[CHAPTER XV]
GOD AND THE WORLD
The Idea of God in General—Antithesis of God and the World; the Supernatural and Nature—Theism and Pantheism—Chief Forms of Theism—Polytheism—Triplotheism—Amphitheism—Monotheism—Religious Statistics—Naturalistic Monotheism—Solarism—Anthropistic Monotheism—The Three Great Mediterranean Religions—Mosaism—Christianity—The Cult of the Madonna and the Saints—Papal Polytheism—Islam—Mixotheism—Nature of Theism—An Extra-mundane and Anthropomorphic God; a Gaseous Vertebrate—Pantheism—Intramundane God (Nature)—The Hylozoism of the Ionic Monists (Anaximander)—Conflict of Pantheism and Christianity—Spinoza—Modern Monism—Atheism
For thousands of years humanity has placed the last and supreme basis of all phenomena in an efficient cause, to which it gives the title of God (deus, theos). Like all general ideas, this notion of God has undergone a series of remarkable modifications and transformations in the course of the evolution of reason. Indeed, it may be said that no other idea has had so many metamorphoses; for no other belief affects in so high a degree the chief objects of the mind and of rational science, as well as the deepest interests of the emotion and poetic fancy of the believer.
A comparative criticism of the many different forms of the idea of God would be extremely interesting and instructive; but we have not space for it in the present work. We must be content with a passing glance at the most important forms of the belief and their relation to the modern thought that has been evoked by a sound study of nature. For further information on this interesting question the reader would do well to consult the distinguished work of Adalbert Svoboda, Forms of Faith (1897).
When we pass over the finer shades and the variegated clothing of the God-idea and confine our attention to its chief element, we can distribute all the different presentations of it in two groups—the theistic and pantheistic group. The latter is closely connected with the monistic, or rational, view of things, and the former is associated with dualism and mysticism.
I.—THEISM
In this view God is distinct from, and opposed to, the world as its creator, sustainer, and ruler. He is always conceived in a more or less human form, as an organism which thinks and acts like a man—only on a much higher scale. This anthropomorphic God, polyphyletically evolved by the different races, assumes an infinity of shapes in their imagination, from fetichism to the refined monotheistic religions of the present day. The chief forms of theism are polytheism, triplotheism, amphitheism, and monotheism.
The polytheist peoples the world with a variety of gods and goddesses, which enter into its machinery more or less independently. Fetichism sees such subordinate deities in the lifeless body of nature, in rocks, in water, in the air, in human productions of every kind (pictures, statues, etc.). Demonism sees gods in living organisms of every species—trees, animals, and men. This kind of polytheism is found in innumerable forms even in the lowest tribes. It reaches the highest stage in Hellenic polytheism, in the myths of ancient Greece, which still furnish the finest images to the modern poet and artist. At a much lower stage we have Catholic polytheism, in which innumerable “saints” (many of them of very equivocal repute) are venerated as subordinate divinities, and prayed to to exert their mediation with the supreme divinity.