Professor Kohler points out that in the history of the world’s religions, although the belief in the omnipotence of God has become so widespread, it is not thought inconsistent that a Buddha, claiming to incarnate the Supreme Being completely within himself, should appear.
Man’s Craving for Religion
Religion is belief in God; that is, belief in spiritual forces inseparable from and interwoven through the universe—forces that render all things distinct and separate, yet make all coalescent and firm, permeating all, and giving to every object its individuality. Man is impelled by Nature to conceive of the universe as divine. This idea exhibits itself universally among primitive folk in the form of animism—a belief that the entire internal and external world is animated, filled with supernatural beings that have originally no determinate nature, but which may appear in the most varied of forms, may vanish and may create themselves anew, as clouds arise from unseen vapour in the air. Spirits are supposed to be not far removed from man; families as well as individuals consider themselves to stand more or less in connection with them; and men, too, have a share in the invisible world when they have cast aside the garment of the body in dream or in death. Thus, every man is thought to have his protecting spirit, his manitou, that reveals itself to him through signs and dreams. Special incarnations, objects in which supernatural beings are inherent or with which they are in some way connected, are called “fetiches”; hence arises fetichism, in regard to which the strangest ideas were held in previous centuries when the science of anthropology was unknown. Trees, rocks, rivers, bits of wood, images of one’s own making—any of these are thought capable of containing beings of divine nature. Naturally, the tree or the fragment of wood or of stone is not worshipped, as men formerly thought, but the spirit that is believed to have entered it. In many cases the belief approaches worship of Nature, especially among agricultural peoples. Divinity is recognised in the shape of factors essential to agriculture—sun, sky, lightning, thunder; these being the beneficent deities, in contrast to whom are the earth-spirits who bring pestilences, earthquakes, and other evils to mankind. Thus the cult is refined; spirits are no longer attached to fetiches, but men worship the heavens, and the earth also. Religion accompanies man from birth to death. Spirits both for good and for evil are supposed to hover about him at his very birth. The soul of some being—perhaps an animal, perhaps an ancestor—enters into the new-born child, and from this spirit he receives his name.
Oftentimes there is a new consecration at the time of marriage; often when an heir-apparent succeeds to the chieftainship. At his decease primitive folk believe that man enters the realm of shadows. At first he hovers over the sea or river of death, and often only after having passed through many hardships does he arrive in the new kingdom, where he either continues to live after the manner of his former existence, or, according to whether his life on earth has been good or evil, inhabits a higher or a lower supernatural sphere. To the dead are consecrated their personal possessions—horses, slaves, wives even—that they may make use of them during the new existence; men go head-hunting in order to send them new helpmates. On the other hand great care is often taken that the spirits of the departed, satisfied with their new existence, may no longer molest the world of the living: propitiative offerings are made; men avoid mentioning the name of the departed, that he may not be tempted to visit them with his presence; they seek to make themselves unrecognisable during the time immediately following his death, wear different clothes, and adopt other dwelling-places. Sometimes the light placed near the deceased for the purpose of guiding him back to his old home is moved further and further away, so that his ghost, unable to find the right path, shall never return.
Thus the belief in spirits encompasses primitive man, following him step by step.
The Belief in Many Gods
From animism develops worship of heroes and polytheism, with their attendant mythological narrations. The idea of the unity of the supernatural world becomes lost; and the indefinite forms of spirit become separate, independent beings, that are developed more and more in the direction of the souls either of animals or of men. This splitting up of the deity, which destroys the tendency toward unity in religion, is followed by a reaction that comes about partly through a belief in creation by a father of the gods, partly through acceptance of a historical origin of the mythological world from a single source (theogonic myths), and partly through direct banishment of the plurality of gods and a new formation of the belief in a unity according either to theistic or to pantheistic ideas. In spite of the conception of a world permeated and pervaded by God alone, the belief that certain persons and places are more powerful in respect to the divinity than others is retained; and the appearance from time to time of a Buddha who incarnates and manifests the Supreme Being directly and completely within himself—in a special manner apart from other natural phenomena—is also not looked upon as inconsistent.