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No . VII . : """ ' THE USE OF ANTHROPOMORPHISM . fHAT long fit of indignation which seizes all generous natures when first they commence contemplating human affairs , having fairly spent itself , there begins to arise a more or less distinct perception that the institutions , beliefs , and forms so vehemently condemned are not so wholly bad as they seemed . This reaction runs to curious lengths . In some , merely to a comparative contentment with the arrangements under which they live . In others , to a recognition of
the fitness that exists between each people and its government , tyrannical as that may be . In some , again , to the conviction , that hateful though it is to us , and highly injurious as it would be now , slavery was once beneficial—was one of the necessary phases of human progress . Again , in others , to the suspicion that great benefit has indirectly arisen from the perpetual warfare of past times , insuring as this did the spread of the strongest races , and so providing good raw material for civilization . And in a few this mode of thought ends in the generalization that all evolutions of humanity subserve , in the times and places in which they occur , some useful function ; that though bad in the abstract , they are relatively good , are the best which the then existing conditions admit of .
This generalization commits those who arrive at it to sundry startling propositions . It involves , for example , the assertion that polygamy was once beneficial . I have myself that faith in the generalization , that even were there no saying how polygamy could ever have been beneficial , I should incline to the opinion that it was so . But the assertion may be justified . I think it may be shown , that like war , and like slavery , polygamy , in the earlier stages of human progress , helps to secure the supremacy and multiplication of the best . For conceding as we must , that in . all states of society the men who acquire wealth and power are men who possess , in a more than average degree , the faculties needed in that state of society—facilities which , though little to be admired in themselves , are yet good relatively to surrounding conditions ; conceding this , it will follow that the men who , under a polygamous regime are able to obtain and to support more wives than one , must be men superior to the average ; and hence there must result an increased multiplication of the
best , and a diminished multiplication of the worst . If the moral degradation accompanying the system be urged as a more than counterbalancing evil , it is replied that there cannot be degradation until there has been elevation , and that under the phase of character to which polygamy appears natural , the moral elevation is not great enough to Tender degradation possible . The feelings to which the institution is repugnant are the growths of a higher civilization . When they begin to make their appearance , polygamy begins to be morally hurtful . But until they do so , there is no such set-off to the benefits achieved . Tims it becomes
possible to hold , that vicious as such a relationship of the sexes is in the abstract , there are conditions under which it produces more good than hai-m . Anotlier startling conclusion to which this faith in the essential beneficence of things commits us . , that the religious creeds through which mankind successively pass are during the eras in which they are severally held the best tliat could be held ; and that this is true , not only of tho latest and most refined creeds , but of all , even to the earliest and most gross . Those who regard men's faiths as given to them from without as having origins either directly divine or diabolical , and who , considering
their own as the sole example of tho one , class all the rest under the other , will think this a very shocking opinion . I can imagine , too , that many of thoso who have abandoned current theologies—who have como to look at religions as so many natural phenomena , so many products of human nature—who , having lost that antagonism to wards their old creed which they felt whilst shaking themselves free from it , can now see that it was highly beneficial to past generations , and is benef icial still to a large part of mankind . loan imagine oven these hardly prepared to admit , that all religions , down to tho lowest Fetichism , have , in their places , fulfilled useful functions . If such , however , will consistently develop their thinking , they will find this inference involved .
For on following out the doctrine that humanity in its social , as well as in its individual manifestatioiiH , is a , growth , and not a manufacture it bocomes obvious , that during each phase , mini ' s theologies , a « well ' their political and nocial arrangements , are determined into siidh forms as tho conditions require . In the one case , as in tho others , by a tentative pr ocess , things from time to time re-settle themselves in a way that best consists with sooial equilibrium . Ah out of plots , and the BlruL ^ les of chieftains , it continually results that the strongest gets to the <; op and bv virtue of his proud superiority , ensures a period of quiet , and ^ iVOH ' societv time to grow ; as out of incidental expedients there periodically arise now divisions o labour , which get permanently established only bv serving men ' s wants better than the previous arrangements did Ho ( he creed which each period evolves must bo the ono most in conformity with the needs of the tune . Not to . rust , . m general s tatements , however lei us consider why this must be ho . Lot us see whether , in the genesis ' of men's ideas of deity , there is not involved a necessity to concei ve ofdeiiv under tho ' aspecli most influential with them . J ' ' '*
It is now generally admitted that a more or leas idealized lninmnif v is the form which every conception of a personal God must take . Antliro poinorphisni is an inevitable result of the . laws of thought . We ennnot take a Htep towards constructing an idea of <» od ; we canno t oven sneak of a divine will without the ascription of human attributes , for \ Ve l / now nothing of volition , Have as a property of our own minds . Whilst this anthromorphie tendency , or rather necessity , i « manifested by themBolvea with sufficient groflsnosa—a groBBnoBa that ia offensive ' to
those more advanced—Christians are vehemently indignant at the still grosser manifestations of it seen amongst uncivilized men . Certainly such conceptions as those of some Polynesians , who believe that their gods feed upon the souls of the dead , or as those of the Greeks , who ascribed to the personages of their Pantheon every vice , fro m domestic cannibalism downwards , are repulsive enough . But if we cease to regard these notions from the outside as they look to us , and more philosophically consider them from the inside as they look to believers , and observe the relationships they bear to the natures and needs of such , we shall begin to think of them with some tolerance . ^ The question to be considered is , whether these beliefs were beneficent in their effects over those who held them ; not whether they would be beneficent for us or for perfect men ; and thus considered , we shall see , that whilst absolutely bad , they were relatively good .
Eor is it not obvious that the savage man will be most effectually controlled by his fears of a savage deity ? Must it not happen , that if his nature requires great restraint , the supposed consequences of transgression , to be a check upon Jiim , must be proportionately terrible ; and for these to be proportionately terrible , must not his god be conceived as proportionately cruel and revengeful ? Is it not well that the treacherous thievish , lying Hindoo should believe in a hell where the wicked are fastened to red-hot iron pillars , boiled in caldrons , rolled down mountains bristling with knives , and sawn asunder between flaming iron posts ? and that there may be provided such a hell , is it not needful that he should believe in a divinity , delighting in human immolations , and the self-torture of fakirs ? Does it not seem clear , that during th e earlier times of Christendom , when men ' s feelings were so hard as that a holv
father of the church could describe one of the delights of heaven to be the contemplation of the torments of the damned—does it not seem clear that , whilst the general nature was so unsympathetic , there needed to keep men in order all the prospective tortures described by Dante , and a deity implacable enough to inflict them P And if it be admitted , as I think it must , that it is well for the savage man to believe in a savage god , then we at once see the great usefulness of this anthromorphie tendency , or , as before said , necessity . We have in it another illustration of that essential beneficence of things seen everywhere throughout nature . This inability under which we labour to conceive of a deity , save as some idealization of ourselves , inevitably involves that in each age , amongst each people , and to a great extent , in mcuvrauaitnere snail arise tnat oi
eacn . , just conception aeity Dest adapted to the needs of the case . If , being violent and bloodthirsty , the nature be one calling for stringent control , it involves the idea of a ruler equally violent and bloodthirsty , and fitted to afford this control . When , by ages of discipline , of adaptation to the social state , the degree of restraint required has become less , the diabolical characteristics before ascribed to the deity are less predominant in the conception of him . And gradually , as all need for restraint disappears , this conception approximates towards that of a purely beneficent necessity . Thus man ' s constitution is in this ,
as in other respects , self-adjusting , self-balancing . The mind itself evolves a compensating check to its own movements , varying always in proportion to the requirement . Its centrifugal and its centripetal forces are necessarily in correspondence , because the one generates the other . We see that the forms of both religious and secular rule follow the same lawthat as an ill-controlled national character produces a despotic terrestrial government , so also does it produce a despotic celestial government , the one acting through the senses , tho other through the imagination ; and that in the converse case the same relationship holds good .
Organic as this relationship is in its origin . no artificial interference can permanently affect it . Whatever perturbations an external agency may seem to produce , they are soon neutralized in part , if not in appearance . I was recently struck with this in reading a missionary account of tho " gracious visitations of the Holy Spirit at Vewa , " one of the JPeejoo islands . Describing a " penitent meeting , " the account says : — " Certainly the feelings of tho Vewa people were not ordinary . They literally roared for hours together for tho disquietude of their souls . This frequently terminated in fainting from exhaustion , which was tho only respite some of them had till they found peace . They no sooner recovered their consciousness , than they prayed themselves first into an agony , and then again into a state of entire insensibility . "
JNow these Feojeo islanders arc the most savage of all tho uncivilized races . They are given to cannibalism , infanticide , and human sacrifices ; they are so bloodthirsty and so treacherous , that members of the samo famil y dare not trust each other ; and , in harmony with these characteristics , they have for tbeir aboriginal god a serpent . ' Is it not clear then , that these violent emotions which the missionaries describe , these terrors and agonies of despair which they rejoiced over , wore nothing but the worship of the old god under a new name ? Is it not clear that theseFcojces hud . simply understood and assimilated those parts of tho Christian creed which agree in spirit with their own—the vengeancethe perpetual torments ,
, the diabolism of it ; that these harmonizing with their natural conceptions of divine rule , they realized them with extreme vividness , and that the extremity of the fear which made them "literally roar for hours together , '' arose from the fuel , that , wIuIhI , they could fully take in and believe , the primitive element , the meroif « 1 one was beyond their comprehensionP riiis is the obvious inference . And if it bo admitted , it ( fairies with it the further one , that in essence their new belief . was merely their old one under a new form—the same 'substantial conception with a new history and new names .
However great , therefore , may bo the sec-wing change adventitiously produced in a people ' s religion , the anthropomorphic tendency provonts it from being other than a superficial change—insures such modifications of tho new religion as to give it nil the potency of the old one—obscures whatever higher elements Ihero may be in it unl . il the people Juivo reached the capability of being acted upon by them , and so re-establishes the equilibrium between the impulHes and the control they need . If any ono required detailed illustration of this , he will find it in abundance m the history of tho modifications of Christianity throughout . Europe .
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Wo should do cur utmost to encourage the Beautiful , for tbo Useful encourages ' itself . —Gobthb . ¦
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1076 THE LEADER . ' [ Satcrbay , "
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Nov. 5, 1853, page 1076, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2011/page/20/
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