Segal, Eliade's Theory of Millenarianism

7/27/2019 Segal, Eliade's Theory of Millenarianism

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Rel. Stud. 14, pp- 159-173

ROBERT A. SEGALAssistant Professor f Religion,ReedCollege,Portland,Oregon

ELIADE'S THEORY OF MILLENARIANISM

To the extent that Mircea Eliade is concerned with millenarianism he isconcerned with it as only an instance of religious phenomena generally andis concerned with itsmeaning rather than its cause.' Yet presupposed in the

meaning he finds is a theory of its cause, and that theory isworth examiningboth because it elucidates Eliade's approach to religion as a whole andbecause as an explanation of millenarianism it is atypical and even unique.

Where most, perhaps all other, theorists of millenarianism view it as anabnormal phenomenon, one which only extraordinary circumstances canexplain, Eliade sees it asmerely the realization of a normal, in fact inherent,eschatological desire on the part ofman: a desire to abolish history, which isprofane time, the time ofman, and return to primordial time, which, as thetime of the gods, is sacred. It is a desire to do so not annually, as in New Yearfestivals, or temporarily, as inmysticism, but once and forever.Man desiresto abolish history because he finds it meaningless and because it standsbetween him and primordial time, where alone meaning lies. Eliade'stheory, then, is that, given themeaninglessness which man quaman finds inhistory and the meaning which he finds in primordial time, he seeks instinctively to abolish history and return to primordial time.Millenarianismis only the fulfilment of that instinct.

The validity of Eliade's theory that the cause of millenarianism is aninherent eschatological desire in man, a desire to break with history andreturn to primordial time, depends on the validity of a first hypothesis: thateschatology, whatever its cause, actually represents a desire to break withhistory and return to primordial time. Both hypotheses are testable. Thesecond hypothesis can prove falsewithout the first one's being false, but thetruth of the second depends on the truth of the first: if eschatology does notsignify a desire to break with history and return to primordial time, aninnate desire inman to do so can hardly be its cause. Finally, the truth of thefirst hypothesis does not establish the truth of the second.

How, then, does Eliade proceed to prove his hypotheses? Rather thantaking each hypothesis in turn, first showing that eschatology per se constitutes a desire to breakwith history and return to primordial time and then

1 See especially 'Cosmic and Eschatological Renewal', in The Two and the One, tr. J. M. Cohen(New York: Harper Torchbooks, I969), pp. 125-59. See also Cosmos and History: The Myth of the

Eternal Return, tr. Willard R. Trask (New York: Harper Torchbooks, I959), passim, and Myth andReality, tr.Willard R. Trask (New York: Harper Torchbooks, I968), passim.


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i6o ROBERT A. SEGALshowinig that the propensity for eschatology is universal and therefore forhim innate, he takes the validity of the second hypothesis for granted and onthe basis of it interprets every eschatology as a desire to break with historyand return to primordial time. Having interpreted every eschatology as adesire to break with history and return to primordial time, he vaunts hiseffort as proof that the desire to break with history and return to primordialtime is universal and therefore, he assumes, innate.

Nowhere does Eliade quite spell out this procedure, needless to say.Rather, one must reconstruct it from his interpretation of particular millenarian movements and, before that, from his interpretation of religion ingeneral.

Eliade, in the fashion of the idealist tradition which goes back to Plato,views the world dualistically: there is appearance, and there is reality.Reality is unchanging, eternal, sacred, and as a consequence meaningful.Appearance is inconstant, ephemeral, profane, and therefore meaningless.Appearance is not illusory, as though it did not in fact exist. The mistakingof it for that which is constant and eternal iswhat is illusory.

For Plato, reality is a distinct metaphysical domain, one which whollytranscends appearance and stands over against it. For Eliade aswell, realityis a distinct metaphysical domain which transcends appearance, but at thesame time reality manifests itself through appearance. For Plato andEliade alike, reality confers meaning on appearance, but where for Platoreality confers meaning by the 'participation' of appearance in reality, forEliade reality confers meaning by almost the reverse: the manifestation ofitself in appearance. When Eliade speaks, for example, of sacred space, he

means not themetaphysical realm of the sacred but a physical place in andthrough which that realm reveals itself. By contrast, Plato scarcely regardsany physical entity, any portion of appearance, as the revelation of thesacred, or the real. No one physical entity is for him any more or less realthan another, the way, for Eliade, one place, one rock, one tree, or otherphenomenon is sacred and another profane.

Where for Plato the forms bestow meaning on the world, for Eliade'archetypes' do.' Where the forms give meaning to physical objects - table,stone, hand - and philosophical ideals - goodness, beauty, justice - archetypes give meaning to physical objects and human acts.Where themeaning

which forms give is exclusively intellectual, themeaning which archetypesgive is religious aswell: where forms define and explain phenomena, archetypes also make them sacred. Where the forms are sacred because they are

In the preface to the paperback edition of Cosmos and History Eliade says: 'In using the term" archetype," I neglected to specify that I was not referring to the archetypes described by ProfessorC. G. Jung. This was a regrettable error ... I need scarcely say that, for Professor Jung, the archetypes are structures of the collective unconscious. But in my book I nowhere touch upon the problemsof depth psychology nor do I use the concept of the collective unconscious. As I have said, I use theterm "archetype" . . .as a synonym for "exemplary model" or "paradigm" . . .' (viii-ix).


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ELIADE S THEORY OF MILLENARIANISM i6ireal and indeed are 'sacred' only in the sense that they are real, archetypesare real because they are sacred: they are divine prototypes, or models, ofphysical objects and human acts. The archetypes of physical objects aretheir divine counterparts; those of human acts are the acts of the gods, asdescribed inmyths. Man does not discover the archetypes on his own, theway he does the forms. The gods reveal them to him. Where, finally, theforms are metaphysically rather than temporally prior to the phenomenathey explicate (unless one reads the Timaeus as cosmogony rather thancosmology), archetypes are both temporally and metaphysically prior to thephenomena they 'sacralize'.

Man grasps the forms cognitively. Archetypes he appropriates existentially. Exactly how man appropriates the archetypes of physical objects ishazy, but the archetypes of human acts he appropriates by reliving the

myths and thereby the archetypal acts they describe. In reliving themythsman imbibes not only the deepest kind of knowledge but the power of thesacred as well - not, or not only, the kind of crude, external, impersonal,physical power that Frazer, for example, ascribes tomagic but power for

man himself, the power to renew an otherwise profane existence. Withoutknowledge of the formsman lives in ignorance, mistaking appearance forreality. Bereft of archetypes, he lives ameaningless existence, and of that heis never oblivious.With man's quest for archetypes, at least for those of human acts, lies atlast the connection between Eliade's interpretation of religion and hisinterpretation ofmillenarianism. For in order to relive themyths man mustreturn to the time of themyths, or the time of creation. Indeed, to relive the

myths is to return to the time of creation. To return to the time of creation is,however, to abolish history, or ordinary, profane time. Millenarianism is,then, only the realization of the desire to abolish history and return to thetime of creation, and its cause is the innate desire in man to do just that.

If man seeks instinctively to abolish history, how does Eliade explain theirksome fact thatman has yet to abolish it - that is, abolish it permanently?To begin with, Eliade distinguishes between primitive, 'anhistorical',mythic man and modern, historical man. Historical man, he admits, doesnot seek - better, does not consciously seek - to abolish history. On thecontrary, he seeks to live in historical time, for in it he finds meaning.History, for him, is teleological. Mythic man, by contrast, does seek toabolish history, which, as a series of 'events that derive from no archetype',he finds 'intolerable'.' Mythic man 'tends to set himself in opposition, byevery means in his power, to history... '.2 The difference between themeaning historical man finds in history and themeaninglessness mythic manfinds in it is 'the crucial difference' between the one kind of man and theother.3

1 CosmosandHistory,p. 75. 2 Ibid. p. 95. 3 Ibid. p. 154.


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I62 ROBERT A. SEGALFar from explaining why, ifman naturally desires to abolish history, he has

yet to do so, the distinction between mythic man and historical man seemingly only aggravates the difficulty. Mythic man, Eliade says, really doeswant to abolish history. Why, then, doesn't he? The question remains.

Worse, historical man, according to Eliade, does not even want to abolishhistory - this in the face of Eliade's original pronouncement that man quaman strives exactly to abolish it. Can Eliade extricate himself from thisdouble bind?

The failure of mythic man to abolish history Eliade manages to explainwithout sacrificing his argument that mythic man truly desires to abolish it.For he says that as much as mythic man does try to abolish history, he isunable to do so, for he is unable to avoid the experience of irreversibility,which Eliade equates with the experience of history. Mythic man experiencesirreversibility both through hismemory and through suffering. His 'memoryis capable (though doubtless far less intensely than that of amodern man) ofrevealing the irreversibility of events, that is, of recording history ',1and 'heis powerless against cosmic catastrophes, military disasters, social injusticesbound up with the very structure of society, personal misfortunes, and soforth'2 - in short, suffering, which he doubtless experiences as distinctly real.

Though mythic man cannot exorcise history, he does learn to 'tolerate' it.He tolerates history in two ways: 'either by periodically abolishing itthrough repetition of the cosmogony and a periodic regeneration of time orby giving historical events a metahistorical meaning... '.3 These tacticsmight seem antithetical - the one eliminating history, the other elevating it -but Eliade considers them complementary, despite his use of 'either- or'.Mythic man periodically abolishes history through rituals. He confersmeaning on history by 'fitting' events 'into a well-consolidated system inwhich the cosmos and man's existence [has] each its raisond'etre'.4 Sufferingin particular gets ascribed to the will of the gods and to part of their plan forhistory.5

The logical difficulty which led Eliade to postulate the conferring o.meaning on history by mythic man was the apparent contradiction betweenhis assertion that mythic man seeks to abolish history and his acknowledg

ment thatmythic man has yet to abolish it.His postulation of the conferringof meaning on history leads, however, to an even keener difficulty: theseeming contradiction between that postulation and his prior contentionthatmythic man finds history meaningless. Alas, this difficulty is the same asthatwhich his characterization of historical man poses: the fact that historical

man findsmeaning in history yet, asman, should not.1Ibid..75. 2Ibid.. 95- 3Ibid.. 142. 4Ibid.' See ibid. pp. 95-102. Eliade lists other means of rationalizing suffering, means short of imputingit to Providence, but these strategies - 'suffering [it is said] proceeds from the magical action of anenemy, from breaking a taboo, from entering a baneful zone, from the anger of a god...' (ibid.p. 97) - bear little evident connection to the bestowal of metahistorical meaning on historical events.


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ELIADE S THEORY OF MILLENARIANISM I63The resolution which Eliade provides in the case of mythic man is surely

the one which he would provide in the case of historical man aswell. Indeed,by ascribing to mythic man the conferring of meaning on history he haserased the distinction between mythic and historical man - mythic man'snot finding and historical man's finding meaning in history being thedefining difference between them. For mythic man to find meaning inhistory is for him to become historical man. Eliade's resolution of the contradiction his interpretation ofmythic man posesmust therefore apply to thecontradiction his interpretation of historical man poses.

That resolution is twofold. First, Eliade declares that the bestowal ofmeaning on history by mythic man is no more than a psychological antidoteto its intrinsicmeaninglessness. The bestowal ofmeaning is simply a meansof 'tolerating' history, and the meaning bestowed ismerely 'consoling'.1Second, Eliade deems that meaning not historical but 'transhistorical' or'metahistorical'. History itself thereby remains meaningless. As he says,

whether he abolishes it periodically, whether he devaluates it by perpetuallyfinding transhistoricalodels and archetypes for it, whether, finally, he gives it ametahistorical meaning (cyclical theory, eschatological significations, and so on), theman of the traditional civilizations accord[s] the historical event no value initself... [italics added].2

Presumably Eliade would explain the meaningfulness of history forhistorical man in the same way, though he never explains why historicalman is reluctant to abolish history in the first place. Mythic man, he argues,wants to abolish history but because of his experience of irreversibilitycannot do so. Instead, he manages to tolerate history by periodicallyabolishing it on the one hand and by giving itmeaning on the other.

Historical man, however, somehow wants to retain history and findsmeaning in it. Rather than explaining why he retains it, Eliade says onlythat themeaning he finds is not genuine but ismerely a means of toleratinghistory. Perhaps Eliade is assuming that historical man's retention of historynecessarily reflects his inability to abolish it, an inability thatmight stem fromthe same sources asmythic man's inability to abolish it. In that case mythic

man and historical man would be truly identical: not only would they bothfind meaning in history, but they would both have originally sought toabolish it. In sum, man, mythic and historical alike, would be imposing

meaning on history only to compensate for the real meaninglessness of it.Unfortunately, thishappy resolution of the seeming contradiction between

man's finding meaning in history and his finding it meaningless is problematic, though not contradictory, in turn. How, first of all, does Eliadeknow that themeaning which history has forman is but a rationalization forits true meaninglessness and not its native significance? He doesn't. He

1 Ibid. p. 142. 2 Ibid. p. I4I.


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i64 ROBERT A. SEGAL

assumes rather than proves this key point. What should be his conclusionis really his premise, and what should be a testable hypothesis becomesa dogmatic assertion. The thesis that man finds history meaningless andyearns for its extinction is itself testable - the evidence being the myriadbeliefs and practices of mankind. Eliade's interpretation of the evidence is

what makes the thesis untestable. For he considers all evidence amenable toit: history can either not have or seemingly have meaning and still accordnicely with it.History without meaning automatically bolsters his thesis, andhistory with meaning he takes to be only a rationalization for its actualmeaninglessness. His thesis is thus beyond disproof and so beyond proof.

But there is untampered evidence for the meaninglessness of history,Eliade would retort, and he would proceed to invoke the other part of hisexplanation of the phenomenon that man apparently finds meaning inhistory: the fact that the meaning man finds is not historical but 'transhistorical' or, better, 'metahistorical'. By 'metahistorical' Eliade means ameaning which not only transcends history but in so doing confirms itsmeaninglessness. A meaning which transcends history is one which bothtranscends a single historical event and is fulfilled in the abolition of historyand therefore, for Eliade, the return to primordial time. To call a meaningwhich supersedes the bounds of a single event metahistorical rather thanhistorical is, however, arbitrary at the least. For any meaning which historymight possess would, as the meaning of all history, exceed the limits of asingle event. To label metahistorical a meaning which finds fruition in theabolition of history and to equate the abolition of history with the return toprimordial time is to argue more persuasively for the meaninglessness ofhistory itself.

For the eschatologies ofmany, perhaps most, peoples are interpretable asbreaking with history and abolishing it, so sparse is the value conferred onevents preceding the end. For example, in the case of theMelanesian cargocults, as Eliade describes them,' events do not lead naturally to the returnof the ancestors and the realization of themillennium. On the contrary, eachof the two stages of the millenarian movement constitutes a rupture, and anunanticipated rupture,with the present.When thewhites come toMelanesia,they come unexpectedly, and the natives greet them as the dead ancestorsnot because the natives have been predicting their return but because thewhites look and act like the ancestors. They have white skins, have obviouslycome from far away, sail inmagnificent ships, and bear goods of plenty.2Only with their arrival, not before, is themillennium proclaimed.

Once the whites establish themselves, however, they 'behave asmasters,despise the natives, compel them to work very hard and try to convert themto Christianity'.3 Above all, the whites refuse to slhare their cargo with the

1 'Cosmic and Eschatological Renewal', pp. I25-40.2 Ibid.p. i28. 3 Ibid.p. 130.


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ELIADE S THEORY OF MILLENARIANISM I65

natives. Certain as the natives are that this situation cannot constitute themillennium yet that the cargo represents the abundance the ancestorsintended for them, they accuse the whites of having stolen the cargo fromthe real ancestors and prophesy their imminent death at the hands of thoseancestors. In the newmillennium now announced not only are the traditionalpromises of abundance and immortality to be realized, but so is a previouslyunimagined yearning: for the ouster of the whites. In the case of bothmillenniums, or of the two stages of a single millenarian movement, theeschatology marks a sharp severance with the present, and the present in noway leads to the millennium. As the restoration of prelapsarian abundanceand immortality, themillennium represents a return to primordial time.Itmay be only when Eliade interprets the seeming value placed on historyby avowedly historical religions like Judaism and Christianity and bysecular ideologies likeMarxism that he reveals the tendentious nature of hisexplanation. His interpretation of the Israelite notion of history best illustrates his view.

In theOld Testament history is the sphere inwhich God acts, and it is byhis actions in history that he is defined. Rather than an abstract being, Godis the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, with each of whom he makes orrenews a covenant. God is he who leads Israel out of slavery inEgypt, he whogives Israel the Law at Sinai, he who gives the people the land of Canaan,and he who establishes themonarchy.

Yet history remains the province of man. God has no history of his own.He is knowable only in relation to man. The deeds of his which historyrecounts take place within historical, not mythic, time. Creation, theExodus, and the revelation of the Law, for examnple,are events in the life ofman and not God. Creation marks the birth of the world and of man, notthe birth of God; the Exodus, the liberation of Israel, not the liberation of

God; the revelation of the Law, its revelation to Israel, not its revelation toGod. These events change the course of history but not God himself. Moreimportant, they are irreversible. They may be commemorated annually,but as historical events. They do not recur.The ritualswhich commemoratethemmay establish contact with the divine but do not involve the repetitionof divine acts.

The Pentateuch itself speaks little of eschatology. Israel awaits onlythe entry into the Promised Land. As the fulfilment of the covenantgoing back to Abraham, that event signifies the fulfilment of history.The Prophets do espouse eschatologies, and those eschatologies usuallyinvolve not only the destruction of the Kingdom, Northern or Southern,but also its restoration. Nevertlheless, the end, as the destruction oftheKingdom and not theworld, iswholly human and therefore historical.

The Prophets ordinarily see life as reverting not to primordial time but tothe time prior to the establishment of theKingdom. And man, not God, is


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responsible for the end. It is his disobedience which breaks the covenant, andit is his obedience which will one day repair it. As the sphere of humanactions, history is responsible for its own fate.

Eliade's denial of the Israelite sense of history may at first glance be lessthan apparent, for he makes several statements which suggest that he, too,recognizes that history, history independent ofmyth, can have meaning. Forexample, having noted the parallels drawn by various scholars between theBabylonian New Year Festival, at which history was abolished and theworld recreated, and a reconstructed Jewish New Year Festival, at which,it is theorized, the same phenomenon occurred, he cautions thatobviously, the symbolic reiterationof the cosmogony at theNew Year inMesopotamia and in Israel cannot be put on the same plane. Among the Jews the archaicscenario of the periodic renewal of the world was progressively historicized, whilestill preserving something of its original [mythic] meaning.'

However, by 'progressive historicization' he means not, as one would expect,that history ceased being periodically abolished and theworld periodicallyrenewed but that on the contrary the periodic renewal of theworld was readinto 'such historical events as the exodus and the crossing of theRed Sea, theconquest of Canaan, the Babylonian captivity and the return from exile,etc.'2He concludes that 'however great the differences between theMesopotamian and Jewish cult systems, they still obviously share a common hopefor the annual or periodic regeneration of theWorld'3- and so for theabolition of history.

Even if Eliade were to say that the world finally ceased being renewedannually or periodically, his postulation of a 'progressive historicization'would still be moot. For pitted against every Biblist who believes that themeaning of theJewish New Year Festival was originally the recreation of theworld and was progressively historicized isat least another who maintains thereverse to have beeil the case: that the New Year Festival celebrated ahistorical event or series of events and was only later 'mythicized '. Eliadecites 'recent studies' of Psalms which have shown that the Festival originallycommemorated the triumph of Yahweh, leader of the forces of light, over theforces of darkness (the chaos of the sea, the primordial monster Rahab). Thistriumph was followed by the enthronement of Yahweh as king and the repetitionof the cosmogonic act. The slaying of the monster Rahab and the victory over thewaters ... were equivalent to the creation of the cosmos .. .5The studies he cites, however, are exclusively those of myth-ritualists, whohardly constitute the consensus of Biblists. For at least asmany other scholars,the forces over which God triumphs are from the outset physical rather than

1Myth and Reality, p. 49. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. p. 50.4 For a summary of these different interpretations and an attempted reconciliation of them see

Frank Moore Cross, Jr., 'The Divine Warrior in Israel's Early Cult', in Biblical Motifs: Origins andTransformations, ed. Alexander Altmann (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, I966),pp I I-30. 5 Cosmos and History, p. 6o.


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ELIADE S THEORY OF MILLENARIANISM I67divine ones, are creations rather than rivals of God, or are only metaphorsfor the human enemies of Israel.

Without distinguishing between this-wordly and otherworldly brands ofeschatology Eliade speaks collectively of 'Judaeo-Christian eschatologicalvisions'. He does note that 'Judaeo-Christianity makes an innovation of thefirst importance' over previous eschatologies: 'the End of theWorld willoccur only once, just as the cosmogony occurred only once'. He even speaksof the end as 'the triumph of a Sacred History'. But then he says that 'theCosmos that will reappear after the catastrophe will be the same CosmosthatGod created at the beginning of Time'.' Once again, he will concede nosignificance to history itself.

In nonapocalyptic Jewish eschatology history certainly triumphs: itwitnesses the progressive improvement of mankind, which the eschatologymerely completes. Yet even in apocalyptic, where the world progressivelydegenerates and divine intervention is necessary not to complete but tooverturn the course of history, history triumphs, and its triumph is still therealization of the eschatology. For the degeneration of the world becomespart of God's plan for theworld, degeneration being as prerequisite to therealization of the apocalyptic eschatology as improvement is to the realization of the nonapocalyptic one. Hence the apocalyptic obsession with readingthe present back into the past, exactly in order to know how historyisheading.

The world may be under the temporary control of Satan, but his reign, too,is part of God's plan, so that even he is under 'divine supervision'. Nor isthe end a return to primordial time. It is the fulfilment of the covenant made

with the apocalyptic group, a fulfilment which now takes place on a cosmicrather than purely human scale.Whether the meaning accorded history is arationalization for its inherent meaninglessness is not here the issue, which isratherwhether history itself hasmeaning, be it a rationalized meaning or not.

At one point Eliade goes so far as to title the Prophetic view of history'history regarded as theophany'2- an impressive concession for one whootherwise dismisses history as profane. The Prophets, he says, were the first,the first 'in history', to 'affirm'the idea that historical events have a value in themselves, insofar as they aredetermined by the will of God. This God of the Jewish people is no longer an

Oriental divinity, creator of archetypal gestures, but a personality who ceaselesslyintervenes in history, who reveals his will through events (invasions, sieges, battles,

and so on). Historical facts thus become 'situations' of man in respect to God, andas such they acquire a religious value that nothing had previously been able toconfer on them.3The Prophets not only were the first to place value on history itself but also'for the first time ... succeeded in transcending the traditional vision of the

1Myth andReality, pp. 64-5. 2CosmosandHistory, p. I02. 3 Ibid. p. 104.


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i68 ROBERT A. SEGALcycle (the conception that ensures all things will be repeated forever), anddiscovered a one-way time'.'

Yet even 'in the Israel of theMessianic prophets, historical events couldbe tolerated' only 'because, on the one hand, they were willed by Yahweh,and, on the other hand, because they were necessary to the final salvation ofthe chosen people '.2That salvation might come only once and not annually,but 'when theMessiah comes, theworld will be saved once and for all andhistory will cease to exist '.3Eliade states outright that

Messianic beliefs in a final regeneration of the world themselves also indicate anantihistoric attitude. Since he can no longer ignore or periodically abolish history,the Hebrew tolerates it in the hope that itwill finally end, at some more or less distant moment. The irreversibility of historical events and of time is compensatedby the limitation of history to time.4Having begun by singling out the Israelite view of history as unique, Eliadeends by lumping it under the universal longing to overcome history.

How, one might ask, does Eliade know that the meaning which 'theHebrew' finds in history is only a device for tolerating it? How can Eliadeforeclose the possibility that history gets tolerated because it ismeaningful inthe firstplace? Indeed, his argument that themeaning which history has forIsrael ismetahistorical rather than historical was supposed to demonstratethis point generally. Eliade cannot argue that the meaning of history forIsrael ismetahistorical in the sense that that meaning transcends history, forhe himself notes that themeaning of history for Israel lieswithin history. He

must argue that the meaning is metahistorical in the sense that historyculminates in the abolition and thereby rejection of itself. And so, as seen, hedoes.

Not only, however, has it seemed far from clear that the end of history forIsrael necessarily means its abolition. It is hardly clear that the abolition ofhistory would in and of itself mean its rejection rather than fulfilment. If itis not clear that the abolition of history necessarily represents its rejection,then it is not clear that man, Israelite or other, necessarily wants to rejecthistory, in which case it is not clear that in the meantime he seeks simply totolerate history, in which case it is not clear that the meaning history has forhim is only a means of tolerating it rather than its genuine meaning.

Recently, the English historian J. H. Plumb has lamented 'the death ofthe past' and its replacement by straight history, or the past as dead. Fromthe earliest recorded time, he explains, the past has been 'a living past,something which has been used day after day, life after life, never-endingly',for a variety of purposes:to explain the origins and purpose of human life, to sanctify institutions of govern

ment, to give validity to class structure, to provide moral example, to vivify1 Ibid. 2 Ibid. pp. i06-7. 3Ibid. p. 107. 4 Ibid. p. i i i.


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ELIADE S THEORY OF MILLENARIANISM I69[man's] cultural and educational processes, to interpret the future, to investboththe individual human life or [sic] a nation's with a sense of destiny.'

By contrast, 'history' denotes a detached, professional stance toward thepast, which no longer exerts any intrinsic authority over man. The pastbecomes a time distinct from our own, a subject of analysis, not venerationor emulation. As Plumb puts it, history cannot do what the past did: dictatewhat aman should believe and do.

Clearly, the relationship for Plumb between hlistoryand the past is like therelationship for Eliade between history and myth. Where, however, Eliaderejects history altogether, Plumb scurries to add that even if history lacks theauthority of the past, it can reveal truths which increaseman's awareness ofhimself. Its power lies in the fact that it is critical and objective, beholden tono tradition and free to seek the truth for its own sake.Here history ismorethan, asmythic man purportedly conceives it, a succession of 'meaninglessconjunctures or infractions of [archetypal] norms '.2It iswhat lhasshaped thepresent, even if it no longer justifies or guides the present. It lives on in theconsequences ithas for the present and is important just because it cannot beeffaced. When radical historians search for a 'usable past' and blacksdemand to know their own past, they only underscore the significance ofhistory forman.

Eliade, it was acknowledged at the beginning of this paper, provides noexplicit theory, or causal explanation, of millenarianism. The meaning, notthe cause, ofmillenarianism iswhat interests him, and themeaning of it forhim is the expression of a natural eschatological yearning inman, a yearningto break with history and return to primordial time. Only by implication,however logical the implication, is he ascribing millenarianism to thatnatural eschatological yearning. The validity of the ascription neverthelessdepends on the validity of his interpretation of millenarianism as the expression of a natural eschatological yearning, and that interpretation has proveddubious.

Moreover, even ifEliade were able to show that every eschatology evincesa desire to abolish history and revert to primordial time, he would still haveto explain the two characteristics which distinguish millenarianism fromordinary eschatology: the imminence of the eschatology, and the frequentadoption of a new eschatology rather than the realization of the existing one.Insofar as these are the distinctive features ofmillenarianism, a theorywhichcould not account for themwould constitute a tenuous theory of thephenomenon. Of course, Eliade is not truly concerned with explaining millenarianism in particular, and just because he views it as only a realized eschatology,its eschatological character explaining it.The differences between millenarianand other eschatologies can, however, undercut the similarities, unless theyare explicable within the compass of a single theory.

1 TheDeath of thePast (London:Macmillan, I969), p. i i. 2CosmosandHistory,p. I54.


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I70 ROBERT A. SEGALMan, saysEliade, forever longs to abolish history and return to primordial

time.Millenarianism is only the fulfilment of that longing. But ifman is bynature potentially millenarian, why does he become millenarian when hedoes? If he has been merely tolerating history rather than truly findingmeaning in it, why does he suddenly cease tolerating it? If he has alwayssought to overcome history, how does he manage to succeed now? Millenarianism may for Eliade be only the long-sought realization of an inherentlonging, but it nevertheless is the long-sought realization of that longing.

Why does it come when it does?Most, and perhaps all other, interpreters of millenarianism have scant

difficulty answering this question, for they deem millenarian yearnings theproduct of new rather than old conditions, whether social, political, economic,or other. Such yearnings do not exist potentially inman, awaiting realization.They do not previously exist at all, and when they arise, they arise as yearnings about to be realized. Eliade alone, perhaps, deems these yearningsinnate and therefore latent.What, then, explains their realization? Must notEliade resort to something beyond man's permanent desire to realize them,and does not his reluctance to venture beyond this sheer desire make histheory of millenarianism inadequate?

In the case of the cargo cults it does not, and for that reason the exampleis not representative of millenarian movements and may even be unique.Eliade need not 'explainwhy themillennium is realized when it is because themillennium just is realized, as it were. He need not explain what new conditions trigger the millennium because the only conditions which could besaid to trigger it - the arrival of thewhites in cargo-laden ships - are for thethe natives not the cause of themillennium but the millennium itself. Thenatives do not attempt to explain the nmillennium. It is for them afait accompli- the arrival of the cargo, together with the arrival of the whites and theirarrival in ships, coincidentally fitting traditional millenarian expectations.It is true that the natives must interprethese events asmillenarian, so thatthe appearance of thewhites, the ships, and the cargo might still seem to beonly the conditions underlying millenarianism. What matters, however, isthat the natives do interpret their appearance not as the cause of themillennium but as the realization of it. The natives do not interpret events asevidence of the imminence f the millennium, theway Jewish and Christian

millenarians interpret events in history as signs of the comingof the nmillennium. The appearance of the whites in ships with cargo is for them themillennium itself.The question iswhether Eliade can cite any other millenarian movementinwhich themillennium simply arrives, the arrival of which he need therefore not explain. If there are few other instances of the unannouncedrealization of themillennium, he must still explain why, in the light of aninherent eschatological drive, man acts on that drive when he does.


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ELIADE S THEORY OF MILLENARIANISM I71It is uncertain whether Eliade is aware of this problem, and it is equally

uncertain whether he intends either of the two possible solutions to itimplicit in his writings. The first solution is the subsumption of the social,political, economic, or other conditions connected with millenarianismunder man's millenarian instinct itself. The second solution is the opposite:the severance of these conditions frommillenarianism itself and the relegation of them to the status of preconditions, or mere instigators of the millenarian instinct.

Either solution is deducible from Eliade's words:Of course, all these millenarist movements in Oceania arose as a sequel to precisehistorical situations, and express a desire for economic and political independence.Numerous works have explained the socio-political context of the 'cargo-cults.'But the historico-religious interpretation of these millenarist minor religions hashardly begun. Now, all these prophetic phenomena become completely intelligibleonly in the perspective of the history of religions. It is impossible to discover thesignificance and assess the extraordinary success of the 'cargo-cults' withouttaking into account one mythico-ritual theme which plays a fundamental part in

Melanesian religions: the annual return of the dead and the cosmic renewal thatit implies.'According to the first solution, the native desire for independence is a desirefor the recreation of the world - for starting society and therefore life afresh.

According to the second solution, this same desire for independence merelysparks the desire for the recreation of theworld.

Both solutions are problematic. The first solution, precisely by subsumingthe desire for independence under the desire for the millennium, fails toexplain the phenomenon it is supposed to explain: why the millenariandesire as a whole expresses itselfwhen it does. To say that themillenariandesire expresses itself themoment the desire for independence does - the onlyconceivable explanation - is to abandon the first solution for the second.But once one acknowledges that the activator ofmillenarianism is other thanreligious, it becomes dogmatic tomaintain that the activator ismerely theactivator and that millenarianism is still a wholly religious phenomenon.Indeed, something can logically be the activator of millenarianism onlyinsofar asmillenarianism provides a response to it. To acknowledge that

millenarianism is, if only in part, a response to a secular activator is surely,then, to make it other than a wholly religious phenomenom. Eliade thusfaces a dilemma: either to refuse to explain the imminence of themillennium,in which case his theory is inadequate, or to explain it nonreligiously, in

which case his theory is not exclusively religious.Just as Eliade has difficulty explaining, at least religiously, the imminenceof the millenarian eschatology, so he has difficulty explaining at all thefrequent supplanting of the traditional eschatology by a new one. To

1 'Cosmic and Eschatological Renewal', p. 132.


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I72 ROBERT A. SEGALdescribe themillennium as the realization of the native desire to realize it isscarcely to explain why the millennium realized may differ from the traditional one. Eliade's explanation of the imminence of the eschatology maybe unclear, but his explanation of the change in eschatology is unambiguous:he denies any change. His interpretation of the cargo cults serves again toillustrate his view.

The key to his interpretation is his inclusion of the cargo within thetraditional goods to be brought by the ancestors. The goods which the whitesbring the natives identifywith the goods which the ancestors are traditionallyto bring, and the natives continue to identify the whites' goods with theancestors' even after they have ceased to identify the whites themselves withthe ancestors.

With this interpretation of the cargo cults the anthropologist KenelmBurridge, for one, agrees in part but in part disagrees. He agrees that thenatives, if only expostfacto, see the cargo as part of the traditional abundancethe ancestors are to bestow on them. But he stresses the novelty of theabundance the cargo represents - indeed, the way it devalues existingnotions of abundance. The cargo thus fulfils the traditional hope for abundance itself, but with a new kind of abundance.' To label the cargo the fulfilment of nothing other than the traditional hope for abundance is tosimplify thematter.

Furthermore, not only is the hope for the cargo new; so is the hope for itsreturn. That the natives justify their demand for the cargo on the groundsthat it represents the traditional abundance promised them does not obviatethe newness of their state of dispossession and their longing to end it. Just,then, as Eliade blurs the distinction between the hope for traditional goodsand the hope for the cargo, so he blurs the distinction between the hope forabundance, inwhatever form, and the hope for return of the cargo. In the

millennium, he says, 'the natives will once more be masters of their islands'- the new hope - 'and will no longer work, for the dead will bring themfantastic quantities of provisions' - the traditional hope.2 In fact, the hopefor regained mastery isno more tied to the hope for abundance than the hopefor cargo is tied to the hope for traditional goods. In both respects, theeschatology now sought goes beyond the eschatology formerly sought, inwhich case traditional hopes cannot account for present ones.

Whether or not Eliade's inability to explain either the imminence of themillennium or the frequent adoption of a new eschatology undermines hisoverall interpretation of millenarianism, it does reveal much about thatinterpretation. It reveals well-nigh the uniqueness of his interpretation: hisfocus on the continuity rather than discontinuity of millenarianism withordinary life. Eliade's inability to explain either the imminence or the

I New Heaven, New Earth (New York: Schocken, i969), passim.2 'Cosmic and Eschatological Renewal', p. 129.


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ELIADE S THEORY OF MILLENARIANISM I73novelty of themillennium is less significant than his indifference to them.Heis indifferent to these aspects of millenarianism exactly because theymark thediscontinuity of millenarianism with ordinary life.

To askwhy themillennium comes now and has not come before and whya new eschatology often replaces the old one is to askwhy the present is sodifferent from the past. It is to search for not just new but exceptional conditions like acute deprivation, whatever the kind, which alone can explainwhy a previously nonmillenarian society should suddenly become millenarian and why a new eschatology should suddenly replace an old one. It is,as a consequence, to emphasize the 'unnaturalness of millenarianism, itsstrangeness, its bizarreness, its fabulousness - in brief, those characteristics of

millenarianism which distinguish it from everyday existence.Eliade, by contrast, is almost blase. For he seesmillenarianism not as the

supplanting of traditional values and habits by new ones but as the finalfulfilment of traditional ones. He sees millenarianism as the product not ofnew conditions but of old ones, at least realized: man's innate desire toabolish history and return to primordial time. It is the naturalness of millenarianismwhich he emphasizes, its conformity with conventional hopes andpractices. Millenarianism is for Eliade no desperate response to unsettlingcircumstances but the long-awaited opportunity to effect man's keenesturges.

Documents

Segal, Eliade's Theory of Millenarianism