Introduction to the History of Religions Part 26

That Manichaeism had a certain force is shown by the fact that it attracted such a man as Augustine, and its survival for several centuries in spite of persecutions attests its vitality. It may be doubted whether its attractiveness lay so much in its dualism as in its gnosticism, though the former element maintained itself in some minor Christian sects. However this may be, it gradually faded away, leaving no lasting impression; it was a form of faith not suited to the peoples who professed Christianity.[1797]

+979+. The modern philosophic proposals to recognize two deities instead of one are as yet too vague to call for discussion. Dualism, though it accounts in some fashion for the twofold character of human experiences, raises as many problems as it solves; in particular it finds itself confronted apparently by a physical and psychological unity in the world which it is hard to explain on the hypothesis of conflicting supernatural Powers.[1798] On the moral side the record of dualistic schemes is in general good. The ethical standard of Mazdaism is high, and the ethical practice of Mazdean communities hardly differs from that of other prominent modern religious bodies. Though the Manichaeans were accused of immoral practices, it does not appear that Mani himself or any prominent disciple of his announced or favored or permitted such practices.

MONOTHEISM

+980+. The preceding survey has shown that the theory of dualism has not proved in general acceptable to men. It was adopted by one people only, and even by them not in complete form, and its character as a national cult was destroyed by the Moslem conquest of Persia in the seventh century. The Zoroastrian system was indeed carried by a body of emigrants to India and has since been professed by the Parsis there; but it has been converted by them into a practical monotheistic cult, so that a consistent dualism now exists nowhere in the world. The thought of the great civilized nations has turned rather to a unitary view of the divine government of the world.

+981+. The history of the movement which has elevated monotheism to the highest place among the civilized cults extends over the whole period of man's life on the earth. It is pointed out above[1799] that very generally in low tribes a local supernatural personage is invested with great power: he is creator, ruler, and guardian of morals; where a tolerably definite civil and political organization exists he has virtually the position and performs the functions of the tribal chief, only with vastly greater powers and privileges; where there is no such organization he is simply a vaguely conceived, mysterious man who has control of the elements and of human fortunes, and punishes violations of tribal custom. Such a personage is, however, at best only the highest among many supernatural Powers. It is immaterial whether we regard such a figure as developed from a spirit or as the direct product of religious imagination. He is always crudely anthropomorphic and, notwithstanding his primacy, is limited in power by his own nature, by other supernatural Powers, and by men. Frequently, also, he tends to become otiose and virtually loses his supremacy;[1800] that is to say, in the increased complexity of social life a G.o.d who was once sufficient for the needs of a simpler organization has to give way to a number of Powers which are regarded as the controllers of special departments of life. Such an otiose form may sometimes indicate a succession of divine quasi-dynasties, somewhat as in the Greek sequence of Ouranos, Kronos, Zeus. Handed down from a former generation, he becomes dim and is neglected. That he is not worshiped is a result of the fact that other divine beings, standing nearer to existing human interests, have come to the front.

+982+. The theory has been held in the past, and is still held, that monotheism was the primitive form of religion and that the worship of many spirits or many G.o.ds is a corruption of primitive thought due to man's intellectual feebleness or to his moral depravity. It is urged that such a monotheistic system was the natural one for unsophisticated man. The view has been widely held also that it was the result of a primitive divine revelation to men. It is obvious that neither of these opinions is susceptible of proof on a priori grounds; the question can be settled only by a survey of the phenomena known to us. When the facts are clearly stated, it is then allowable to deduce from them such conclusions as may seem legitimate.

+983+. As a matter of fact, it does not appear that real monotheistic belief exists or has existed among savage and half-civilized communities of whose history we have any knowledge. Where a certain supernatural being is described by observers as "the G.o.d" or "the supreme G.o.d" of a tribe, it turns out on inquiry that he is at most, as is remarked above, a very prominent divine figure, perhaps the most prominent, but never standing alone and never invested with those physical, intellectual, and moral capacities that are necessary for a complete monotheistic faith.

+984+. While, however, this conclusion is generally admitted for the majority of cases,[1801] it has been held, and is still held, that there are found in savage cults certain "self-existent, eternal, moral" beings who satisfy all the conditions of a monotheistic faith. Among the examples cited are the American G.o.ds described by Strachey and Winslow as supreme in power and ethically good.[1802] But, even in the curt and vague accounts of these early observers (who were not in position to get accurate notions of Indian beliefs), it appears that there were many G.o.ds, the supposed supreme deity being simply the most prominent in the regions known to the first settlers. The "Great Spirit" of the Jesuit missionaries is found, in like manner, to be one of many supernatural patrons, locally important but not absolute in power.[1803] The Zulu Unkulunkulu is revered by the natives as a very great being, morally good according to the standards of the people, but he is of uncertain origin and is valueless in the existing cult.[1804] The much-discussed Australian figures, Baiame, Bunjil, and Daramulun, appear not to differ essentially from those just mentioned. The reports of the natives who have been questioned on the subject are often vague and sometimes mutually contradictory, and exact biographical details of these divine personages are lacking; but careful recent observers are of opinion that they are nothing more than supernatural headmen, having such power as tribal chiefs or headmen possess, and credited in different regions with different moral qualities.[1805]

+985+. In the systems of many other low tribes there are quasi-divine beings who are credited with great power and are revered without being thought of as eternal or as standing alone in the government of the world. A specially interesting example is the Andaman Puluga, a sort of creator who receives no worship; his abode is a mountain or the sky, and he seems to have been originally a local supernatural figure who is traditionally respected but is no longer thought of as an efficient patron.[1806] The mysterious Ndengei of Fiji is judge of the dead, but one of many G.o.ds and not all-powerful.[1807] In many tribes there is no one great divine figure; the control of things is divided among hosts of spirits and G.o.ds. This is the case with the Ainu, the Maoris, the Greenlanders, the Kwakiutl of Northwest America,[1808] and is probably the rule in most of the lower communities.

The terms 'self-existent' and 'eternal' are not found in savage vocabularies and seem to have no representatives in savage thought.

Savage cosmology carries the history of the world back to a certain point and stops when there is no familiar hypothesis of genesis.[1809]

As a rule spirits (as distinguished from ghosts) are not thought of as having a creator; they are a part of the system of things and are not supposed to need explanation, and so it seems to be with simple clan G.o.ds. Nor is there any reason, in savage theory, why G.o.ds or spirits should die; death is an accident for human beings, not an essential feature of their const.i.tution; but such an accident is not usually supposed to occur in the case of G.o.ds. What takes the place of the conception of 'eternal' in savage thought is an existence that is supposed to continue for the reason that its cessation does not come into consideration. As to creation, there is no need, in a low community, to suppose more than one originator of the world, and cosmogonic theory may stop at that point, though this is not an invariable rule. The t.i.tle "father" for persons of distinction, human or divine, is found among many undeveloped peoples, and a headman or patron may be called, by a natural extension of thought, "all-father," a t.i.tle that is not essentially different in signification from the simple "father," and does not carry with it the refined sense of later times.

The question of savage monotheism need present no difficulty if the conditions are clearly defined.[1810] It is true that there is in some cases a monarchical conception of the divine control of a clan or a tribe, and that this simple system is followed by a more or less elaborate theology. In both civil and religious systems the increasing complexity of social life has called forth correspondingly complex organizations, but this movement away from simplicity does not denote falling off in civil and religious purity and wisdom. A true monotheism has never arisen except as a criticism of polytheism.

+986+. It is obvious that the popular cults of the great nations of antiquity were far removed from monotheism. The Egyptians, the Babylonians and the a.s.syrians, the Phoenicians, the Hebrews, the Arabs, the Hindus, the Greeks and the Romans, down to a late period, worshiped a mult.i.tude of G.o.ds and were not disturbed by any feeling of lack of unity in the divine government of the world. The proof that such was the case among the ancient Hebrews down to the sixth century B.C. is found in the Old Testament writings: the historical books from the entrance of the Hebrew tribes into Canaan down to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans and the prophetical writings of the eighth, seventh, and sixth centuries represent the people generally as addicted to the worship of a great number of G.o.ds. In Persia also, since the Mazdean system recognized a considerable number of deities, it cannot be doubted that the people were polytheistic, not to speak of the probability that there were survivals of a lower form of religion which preceded Mazdaism. In the modern nations of the east of Asia, China and j.a.pan, the popular worship is anything but monotheistic: in China the local spirits play a very great part in the life of the people, and in j.a.pan the old G.o.ds are still objects of worship. It may be added that among the ma.s.ses in some nominally Christian countries, particularly among the peasants of Southern Europe, the old polytheism continues in the form of the worship of saints and the Madonna.

+987+. While the popular cults in the civilized world have held somewhat pertinaciously to pluralistic views, there has been a general tendency in advanced circles everywhere toward a unitary conception of the government of the world. As this tendency has been general it must be referred to the general progress of thought, the demand of the human mind for unity or simplicity. The particular lines of the movement have varied among different peoples according to the peculiarities of their culture, and the unitary feeling has varied in its degree of definiteness. In some cases the political predominance of a city or region has secured preeminence for its deity, or national attachment to the national G.o.d has elevated him above all other G.o.ds; where a people has cultivated poetry or philosophy, the idealizing thought of the one or the scientific a.n.a.lysis of the other has led in the same direction.

+988+. First, then, we may note the disposition to give substantial absoluteness to some one G.o.d, the choice of the deity being determined by the political condition as is suggested above, or by local attachments, or possibly by other conditions which do not appear in the meager records of early times. Examples of this form of thought are found in several of the great nations of antiquity. The hymns to the Egyptian G.o.ds Ra, Amon, Amon-Ra, Osiris, and the Nile describe these deities as universal in attributes and in power. At the moment the poet conceives of the G.o.d whom he celebrates as practically the only one--if Ra does everything, there is no need of any other deity. At another moment, however, the same poet may celebrate Osiris with equal enthusiasm--these high G.o.ds are interchangeable. The suggestion from such fluid conceptions of the divine persons is that the real thought in the mind of the poet was the supremacy of some divine power which is incorporated now in one familiar divine name, now in another. It does not, however, quite reach the point of well-defined monotheism, for these G.o.ds remain distinct, sometimes with separate functions and duties.

+989+. But this mode of conceiving of the supernatural Power would naturally pave the way for monotheism, and it is not surprising that very early in Egypt a definite monotheistic view was developed. King Amenophis IV, or to give him the name that he adopted in conformity with his later cult, Khuen-Aten, made a deliberate attempt to elevate the sun-G.o.d Aten to the position of sole ruler and object of worship. Though the nature of his belief in this deity is not stated in the doc.u.ments with the fullness and precision that we should desire, it seems clear, from the fact that he ordered the destruction of the shrines of the other deities in the land, that he regarded the worship of this one G.o.d as sufficient. The movement was not a successful one in so far as the national religion was concerned--it lasted only during his lifetime and that of his son, and then a counter-revolution swept Aten away and reinstated the Theban Amon in all his former dignity and powers--but its very existence is a testimony to the direction of thought of educated minds in Egypt about the year 1400 B.C. The Aten revolution appears to have been distinctively Egyptian--there is no trace of foreign influence in its construction. It has been suggested that Amenophis got his idea from Semites of Western Asia or particularly from the Hebrews. But neither the Hebrews nor any other Semitic people of that period were monotheistic, nor do we find in Egyptian history at the time such social intercourse as might produce a violent upturning of the religious usage.

We can only suppose that Amenophis was a religious genius who put into definite shape a conception that was in the air, and by the force of his enthusiasm made it for the moment effective. Such geniuses have arisen from time to time in the world, and though the revolution of this Egyptian king may seem to us to have sprung up with abnormal abruptness, it is more reasonable to suppose that the way had been prepared for it in Egyptian thought. He was a man born out of due time; but it cannot be said that his attempt was without influence on succeeding generations.

+990+. Pa.s.sing now to the oldest Semitic civilizations, we find in Babylonia and a.s.syria many local deities, one or another of whom comes to the front under the hegemony of some city or state. Here we are met by the fact already referred to that the G.o.ds are interchangeable--it is practically a matter of indifference whether one deity or another is elevated to headship. In the great empires the G.o.ds of the capital cities naturally became preeminent; so Marduk in Babylonia and Ashur in a.s.syria. The royal inscriptions speak of these G.o.ds as if they were all-powerful and all-controlling. In both countries the G.o.ddess Ishtar appears as the supreme director of affairs, and other deities are similarly honored. What might have been the issue if the later Babylonian kingdom had continued for a long time it is impossible to say, but the impression made by the words of the devout king Nebuchadnezzar II (605-562 B.C.) is that he would have been content with Marduk as the one object of worship. Babylonia produced no such radical reformer as the Egyptian Amenophis--there is no formulation of monotheism; but the general tone of the Babylonian religion of the sixth century is not very different from that of the Hebrew religion of the same time.

+991+. The religious point of view of the Vedas belongs in the same category with the early Egyptian. Varuna, Agni, and Indra appear in the hymns, each in his turn, as supreme. The role of Varuna seems to be practically identical with that of the Iranian Ahura, but unlike the latter he does not succeed in expelling his brother divinities. This difference of development between the Hindu and the Iranian people we cannot hope to explain. India moved not toward monotheism, but toward pantheism. But the Vedic hymns prove the existence of a certain sense of oneness in the world, held by the poets, though not by the ma.s.s of the people, and destined to issue in a very remarkable religious system.

+992+. It has been by a very different line that China has reached its unitary conception of the world. The details of the movement are obscure, but its general course is clear.[1811] As with many other peoples it is the objects of nature to which Chinese worship is mainly paid, but the Chinese mind, impressed by the power of these objects, is content to rest in them in their visible form; no proper names are attached to them, and they have a more or less vague personality which varies in definiteness at different times and with different persons.

The theistic system is a reflection of the social system. The eminently practical Chinese mind lays the chief stress on the earthly life: in the common everyday life the family is the unit; but the general course of affairs is controlled by the great natural Powers of earth and sky, whence arise the two great divisions of Chinese worship. The State is a larger family in which the duke or emperor or other chief political officer occupies the same position that is occupied by the father in the smaller social circle; the government is patriarchal, with gradations which correspond to those of the family. Life, it is held, is controlled by the heavenly bodies, by the mountains and rivers of the earth, and by deceased members of families. To these the people sacrifice, the princ.i.p.al part being taken by the civil heads of the larger and smaller const.i.tuent parts of the empire; there is thus no place for priests. As the emperor (or other head of the State) is supreme on earth, so Heaven and Earth, Sun and Moon occupy the highest positions in the divine hierarchy, and ancestors are influential and ent.i.tled to worship according to the rank of the families they represent.[1812] From an early time, long before Confucius, the headship of the divine Powers, it would seem, was a.s.signed to Heaven--not the physical sky, but, at least in the thinking circles of the nation, the Power therein residing. Thus arose the conception of an imperial divine government in which Heaven, though it does not stand alone, is recognized as supreme. The larger theistic conception is embodied in the annual sacrifices conducted by the emperor,[1813] especially at the winter and summer solstices when sacrifices are offered to Heaven and Earth, Sun and Moon, the Four Quarters and the mountains and rivers of the empire and to his ancestors, whose worship includes the interests of the whole State. Thus with a vast number of objects of worship (spirits of all departments of life, and a few G.o.ds proper) the Chinese religion has attained and maintained a general unitary conception of the divine government of the world.[1814]

+993+. Some resemblance to the Chinese system appears in the religion of Peru, so far as this can be understood from the accounts that have come down to us.[1815] The supreme position given to the Sun in Peru and to the Inca as child of the Sun is parallel to the supremacy of Heaven in China and the headship of the emperor as the son of Heaven. The Peruvian cult appears not to have reached the distinctness of the Chinese. There were, in fact, in Peru a considerable number of tolerably well-formed divinities along with a vast crowd of spirits. Yet it appears that the sun was regarded, at least by the Inca and his circle, as supreme ruler of the world. The Sun, as G.o.d, has no proper name in Peru, as in China Heaven, as G.o.d, has no proper name. In both countries, it would seem, the imagination of the people was overpowered by the spectacle of the majesty of a great natural object. The two religions differ in their ritual development: while the Inca, like the Chinese emperor, was the religious head of the nation, the Peruvians created an elaborate system of worship, with temples and ministrants, which is wanting in China.[1816] The remarkable character of the Peruvian system makes it all the more regrettable that the data available do not enable us to trace its growth from the simplest beginnings.

+994+. Still another line of theistic development is furnished by the Hebrew system. The Hebrews are remarkable among ancient peoples as having had, so far as our information goes, only one national G.o.d. This G.o.d they brought with them into Canaan from the wilderness over which they appear to have roamed with their flocks for a period and under conditions not definitely known to us. Arrived in Canaan, the ma.s.ses were attracted by the local Canaanite deities (whose worship represented a higher civilization than that of the nomadic Hebrews), and later, in the seventh century B.C., a great part of the people of the little kingdom of Judah adopted the a.s.syrian astral cult; but a group of Israelites had always remained faithful to the national deity Yahweh (Jehovah) and vigorously opposed all foreign worship. It was naturally the more thoughtful and ethically better-developed part of the community that took this uncompromising position, and their spokesmen, the writing prophets whose discourses are preserved in the Old Testament, became preachers of morality as well as champions of the sole worship of Yahweh. It does not appear that they denied the existence of other G.o.ds, but they regarded their own G.o.d as superior to all others in power, standing in a peculiarly close relation to his people and bound to them by peculiarly intimate ties.

+995+. This attachment to one deity proved to be the dominant sentiment of the nation. As time went on and the people were sifted by the a.s.syrian and Babylonian deportations, the higher moral feeling of the best men attached itself more and more definitely to the national G.o.d.

Thus was established a monolatry which was practically monotheism, though a theory of absolute monotheism was never formulated by the pre-Christian Jews. It must be added, as is remarked above, that, from the third or second century B.C. on, the somewhat undefined range of activity attributed to Satan produced a sort of dualism, yet without impairing the practically unitary conception of the divine government of the world.[1817] The course of their national fortunes and the remarkable power of self-contained persistence of the Jews brought about a segregation of the people and, finally, their organization into a community governed by a law held to be divinely revealed. This capacity of social religious organization was the distinctive characteristic of the Jewish people and, supported by their unitary theistic system and a high moral code, gave the example of popular monotheism which, through the medium of Christianity, finally imposed itself upon the Roman world.

+996+. In the ancient world the most thorough investigation of the theistic problem was made by the Greeks, whose leading thinkers, like the Hebrews, moved steadily toward a unitary conception of the divine power, but, unlike the Hebrews, did not succeed in impressing their views on the people at large. What the theistic conception in the pre-Homeric times was we are unable to say definitely, but presumably in every separate community there was a local deity who had practically the direction of affairs. In process of time, through conditions not known to us, Zeus came to be recognized throughout the h.e.l.lenic world as the princ.i.p.al deity. In the Homeric poems and in Hesiod we find a political or governmental organization of the G.o.ds which followed the lines of the social organization of the times. As Agamemnon is the head chief over a group of local chiefs, so Zeus, though not absolutely supreme, is a divine king, the head over a considerable number of deities who have their own preferences and plans, and in ordinary matters go their own way and are not interfered with so long as they mind their own business; but at critical points Zeus, like Agamemnon, intervenes, and then no G.o.d disputes his decisions.

+997+. This conception of the divine government appears, therefore, to rest on the Greek demand for political organization; the world was thought of as divided into various departments which had to be brought into a unity by the ascription of a quasi-supreme authority to some one personage. Necessarily, however, larger intellectual and ethical ideas were incorporated in this political view. Though the popular anthropomorphic conceptions of the deities appear throughout the Homeric poems (the G.o.ds being sometimes morally low as well as limited in knowledge and power), yet on the other hand they are said to know everything. To Zeus in particular lofty qualities are ascribed; he is the father of men and their savior and the patron of justice. How it came about that these two sorts of conceptions of a supreme deity are mingled in the poems is a question that need not be discussed here; a similar mingling of contradictory ideas is found in the Old Testament, in which the unmoral G.o.d of the people stands alongside of the highly developed ethical Yahweh of the great prophets.

+998+. In Homer and Hesiod, however, the conception of headship is complicated by the introduction of the idea of fate. In the Iliad Zeus is sometimes ignorant of the future and has to employ the scales of destiny, and in Hesiod appear the three Fates who control the lives of men independently of the G.o.ds. The conception of a controlling fate may be regarded as an effort to reach an absolutely unitary view of the world. Above all the divine powers that regulate affairs, after the manner of the government by a king with his attendant chieftains and officers, there is a sense of a dim and undefined power of unknown origin, mysterious, absolute, universal. The question whether this conception was a reflection of a sense of the controlling power resident in the universe itself, or merely an endeavor to rise above the variations of anthropomorphic deities, is important from the point of view of the genesis of ideas, but its decision will not affect the fact just stated.[1818] Obviously in the Homeric world there appears this general conviction that men and G.o.ds are bound together in unity and that some force or power controls all things.[1819]

+999+. This sense of the governmental unity is further developed by the later great poets who infused into it higher and more definite moral elements. The polytheistic view continues; to the thinkers of the time there was no more difficulty in conceiving of a single headship along with many deities of particular functions than was felt by Hebrew prophets who recognized the existence of foreign deities, with Yahweh as a superior G.o.d, or by the modern Christian world with its apparatus of angels, saints, and demons alongside of the supreme G.o.d. For Pindar Zeus is lord of all things and is far removed from the moral impurities of the popular conception. aeschylus represents him as supreme and in general as just, though not wholly free from human weaknesses. A real unity of the world is set forth by Sophocles: there is a divinely ordered control by immutable law, and the will of Zeus is unquestioned.

The unitary conception is found also in Euripides notwithstanding his skeptical att.i.tude toward the current mythology. The sense of symmetry potent in the poets forced them to this unitary conception of government, and the natural progress of ethical feeling led them to ascribe the highest ethical qualities to the deities.

+1000+. Similar motives appear in the speculations of the Greek philosophers: Greek philosophy in seeking to discover the essential nature of the world moved definitely toward the conception of its unity--so, for example, as early as the sixth century, in Xenophanes and Parmenides. The conception of a supreme spiritual ruler of the world appears in Herac.l.i.tus and Anaxagoras (fifth century). To these and other Greek thinkers the unity of the world and the dominance of mind or spirit appeared to be necessary a.s.sumptions. The most definite expression of these conceptions is found in Plato and Aristotle.

According to Plato (in the Timaeus) G.o.d, the eternal Father, created the world (for nothing can be created without a cause), brought order out of disorder and made the universe to be most fair and good, so that it became a rational living soul, the one only-begotten universe, created the G.o.ds and the sons of the G.o.ds, and framed the soul to be the ruler of the body. Aristotle, in simpler phrase, represents the ground of the world as self-sufficient Mind, an eternal Power (d??a??), from which all action or actuality (e?e??e?a) proceeds.[1820]

+1001+. There are certain apparent limitations, it is true, to this conception of unity. Both Plato and Aristotle recognize the existence of a host of subordinate deities (created but immortal) to whom is a.s.signed a share, by direction of the supreme G.o.d, in the creation of things; yet essentially these deities are nothing more than agents or intermediaries of the divine activity, and may be compared to the natural laws and agents of modern theism and, more exactly, to the Hebrew angels through whom, according to the Old Testament, G.o.d governed the world. Plato has also a somewhat vague notion of a something in the nature of the material of the world that limits or constrains the divine creative power--a "necessity" that forces the deity to do not the absolutely best but the best possible. Perhaps this is a philosophical formulation of the old "fate," perhaps Plato is merely trying to account for certain supposed inconcinnities and inadequacies in the world. He is not quite consistent with himself, since he represents the creation of the universe as resulting from the fact that necessity yielded to the persuasion of mind, which thus became supreme.[1821] In spite of this vagueness his view is unitary, and the unitary conception is continued by the Stoics, its best Stoic expression being found in the famous hymn of Cleanthes to Zeus: "Nothing occurs on earth apart from thee" and "We are thy offspring."[1822]

+1002+. In the last centuries before the beginning of our era the Jews, partly under Persian and Greek influence, clarified their theistic view, attaining a practically pure monotheism, only retaining their apparatus of angels and demons. This theistic scheme pa.s.sed over in complete form to early Christianity, in which, however, greater prominence was given to the chief demon, the Satan; his larger role arose from the fact that he was brought into sharp antagonism with the Christ, the head of the kingdom of G.o.d. When Christianity was adopted by the Graeco-Roman world, the doctrine of the Trinity was worked out and formulated in accordance with Greek and Roman philosophic thought, but was held not to impair the monotheistic view since the three Persons were regarded as being in substance one. Islam adopted the Jewish form of monotheism, with its Satan and angels, retaining also the old Arabian apparatus of demonic beings (the jinn).

+1003+. A certain tendency to a practically unitary view is discernible in the cults of Isis and Mithra, which were widely diffused in the Roman Empire.[1823] In both these cults the main interest of the worshipers was centered in a single deity, though other deities were recognized.

The unifying impulse was devotional, not philosophic.

So far as a unitary conception of the divine government of the world existed it must be referred to the spirit of the age which had outgrown the old crude polytheism. Such modern monotheistic movements as the Brahma-Samaj and the Parsi in India, the Babist in Persia, and the reformed Shinto in j.a.pan owe much to European influence, though doubtless some part of them is the outcome of natural progress in intellectual and moral conceptions.

PANTHEISTIC AND NONTHEISTIC SYSTEMS

+1004+. The systems of theistic thought considered above all make a sharp separation between G.o.d and the world. Plato and Aristotle regarded mind or spirit as a force that dominated matter. The Persian, Hebrew, and Christian theologies conceive of the deity as transcendent, standing outside of and above the world and entering into communication with it either by direct revelation or through intermediaries. To certain thinkers of ancient times this dualistic conception presented difficulties--an absolute unity was held to be incompatible with such separation between the world and G.o.d. The precise nature of the reflections by which the earliest philosophers reached this conclusion is not clearly set forth, but it may be surmised that in general there were two lines of thought that led to this inference: first, a metaphysical conception of unity as something that was demanded by the sense of perfectness in the world; and, secondly, observation of facts that appeared to characterize the world as a unit. Among several different peoples, and apparently in each independently, the idea arose that the divine manifests itself in the world of phenomena and is recognizable only therein. Such a view appears in India in the Vedanta philosophy, and in Greece a little later it is more or less involved in Orphic theories and in the systems of several philosophers. The tendency to deify nature appears even in writers who do not wholly exclude G.o.ds from their schemes of the world--in the sayings of Herac.l.i.tus, for example: "All things are one," "From all comes one, and from one comes all." A similar view is attributed to Xenophanes by Aristotle,[1824] and traces of such a conception appear in Euripides.[1825] For the modern forms of pantheism, in Spinoza and other philosophers, reference must be made to the histories of philosophy.

+1005+. Pantheism has never commended itself to the ma.s.ses of men. It is definitely theistic, but the view that the divine power is visible only in phenomena and is to be identified practically with the world is one that men in general find difficult to comprehend. The demand is for a deity with whom one may enter into personal relations--the simple conception of a G.o.d who dwells apart satisfies the religious instincts of the majority of men. The ethical questions arising from pantheism seem to them perplexing: how can man be morally responsible when it is the deity who thinks and acts in him? and how can he have any sense of loyalty to a deity whom he cannot distinguish from himself? Nor do men generally demand so absolute a unity as is represented by pantheism.

Such questions as those relating to the eternity of matter, the possibility of the existence of an immaterial being, and the mode in which such a being, if it exists, could act on matter, have not seemed practical to the majority of men. Man demands a method of worship, and pantheism does not permit organized worship. For these reasons it has remained a sentiment of philosophers, though it has not been without effect in modifying popular conceptions of the deity: the conception of the immanence of G.o.d in the world (held in many Christian orthodox circles), when carried to its legitimate consequences, it is often hard to distinguish from pantheism.

+1006+. _Nontheistic systems._ A further attempt to secure a complete unity of the world appears in those systems of thought which regard the world as self-sufficient and, therefore, dispense with extramundane agency. These start either from the point of view of man and human life or from contemplation of the world. In China the sense of the sole importance of the moral life and the impossibility of knowing anything beyond mundane life led Confucius practically to ignore divine agency.

He did not deny the existence of Powers outside of men, but he declined to speak of them, regarding them as of no practical importance. This sort of agnosticism appears in Greece as early as the fifth century B.C., when Protagoras's view that "man is the measure of all things"

makes extrahuman Powers superfluous. Epicurus reached a similar practical atheism apparently from a scientific view of the construction of the world. According to him there are G.o.ds, but they are otiose--living a life of happy ease, they are to be thought of as a pleasant phenomenon in the world, but ineffective as regards human fortunes, and men may go their ways certain that if they obey the laws of the world the G.o.ds will not interfere with them.

+1007+. The Sankhya philosophy of India dispenses completely with G.o.ds, holding that the primordial stuff is eternal, but it also holds that souls have a separate existence and are eternal. Thus a species of dualism emerges. Buddhism goes a step further, ignoring the soul as well as G.o.ds. It is agnostic in that, admitting the world to have a cause, it holds that it is impossible to know this cause. Its practical aim--to get rid of suffering by getting rid of desire, and thus to pa.s.s into a blissful state of existence in which apparently there is to be no effort as there is to be no pain--has enabled it to establish a vigorous organization, a sort of church, in which the undefined universe takes the place of a personal G.o.d, and character takes the place of soul, this character (Karma) pa.s.sing from one being to another without the a.s.sumption of ident.i.ty in the beings thus united in destiny.[1826]

+1008+. In Greece pure materialism (similar in essence to the Sankhya) took the shape of the a.s.sumption of an original and eternal ma.s.s of atoms whence have come all forms of being (so Democritus in the fifth century B.C.), and this conception was adopted by Epicurus and expounded at length by Lucretius.[1827] The necessary qualities and movements being attributed to the atoms, the conclusion was that nothing else was required in order to explain the world. With this may be compared the view of Empedocles (fifth century) that love and hate (in modern phrase, attraction and repulsion) are the creative forces of the world. The simplicity of this scheme has commended it to many minds in modern as in ancient times. Man, it is said, can know nothing outside of phenomena, and, so far as regards the origin of things, it is as easy to conceive of an eternal self-existent ma.s.s of matter as of an eternal self-existent deity. The n.o.bler part of man, it is held, is not thereby surrendered--reason and all high ethical and spiritual ideals have grown naturally out of the primordial ma.s.s. In such systems there is often the hypothesis of an original force or life resident in matter, and this force or life, being credited with all that has issued from it, may be regarded as having the elements of personality, and in that case becomes practically a deity. Such a deistic materialism approaches pantheism nearly.

GENERAL SURVEY OF THE THEISTIC DEVELOPMENT

+1009+. The theistic conceptions of men have followed the general line of social development. All systems and shades of thought are faithfully reflected in the various ideas that men have formed for themselves of the G.o.ds. Human nature is the highest thing known to men, and their conception of supernatural forces has been based on ideals derived from experience. The sphere of divine activity has been determined for men by their systems of physical science; the moral character of the G.o.ds is a reflection of human ethical conceptions; the internal activity of the deity in man's mind is defined by man's spiritual experience.

+1010+. From the earliest times the extent to which the G.o.ds were supposed to intervene in human affairs has been fixed by scientific observation, by the knowledge of natural law--the G.o.ds have been called on to intervene only when it was necessary because ordinary powers failed. When finally the conception is reached that all nature is governed by natural law, the theistic view a.s.sumes that the deity works through ordinary natural means, and the supposition of particular interventions is rejected by the ma.s.s of scientific thinkers. It was natural in early times to suppose that reward and punishment were administered by the deity in this world in accordance with the principles of right, that the good prospered and the bad failed; but this view has vanished before observation, and, by those who demand an exact accordance between conduct and fortunes, the final compensations of life have been relegated to the other world.

+1011+. The belief in miracles, however, has never completely vanished from the world. A miracle is an intervention by the deity whereby a natural law is set aside. No a priori reasoning can ever prove or disprove the possibility of miracles--such proof or disproof would involve complete knowledge of the universe or of the divine power in the universe, and this is impossible for man. The indisposition to accept a miracle has arisen from the conviction that the demand for interventions that set aside the natural order is a reflection on the wisdom of the Creator's arrangement of the world, and further from long-continued observation of the dominance of natural law, and, when appeal is made to alleged miraculous occurrences, from the arbitrary way in which, according to the reports, these have been introduced. In the records of peoples we find that miracles increase in number and magnitude in proportion as we go back to dim times without exact historical doc.u.ments. They appear, it is held, in connection usually with insignificant affairs while the really great affairs in later times are left without miraculous elements.[1828] The history of the world, so historical science holds, receives a satisfactory explanation from the character of the general laws of human nature, and the principle of parsimony demands that no unnecessary elements of action be introduced into affairs. The exclusion of miracles from the world does not exclude divine agency and government; it only defines the latter as being in accordance with man's observation of natural law.

+1012+. Philosophy constructs the const.i.tution of the deity and the relation of divine elements to the world. Whether the deity stands outside of the world or within it, whether the divine power is unitary or dual or plural, or whether there is any need to a.s.sume a power outside of physical nature--these are the questions that are discussed by philosophy, whose conclusions sometimes favor a religious view of the world, sometimes oppose it. Few persons are able to follow elaborate philosophic lines of thought--the majority of men accept the simple doctrine of a personal G.o.d who is generally supposed to stand outside of the world. The controlling consideration here is that everything must have a cause--a line of reasoning in accordance with common sense, but not always, in its crude form, regarded by philosophers as decisive.

+1013+. The moral character of a deity is always in accordance with the moral ideas of his worshipers. Religions have sometimes been divided into the ethical and the nonethical; but so far as the character of the deity is concerned no such division holds, for there never has been a supernatural Power that has not reflected the moral ideas of its time and place. A cannibal G.o.d is not only natural in a cannibal society, but he represents moral ideals, namely, the attempt to acquire strength by absorbing the physical substance of men. The deity who deceives or is vindictive arises in a society in which deceit and vindictiveness are regarded as virtues. The pictures of what we regard as immoralities in the deity as given in the Iliad and in the Old Testament were not regarded as immoral by the writers. The progress in the characterization of the deity has been not by the introduction of an ethical element, but by the purification and elevation of the already existing ethical element.[1829]