The savage is not the type of a free man, although in popular estimation he is generally so considered. He is, in fact, tyrannically fettered by traditional laws and tribal customs. He is merged in his clan or gens, against whose rules, often most painful and arbitrary, he dares take no step. As an individual, he cannot escape from their invisible chains.[291]
His only avenue to permitted freedom is through the higher law of his personal religion. If he pleads that his own tutelary spirit has ordered him to an act contrary to custom, or that his own magical powers enable him to defy established usage, his disregard of it will be condoned.
In savage life, the inspired and the insane are always ranked in the same category as above the law. Among the Kamschatkans, if a man declares that his personal divinity has in a dream commanded him to unite with some woman of the tribe, it is her duty to obey, no matter what her position or relationship.[292]
Although at times this freedom was doubtless abused, it secured for the individual a degree of personal liberty which he could have attained in no other manner. By recognising a law for the single conscience above that of either ancestral usage or popular religion, it paved the way to the development of the individual, free from all restraints other than his clear judgment would lay upon himself.
He who possessed the hidden knowledge, the esoteric _gnosis_, was by that knowledge released from bondage to his fellow-men. As the poet Chapman so well says:
“There is no danger to a man who knows What life and death is; there’s not any law Exceeds his knowledge: neither is it lawful That he should stoop to any other law.”
This sense of superiority to all surroundings is disclosed everywhere in mystic religions. A Hindu prophetess was a few years ago imprisoned by the English civic judge for violation of the local laws and disturbing the peace. Her only statement in defence was: “Years ago, when a girl, I met in the jungle, face to face, the god Siva. He entered into my bosom. He abides in me now. My blessing is his blessing; my curse his curse.”[293] The Malay, when he “runs amuck,” regards himself exonerated from all restraint, moral or social; and that custom and belief are not confined to his race.[294]