Anthropomorphism [pp. 120-144]

THE PRINCE TON RE VIFE W.
We outdo the traditional ostrich if we bury our heads in the
sands of conservatism, and cry out that there is no truth in the
criticisms which pursue us. It is true-we might as well admit
the fact first as last-that we have arrived at our present concept of deity through childish forms of representation, from
which, in our higher culture, we recoil as grossly anthropomorphic. The question of an original monotheism has nothing to
do with it. That monotheism, if it existed, was prehistoric.
History begins with degraded representations of God in pictured imagery. Our school-boys know the wretched mythologies of the Greeks and Romans. The earliest God of the Chinese
did not rise above a famous king or one's great-grandfather.
Brahmanism was originally the worship of physical forces. The
best apology for a God which Buddhism could offer was Buddha
himself. The Persians worshipped fire; the Egyptians, cows.
The Jews, with all their monotheism, pictured a God with eyes
and arms and feet, a God who would become angry and then
repent,nd make amends.
Primitive man was but a child. He must have his blocks
and his blackboard. But here and there, even at a very early
date, exceptionally keen thinkers saw through the pictures and
recognized the grand mystery which they so inadequately symbolized.' Unto whom will ye liken God?" cries the greatest of
prophets. "There is no searching of his understanding." And,
in the same strain, the earliest Greek Mystic writes:
"Such things of the.gods are related by Homer and Hesiod
As would be shame and abiding disgrace to any of mankind:
Promises broken, and thefts, and the one deceiving the other.
But men foolishly think that gods are born like as men are,
And have, too, a dress like their own, and their voice and their figure.
But if oxen and lions had hands like ours, and fingers,
Then would horses like unto horses, and oxen to oxen,
Paint and fashion their god-forms, and give to them bodies
Of like shape to their own, as they themselves too are fashioned."
Spencer and his fellow-critics have the advantage of Isaiah
and Xenophanes in their more extended knowledge of historic
fact and historic metaphysics. With the exception of the scientific attack upon the supernatural in nature, there is no question of modern discussion so important as this of the legitimate
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