nature was occasioned by the sin of Adam and Eve; it does not mention any withdrawal of divine gifts such as before the Fall might have enabled man to remain morally innocent; it does not represent that Adam's posterity was involved in the consequences of his sin, except exclusion from the garden and from access to the tree of life, and liability to the physical ills of life. Further, no element of the conception of original sin seems to have been present to the Jahwist compiler's mind. Subsequent sins, such as Cain's, are in no way connected with Adam's; undiminished responsibility is attributed to the sinner of the second generation, evil is not predicted of human nature, sinfulness is not regarded as universal in Adam's posterity, and the general corruption which evoked the Flood is assigned, in the Jahwist history, to a different cause from the sin of the first parent. Lastly, the story of Paradise does not receive any doctrinal exposition in any of the books of the OT, and no connexion between the sinfulness of mankind and Adam's sin is ever hinted at in them. But the OT testifies to the growth of several ideas which were afterwards embodied in the conception of inherited or original sin, and to a growth uninfluenced by any such conception. Sin is sometimes personified as a power external to man, in which we see exhibited the tendency, so disas trous in later theology, to conceive of sin in abstraction from the sinner, apart from whom it can have no existence. Man is credited with an evil imagination (yeşer), though this imagination or disposition was not a result of the Fall. Sin is regarded as a state, as well as an isolated act. The universality of sinfulness is sometimes emphasized. Sin is occasionally spoken of as inherent in inherited sinfulness is regarded as guilty. Facts man from his birth, and in Ps 51 this inherent and and conceptions are thus recognized which were afterwards connected and explained by the idea of original sin derived from Adam; but in the OT itself the inherent and inherited sinfulness of mankind is not identified with a moral consequence of the first sin. Indeed, OT thought seems to preclude the possibility of such identification. 2. Development of thought in uncanonical Spencer-Gillen, p. 381; see Crawley, Mystic Rose, London, Jewish literature. - Perhaps the earliest extant 1902, pp. 273, 479. 10 CGS v. 161 ff. 11 Frazer, GB3, pt. vi., The Scapegoat, pp. 225, 847. exegesis of the Fall-story is contained in Sir 254 1 Ellis, p. 223 f.; CGS v. 237. |