Illustrations of Universal Progress: A Series of Discussions

by Herbert Spencer

That the harmony exists is clear. Equally in the cases of Egypt, Assyria, Greece, and Rome, town life preceded the construction of the symmetrical buildings that have come down to us. And town life is one in which, as already observed, the majority of familiar objects are symmetrical. We instinctively feel the naturalness of this association. Out amid the fields, a formal house, with a central door flanked by an equal number of windows to right and left, strikes us as unrural—looks as though transplanted from a street; and we cannot look at one of those stuccoed villas, with mock windows carefully arranged to balance the real ones, without being reminded of the suburban residence of a retired tradesman.

In styles indigenous in the country, we not only find the general irregularity characteristic of surrounding things, but we may trace some kinship between each kind of irregularity and the local circumstances. We see the broken rocky masses amid which castles are commonly placed, mirrored in their stern, inorganic forms. In abbeys, and such-like buildings, which are commonly found in comparatively sheltered districts, we find no such violent dislocations of masses and outlines; and the nakedness appropriate to the fortress is replaced by decorations reflecting the neighbouring woods. Between a Swiss cottage and a Swiss view there is an evident relationship. The angular roof, so bold and so disproportionately large when compared to other roofs, reminds one of the adjacent mountain peaks; and the broad overhanging eaves have a sweep and inclination like those of the lower branches of a pine tree. Consider, too, the apparent kinship between the flat roofs that prevail in Eastern cities, interspersed with occasional minarets, and the plains that commonly surround them, dotted here and there by palm trees. You cannot contemplate a picture of one of these places, without being struck by the predominance of horizontal lines, and their harmony with the wide stretch of the landscape.

That the congruity here pointed out should hold in every case must not be expected. The Pyramids, for example, do not seem to come under this generalization. Their repeated horizontal lines do indeed conform to the flatness of the neighbouring desert; but their general contour seems to have no adjacent analogue. Considering, however, that migrating races, carrying their architectural systems with them, would naturally produce buildings having no relationship to their new localities; and that it is not always possible to distinguish styles which are indigenous, from those which are naturalized; numerous anomalies must be looked for.

The general idea above illustrated will perhaps be somewhat misinterpreted. Possibly some will take the proposition to be that men intentionally gave to their buildings the leading characteristics of neighbouring objects. But this is not what is meant. I do not suppose that they did so in times past, any more than they do so now. The hypothesis is, that in their choice of forms men are unconsciously influenced by the forms encircling them. That flat-roofed, symmetrical architecture should have originated in the East, among pastoral tribes surrounded by their herds and by wide plains, seems to imply that the builders were swayed by the horizontality and symmetry to which they were habituated. And the harmony which we have found to exist in other cases between indigenous styles and their localities, implies the general action of like influences. Indeed, on considering the matter psychologically, I do not see how it could well be otherwise. For as all conceptions must be made up of images, and parts of images, received through the senses—as it is impossible for a man to conceive any design save one of which the elements have come into his mind from without; and as his imagination will most readily run in the direction of his habitual perceptions; it follows, almost necessarily, that the characteristic which predominates in these habitual perceptions must impress itself on his design.

XIII.
THE USE OF ANTHROPOMORPHISM.

That long fit of indignation which seizes all generous natures when in youth they begin contemplating human affairs, having fairly spent itself, there slowly grows up a perception that the institutions, beliefs, and forms so vehemently condemned are not wholly bad. This reaction runs to various 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 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 reaction ends in the generalization that all modes of human thought and action 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.

A 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 best 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 have abandoned current theologies, and now regard religions as so many natural products of human nature—men who, having lost that antagonism towards their old creed which they felt while shaking themselves free from it, can now see that it was highly beneficial to past generations, and is beneficial still to a large part of mankind;—I can imagine even these hardly prepared to admit that all religions, down to the lowest Fetichism, have, in their places, fulfilled useful functions. If such, however, will consistently develop their ideas, they will find this inference involved.

For if it be true that humanity in its corporate as well as in its individual aspect, is a growth and not a manufacture, it is obvious that during each phase men's theologies, as well as their political and social arrangements, must be determined into such forms as the conditions require. In the one case as in the other, by a tentative process, things from time to time re-settle themselves in a way that best consists with national equilibrium. As out of plots and the struggles of chieftains, it continually results that the strongest gets to the top, and by virtue of his proved superiority ensures a period of quiet, and gives society 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; so, the creed which each period evolves is one more in conformity with the needs of the time than the creed which preceded it. Not to rest in general statements, however, let us consider why this must be so. Let us see whether, in the genesis of men's ideas of deity, there is not involved a necessity to conceive of deity under the aspect most influential with them.

It is now generally admitted that a more or less idealized humanity is 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 step towards constructing an idea of God without the ascription of human attributes. We cannot even speak of a divine will without assimilating the divine nature to our own; for we know nothing of volition save as a property of our own minds.