Pagan and Christian Creeds [40]
enlightened consciousness of its own intimate quality, and still deeply penetrated with the sense of its kinship to external nature, it would inevitably and perfectly logically credit the latter with an inner life and intelligence, more distinctly human than before. Its religion in fact would become MORE 'anthropomorphic' instead of less so; and one sees that this is a process that is inevitable; and inevitable notwithstanding a certain parenthesis in the process, due to obvious elements in our 'Civilization' and to the temporary and fallacious domination of a leaden-eyed so-called 'Science.' According to this view the true evolution of Religion and Man's outlook on the world has proceeded not by the denial by man of his unity with the world, but by his seeing and understanding that unity more deeply. And the more deeply he understands himself the more certainly he will recognize in the external world a Being or beings resembling himself.
W. H. Hudson--whose mind is certainly not of a quality to be jeered at--speaks of Animism as "the projection of ourselves into nature: the sense and apprehension of an intelligence like our own, but more powerful, in all visible things"; and continues, "old as I am this same primitive faculty which manifested itself in my early boyhood, still persists, and in those early years was so powerful that I am almost afraid to say how deeply I was moved by it."[1] Nor will it be quite forgotten that Shelley once said:--
The moveless pillar of a mountain's weight Is active living spirit. Every grain Is sentient both in unity and part, And the minutest atom comprehends A world of loves and hatreds.
[1] Far Away and Long Ago, ch. xiii, p. 225.
The tendency to animism and later to anthropomorphism is I say inevitable, and perfectly logical. But the great value of the work done by some of those investigators whom I have quoted has been to show that among quite primitive people (whose interior life and 'soul-sense' was only very feeble) their projections of intelligence into Nature were correspondingly feeble. The reflections of themselves projected into the world beyond could not reach the stature of eternal 'gods,' but were rather of the quality of ephemeral phantoms and ghosts; and the ceremonials and creeds of that period are consequently more properly described as, Magic than as Religion. There have indeed been great controversies as to whether there has or has not been, in the course of religious evolution, a PRE- animistic stage. Probably of course human evolution in this matter must have been perfectly continuous from stages presenting the very feeblest or an absolutely deficient animistic sense to the very highest manifestations of anthropomorphism; but as there is a good deal of evidence to show that ANIMALS (notably dogs and horses) see ghosts, the inquiry ought certainly to be enlarged so far as to include the pre-human species. Anyhow it must be remembered that the question is one of CONSCIOUSNESS-- that is, of how far and to what degree consciousness of self has been developed in the animal or the primitive man or the civilized man, and therefore how far and to what degree the animal or human creature has credited the outside world with a similar consciousness. It is not a question of whether there IS an inner life and SUB-consciousness common to all these creatures of the earth and sky, because that, I take it, is a fact beyond question; they all emerge or have emerged from the same matrix, and are rooted in identity; but it is a question of how far they are AWARE of this, and how far by separation (which is the genius of evolution) each individual creature has become conscious of the interior nature both of itself and of the other creatures AND of the great whole which includes them all.
Finally, and to avoid misunderstanding, let me say that Anthropomorphism, in man's conception of the gods, is itself of course only a stage and destined to pass away. In so far, that is, as the term indicates a belief in divine beings corresponding to our PRESENT conception of ourselves
W. H. Hudson--whose mind is certainly not of a quality to be jeered at--speaks of Animism as "the projection of ourselves into nature: the sense and apprehension of an intelligence like our own, but more powerful, in all visible things"; and continues, "old as I am this same primitive faculty which manifested itself in my early boyhood, still persists, and in those early years was so powerful that I am almost afraid to say how deeply I was moved by it."[1] Nor will it be quite forgotten that Shelley once said:--
The moveless pillar of a mountain's weight Is active living spirit. Every grain Is sentient both in unity and part, And the minutest atom comprehends A world of loves and hatreds.
[1] Far Away and Long Ago, ch. xiii, p. 225.
The tendency to animism and later to anthropomorphism is I say inevitable, and perfectly logical. But the great value of the work done by some of those investigators whom I have quoted has been to show that among quite primitive people (whose interior life and 'soul-sense' was only very feeble) their projections of intelligence into Nature were correspondingly feeble. The reflections of themselves projected into the world beyond could not reach the stature of eternal 'gods,' but were rather of the quality of ephemeral phantoms and ghosts; and the ceremonials and creeds of that period are consequently more properly described as, Magic than as Religion. There have indeed been great controversies as to whether there has or has not been, in the course of religious evolution, a PRE- animistic stage. Probably of course human evolution in this matter must have been perfectly continuous from stages presenting the very feeblest or an absolutely deficient animistic sense to the very highest manifestations of anthropomorphism; but as there is a good deal of evidence to show that ANIMALS (notably dogs and horses) see ghosts, the inquiry ought certainly to be enlarged so far as to include the pre-human species. Anyhow it must be remembered that the question is one of CONSCIOUSNESS-- that is, of how far and to what degree consciousness of self has been developed in the animal or the primitive man or the civilized man, and therefore how far and to what degree the animal or human creature has credited the outside world with a similar consciousness. It is not a question of whether there IS an inner life and SUB-consciousness common to all these creatures of the earth and sky, because that, I take it, is a fact beyond question; they all emerge or have emerged from the same matrix, and are rooted in identity; but it is a question of how far they are AWARE of this, and how far by separation (which is the genius of evolution) each individual creature has become conscious of the interior nature both of itself and of the other creatures AND of the great whole which includes them all.
Finally, and to avoid misunderstanding, let me say that Anthropomorphism, in man's conception of the gods, is itself of course only a stage and destined to pass away. In so far, that is, as the term indicates a belief in divine beings corresponding to our PRESENT conception of ourselves