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1076 THE LEADER. [Satpspay , ¦ ' ^ . -. ...
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Wo should do cut utmost to encourage the...
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No. VII. THE USE OF ANTHROPOMOKPHISM:. f...
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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1076 The Leader. [Satpspay , ¦ ' ^ . -. ...
1076 THE LEADER . [ Satpspay , ¦ ' ^ . -. . . j ^__^_ j ^^^ Mm ^^ M ^^ m ^^^ M ^^_^^^ m ^__^ j __ ' » ^ . L _
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Wo Should Do Cut Utmost To Encourage The...
Wo should do cut utmost to encourage the Beautiful , for tb « Useful encourages itself . —Gobthb .
No. Vii. The Use Of Anthropomokphism:. F...
No . VII . THE USE OF ANTHROPOMOKPHISM :. 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 rmp . p . Kfvnp . firvial . T li a . vp . rnvsftlf that , faith in ¦ fch fi P"p / nfiTa , lizat , i n-n . + Tin . t , p > -cvvn - Bf m , ¦¦¦ ta m
^^ bO *^ ^^ 1 h ^ |^^ ^^ ^ L- ^ l ^ > r T _>_ . _ -p ^ g ^_ | J » 11- ¦ - *^ &&* - J ^ h ^ ^ rfr m *? ^ ^ ^>^* «* ^^ I w ^»^» - ^^^ ^ ^ . ^^^^ v f ^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^ " ^ »^» ^ . ^ fc ^^ ^ b ^ h « 1 " 11 ' ^^ ^ J f * * * ft 1 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 supre - macy 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—faculties which , though little to he 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 Ttnen superior to the
average ; and hence there must result an increased multiplication of the beat , 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 render 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 . Thus it becomes possible to hold , that vicious aa such a relationship of the sexes is in the
abstract , there are conditions under which it produces more good than harm . Another startling conclusion to which this faith in the essential beneficence of things commits us is , that the religious creeds through which mankind successively pass are during the eras in which they are severally held the beat that could be held ; and that this is true , not only of the 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 the one , class all the rest under
the other , will think this a very shocking opinion . I can imagine , too that many of those who havo abandoned current theologies who have come to look at religions as so many natural phenomena , so many pro - ducts of human nature—who , having lost that antagonism towards their old creed which they felt whilst Blinking themselves free from it , can now eoo that it was highly beneficial to past generations , and in beneficial still to a large part of mankind . I can imagine even those hardly prepared to admit , that all religions , down to the lowest Fetiehism , 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 woll as in its individual manifestations , is a growth , and not a manufacture it becomes obvious ,. that during each pha . se , men ' s theologies , m wolf as their political and social arrangements , are determined into such forms as tho conditions require . In the one ease , an in the others , by a tentative process , things from time to time re-settle themselves in a wuy that h <\ s ( consists with " social equilibrium . Ah out of plots , and the strngd ' os of chieftains , it continually results that the strongest gets to the ton and [) v virtue of his proud superiority , ensures a period of nuiet , and irJv < ' ' , j ( , fcJ time to grow ; as out of incidental expedients there periodically arise new divisions of labour , which get permanently established only by serving men's wants better than the previous arrangements did ¦ soilm must tlio
creed which each period evolves Do one most in conformity willi the needs of the time . Not to rest in general statement , however let us consider why this must bo ho . Let us , see whether , j u t \ w g ( V ,, (> H 1 ' j men ' s ideas of deity , there is not involved a necessity to conceive of deity under the aspect most influential with them . J It i . s now generally admitted that a more or loss idealized humanity in the form which every conception of a personal God must take . Anthropomorphism is an inevitable result of the laws of thought . " We cannot take a stop towards constructing un idea of God ; we cannot oven spcnl < of a divine will without the ascription of human attribute ^ for wo know nothing of volition , save an a property of our own minds . ' Whilst this anthroinorphie tendency , or rather necessity , in luanifcstod l > y UiouihoIvch with tmificiojut grosBnoea—a groBHuesa that ia offensive to
those more advaneed--Christians are vehemently indignant at the still grosser manifestations of it seen amongst uncivilized men . Oertainlv 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 , from domestic cannibalism downwards , are repulsive eno ugh . But if we cease to regard these notions from the outside as they look to us , and more philosopliicallv consider them from the inside as they look to believers , and observe t he relationships they bear to the natures and needs of such , we shall beein 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 .
For 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 groat restraint , the supposed consequences of transgression , to be a check upon him , must be proportionately terrible ; ana 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 flamin g 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 the earlier times of Christendom , when men ' s feelings were so hard as that a holy 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 ? 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 anthromorphic tendency , or , as before said , necessity . We have in it another illustration of that essential beneficence of things seem
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 , im each individual , there shall arise just that conception of deity best 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 , ll need for restraint
as a 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 the" gracious visitations of the Holy Spirit at Vewa , " one of the Feejoe * islands . Describing a " penitent meeting , " the account says : " Certainly tho feelings of the Vewa people were not ordinary . They literally roared for hours together for the 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 . "
Now these Feejee islanders are the most savage of all the uncivilized races . They are given to cannibalism , infanticide , and human sacrifices ; they are so bloodthirsty and so treacherous , that members of the same famil y dare not trust each other ; and , in harmony with these characteristics ,, they have for their aboriginal god a serpent . Is it not clear then , that these violent emotions which the missionaries describe , these terrors ami agonies of despair which they rejoiced over , were nothing but the worship ' of the old god under a new name P Is it nob clear that these Foojees had simply understood and assimilated those parts of the Christian creed which agree in spirit with their own—the vengeance , the 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 fact thai , whilst they could fully take in and believe the primitive element , the merciful one was beyond their comprehensionP Phis is the obvious inference . And if it be admitted , it carries with it the further one , that in essence their new belief was merely their old one under a tww form—the same substantial conception with a new history and new names .
However great , therefore , may be the seeming change adventitiously produced in a people ' s religion , the anthropomorphic tendency prevents it from being other than n , superficial change !—insures such modifications of the new religion as to give it all the potency of the old one—obscures whatever higher elements there may be in it until the people have reached tho capability of being acted upon by them , and so re-establishes the equilibrium between the impulHcs and the control they need . If any one requires dotailed illustration of this , ho will find it in abundance in the history of tho modifications of Gliristiiuuly tlu'oughout Europe .
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Nov. 5, 1853, page 20, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_05111853/page/20/
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