# Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)/Deity

From volume 4 of the work.
(Fr. déité; L.L. deitas; Lat. deue, divus, "the divine nature", "godhead", "god").
The original meaning of the word is shown in the Sanskrit dyaus, gen. divas, root div, which root appears in an adjective formation as deva, "bright", "heavenly" -- attributes of God -- hence devas, "the bright beings", or, as a noun substantive, dyaus. In its substantive form, dyaus is either masculine e.g. "heaven", "sky" -- or feminine, as Heaven (personified). Hence, in the Avesta daeva, "evil spirit" Lith. deva, "a god"; Gael. and Irish dia, "god"; O. Teut. tiu; A.S. Tiw (e.g. Tuesday, i.e. Tiwesday); Gr. Zeus (gen. Dios Lat. Jupiter (i.e. Jov-pater). From the same root we have the Lat. names of deities: Diana, Janus, Juno, Dis, the genitive Jovis (Diovis), and the word dies.
The present article is confined to the non-Christian notion of the Deity. The Christian idea is set forth elsewhere under the section GOD. The data, therefore, are drawn from the new science of the history of religions. They embrace written records, customs, laws, life, language. The earliest documents of history show that religion had long existed at the time of their composition. For a long time some deity had been adored, had received sacrifices, and no one could recall the beginning of these ancient rites. Many histories of religion published in recent years are made up of hypotheses pure and simple, often far removed from the facts on which they are based -- often absolutely arbitrary. The scientific spirit demands statements of facts verified beyond dispute or inductions in accord with facts. Thus viewed, the history of religions shows on the subject of the Deity:
Religion, in its most general sense, is a universal phenomenon of mankind. At times this conception appears lofty and pure, again it is comparatively crude and involved in a mass of superstitious fancy. Yet, however imperfect and childish the expression may seem, it represents the highest idea of the Deity which the mind, for the time and under the circumstances, grasped.
I. DEITY CONCEIVED AS A MIX OF POLYTHEISTIC AND MONOTHEISTIC ELEMENTS
Religious life among savage peoples of today -- as among pagan nations before Christianity -- resembles the entangled confusion of a forest where trees, brambles, and creepers, of all ages and sizes, are to be seen interlacing, supporting and crushing each other with their earthy growths, while, above the topmost branches, is caught a glimpse of the blue sky of heaven.
The religion of paganism in general is Polytheism, which has been accounted for by theories of Animism, Fetishism, Naturism, and the concrete forms of Anthropomorphism and Idolatry. The advocates of these various theories should be classed as theorists rather than historians. Taking the theory of evolution as a common starting point they hold that man arose from mere animals and that he is an animal gradually transformed. They differ only in the cause and nature of the religious development which resulted in the notion of the Deity. Here we reject all presuppositions and deal only with the historical aspect of the problem. In the words of one scholar, the primitive man of modern anthropology is "a pure fiction, however convenient a fiction he may be."
Paganism presents not a doctrine, but a grouping of customs and teachings different and often opposed, an incoherent mass of beliefs with various origins. Close analysis enables the student to separate the doctrinal streams and trace them to their proper sources. The luminous truth presented by this study is the corruption of religious ideas on the nature of the Deity by the tangled confusion of human growth. Sir A. C. Lyall (Asiatic Studies, Ser. II, p. 234), while rejecting the theory of a primitive revelation admits that "beyond doubt we find many beliefs and traditions running downward, spreading at a level much below their source". Following are some of the causes which contributed to produce this tangled profusion in the pagan conception of the Deity.
Deification of nature and her powers and of sensible objects
Of necessity the result was an inexhaustible variety of deities. As time went on, the divine assumed thousands of fanciful and fortuitous images and forms. Deification of the powers of nature led first to the worship of the elements. One divinity of the heavens stood in contrast with one of the earth. Fire, as the warming, nourishing, consuming, and destroying power, was early worshipped as a separate deity. Hence the Vestal Virgins in Rome, the Vedic Agni, the Fire-worshippers of Mazdeism, and the sacred fire of Shintoism. So also moisture or water, not only in general, but in its concrete forms, e.g. sea, lake, river, spring, cloud; and thus was had a fourth elemental deity. In the East, Astrolatry, or Sabaeism -- i.e. the worship of the stars that illumine the earth -- developed above all the worship of the sun. Where soil and vegetation was rich, the earth was regarded as a nursing mother, and Geolatry in many forms arose. In the Vedic hymns we can trace the transition from natural phenomena into natural deities -- e.g. Agni, i.e. fire, Varuna, i.e. heaven, Indra, i.e. the rain-clouds -- but even then doubts spring up, and the poetic writers ask themselves whether, after all, there are such things as the Devas. In Homer and Hesiod the forces of nature are conceived as persons -- e.g. Uranos (heaven); Nyx (night); Hypnos (sleep), Oneiros (dream), Oceanos (ocean) -- the answer of Achilles to the river Scamander "in human form, confessed before his eyes" (Iliad, XXI), and his prayer to the winds Boreas and Zephyrus, that they kindle the flames on the funeral pyre of Patroclus (Iliad, XXIII). Observation of the fact that in nature two energies -- one active and generative, the other passive and feminine -- combine, led men to associate heaven and earth, sun and moon, day and night, as common primal and motherly deities cooperating in the production of being. Hence the distinction of male divinities -- e.g. heaven, ether, sun -- and of female divinities e.g. earth, air, moon. From this only a step to the deification of the generative principle and the worship of the phallus.
Anthropomorphosis
The powers of nature were at first worshipped without form or name, afterwards humanized and regarded as persons. Thus Gaia, of ancient Pelasgic worship, appears as Rhea in Cretan traditions, as the Cybele of Asia Anterior, as Hera in Arcadia and Samos, as the goddess of nature Aphrodite, as Demeter. In Rome the Bona Dea of mystic rite, whose proper name was not to be spoken, was later akin to, or identified with, a number of Greek or Italian deities. De la Saussaye writes of ancient Babylono-Assyrian religion: "Among the influential words which could avert or expel evil, the most prominent were the names of the great gods; but these names were considered to be secret, and therefore people appealed to the god himself to pronounce them." In Samothrace the Cabiri -- i.e. great and mighty deities, the supreme powers of nature -- were adored at first without specific names. In old Latium the pontifices concealed the names of the gods. Herodotus says the Pelasgian deities were nameless. In the Vedic hymns the sacrificial tree, to which the sacrifices were attached, is thus addressed: "Where thou knowest, O Tree, the sacred names of the gods, to that place make the offerings go." According to de la Saussaye the deities of the Rig-Veda are but slightly individualized. To the formless gods of nature succeeded the deities of Homeric imagination, in human shape and with human feelings. In the judgment of Herodotus it was Homer and Hesiod who settled the theogony of the Greeks -- in fact laid the basis of the later Hellenic religion. The Greeks lavished the rich stores of their intellectual life upon their deities, humanized and severed them from natural phenomena. Hence the whole of nature was pervaded by a family of deities descending from the elements as primal gods, the individual members of which family were of kin to one another and in mutual relations of higher and lower older and younger, male and female, stronger and weaker; so that man, feeling himself surrounded on all sides by deities, discovered in the course of nature, and in her various phenomena, their actions, histories, and manifestations of their will. The conception of these deities was anthropopathic, in their motives and passions they were more powerful and more perfect men, they had a human body and a human countenance, human thoughts and feelings, they resided in the clouds or on a high mountain; they dwelt in a heavenly palace. Such an idea is incoherent and contradictory. In reality the Deity was nature. If its inanimate forms were personified and worshipped, why not animals and plants -- e.g. tree-worship?
Human Apotheosis
Human Apotheosis is another cause and equally prolific in later pagan times. Plutarch (in his "Romulus") enters at length into the question, how the soul, when separated from the body, advances into the state of heroism, and from a hero develops into a demon and from a demon becomes a god. To Cicero the doctrine of Euhemerism is the core and fundamental principle of the mysteries (de Nat. Deor., III xxi). With the Greeks it had been a custom to honour renowned or well-deserving men as heroes after death, e.g. Herakles, Theseus; but to pay divine honours to the living never entered into their minds in early times. Heroes or saintly men were regarded
St. Augustine's Observations
St. Augustine (Civ. Dei, IV, ii) discusses the opinion of Roman writers that all the manifold gods and goddesses of the Romans were in the final analysis but one Jupiter, for these deities melt away into each other on closer inspection. Thus we have a single god who by the dissection of his nature into various aspects of his powers, and by the personifying of his individual powers, has been resolved into a multiplicity of deities. The Romans thus broke up the idea of deity by hypostasizing particular powers, modes of operation, physical functions, and properties. By this process not only events in nature and in human life, but their various phases, qualities, and circumstances were considered apart as endowed with proper personalities, and worshipped as deities. Thus in the life of a child; Vaticanus opens his mouth, Cunina guards the cradle, Educa and Potina teach him to eat and drink, Fabulinus to speak, Statalinus helps him to stand up, Adeona and Abeona watch over his first footsteps. Since every act required a god, there was scarcely any limit to the inventive work of the imagination. And St. Augustine tells us (Civ. Dei, IV viii) that the Roman farmer was in the hands of a host of deities who assisted him at each stage of ploughing, hoeing, sowing, and reaping. Under such conditions we can understand how easily the cultured Roman could embrace the pantheism of Stoic philosophy, teaching the one creative all-ruling power of Nature -- itself a personification -- and at the same time permit the ignorant to personify and worship as distinct deities the various acts and phases by which this power was manifested.
Political element
A political element enters into the multiplication of deities in the Pagan world. To make a nation several tribes must unite. Each has its god, and the nation is apt to receive them all equally in its Pantheon. Or in time of war the victorious nation was not content to impose laws and tribute upon the conquered, it must displace the conquered deities by its own. Again, where ancient nations each having its own religion and mythology, were brought by commerce into close contact, the deities who showed a certain similarity were identified, and even their names were adopted by one language from another. According to Max Müller, Durga and Siva are not natural developments, nor mere corruptions of Vedic deities, but importations or adaptations from without. A striking illustration is furnished in the history of Rome. In the earlier times the chief deities were general nature-powers or mere abstractions of the State or family. They had no real personality. Thus the Lares came from Etruria, the chief of them being the Lar Familiaris, the divine head of the family, the personification of the creative power assuring the duration of the family; Vesta, the fire of the domestic hearth the protectress of the family, became identified later with the Greek Hestia. Afterwards, when Rome spread out into a world-power, it received into its Pantheon the deities of the nations conquered by its armies. Again, the political element becomes a more potent factor when deities are created by human enactment. Thus, in ancient Rome the pontifices had the right and care of making new deities. And in China today the Government orders posthumous honours and titles and deifications of men, gives titles and rewards to deities for supposed public service and exercises a control over Buddhist incarnations. The Emperor of China used the monopoly of deification as a constitutional prerogative, like the right of creating peers.
Language
A final explanation can be found in language. The words employed by the mind to designate spiritual facts are all drawn from conscious individual experience. In the beginning man naturally expressed the power and attributes of the deity in different words drawn from nature and from life. According to de la Saussaye the opinion is even expressed in the Rig-Veda that the many names of the gods are only different ways of denoting a single being. Now the tendency of language is to become crystallized. Words gradually lose their etymological force, and their original meaning is forgotten. They stand out as distinct and independent facts in our mental life. What was at first a sign becomes itself an object. Thus in the Vedic religion the Sun has many names -- Surya, Savitri, Mitra, Pushan, Aditya. Each of these names grew by itself into some kind of active personality after its original meaning had been forgotten. Originally all were meant to express one and the same object viewed from different points, e.g. Surya meant the Sun as offspring of the sky; Savitri the Sun as quickener or enlivener, Mitra the bright Sun of the morn; Pushan the Sun of the shepherds; Varuna was the sky as all-embracing; Aditya the sky as boundless. In this sense the Hindu gods have no more right to substantive existence than Eos or Nyx; they are nomina, not numina, i.e. words, not deities. So also in Egypt the Sun is Horus in the morning, Ra at midday, Tum in the evening, Osiris during the night. In another manner language may lead into error, as when Bancroft remarks that in many of the American languages the same word is used for storm and god. Brinton writes, "The descent is almost imperceptible which leads to the personification of wind as god". Goldzeher states that the Baghirami in Central Africa use the same term for storm and deity. The Akra people on the Gold Coast of Africa say, "Will God come?" for "Will it rain?" Here we have the same word with two meanings. Thus the Odjis, or Ashantis, call the deity by the same word as the sky, but mean a personal god who created all things and is the giver of all good things.
All pagan religions have zoomorphic, or partially zoomorphic, idols, deities in the shape of lower animals. Especially is this true of the Egyptian deities. But it is the sphere of totem-lore or mythology to explain these strange metamorphoses, which scandalized philosophers, and which Ovid set in verse for the cultured of his time.
II. EARLY MONOTHEISTIC NOTIONS OF DEITY
The human race has at all times and in various ways sought to express the notion of the deity. The history of religions, however, lays bare another truth: that the farther back we go in the history of religious thought, the purer becomes the notion of the deity. In the Rig-Veda, the most ancient of the Hindu sacred books, traces of a primitive monotheism are clearly shown. The Deity is called "the only existing being" who breathed, calmly self-contained, in the beginning before there was sky or atmosphere day or night, light or darkness. This being is not the barren philosophical entity found in the later Upanishads, for he is called "our Father", "our Creator", omniscient, who listens to prayers. Father Calmette maintains that the true God is taught in the Vedas. Again, "That which is and is one, the poets call in various ways", and it is declared to exist "in the form of the unborn being". Traces of a nature-religion are found in the Vedas. To a later date, however, must be ascribed the mythology of the Vedic hymns in which the "bright ones" (the heavens and earth, the sun and moon, with various elemental powers of storm and wind) are the only distinctly recognized deities. D'Harlez, F.C. Cook, and Phillips hold that the moral and spiritual basis is older. Pictet, A.B. Smith, Banergia, Ellingwood Wilson, Muir do not hesitate to declare that the loftier conceptions of the Vedas are unquestionably the earlier, and that they show clear traces of a primitive monotheism. The use of different divine names in the Vedas does not warrant us in concluding without other evidence that different deities are designated. On this basis we could conclude, with Tiele, that the Jews at different times worshiped three different gods, e.g. Elohim, Yahweh, Adonai. The use of the different names may be due to personification of natural forces or to crystallization of language, but such a use marks a later stage in religious thought. Why could not these names originally be employed to express the many perfections and attributes of the great God? Thus the Vedic poet writes, "Agni, many are the names of Thee, the Immortal One", and, "The father adoring gives many names to Thee, O Agni, if thou shouldst take pleasure therein". Of the Egyptian deity Ra it is written, "His names are manifold and unknown, even the gods know them not". Farnell states that "many deities, some of whom were scarcely known outside a narrow area, were invoked as polyonyme all possible titles of power being summed up in one word". Thus, the farther back we go in the history of the Indian people the purer becomes the form of religious belief. Idolatry is shown to be a degeneration. "It is true", says Sir A.C. Lyall, "that in India, as elsewhere, the idea of one Supreme Being, vaguely imagined, stands behind all the phantasmagoria of supernatural personages". A luminous proof of this inference is furnished by an analysis of the word Jupiter. Jupiter in Latin is Zeus pater in Greek and is Dyaus pitar in Sanskrit. The Teutonic form is Tiu. The meaning is "Heaven-Father". The designation of the Deity in all these branches of the Aryan family points to a time, 5000 years ago or earlier, when the Aryans before their dispersion, before they spoke Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, or German, united in calling on the Deity as the Heaven-Father. In the Vedas Dyauss-pitar is found, but even in these documents Dyaus is already a fading star, he is crowded out by Indra Rudra, Agni, and other purely Indian deities. In the Vedas Dyaus has two forms -- a masculine and a feminine. But the Vedic Dyu or Dyaus-pitar is first of all a masculine, while in later Sanskrit only it becomes exclusively a feminine. Hence it is not true to say that the name originally was a feminine to designate heaven, and that the nation afterwards changed it into a proper name to express the Deity.
The Gathas, the most ancient hymns of the Avesta, form the kernel about which the sacred literature of the Iranians clustered in an aftergrowth. They inculcate belief in Ahura Mazda, the self-existent omnipotent being. He is the all-powerful Lord who made heaven and earth, and all that is therein, and who governs everything with wisdom. Tiele says that the sole really personal being is Ahura, and that the two spirits in antagonism are below him (Elem of the Science of Rel., Ser. I, p. 47). The opposition of Ahriman is of a later date. Pfleiderer holds that originally he was a good spirit created by Ahura (Phil. Of Rel., III, p. 84). The Amesha-Spentos of the Gathas have the nature of abstract ideas or qualities, i.e. attributes of Ahura; afterwards they formed a kind of celestial council. L. H. Mills (New World, March, 1895) holds that the spiritual, unique nature of Ahura is attested beyond question, and he unites with d'Harlez Darmesteter, and Tiele in teaching that the primitive form of Iranian belief was monotheistic. The Paganism of Greece and Rome with its family of deities in human shapes and with human passions bears upon its face evident marks of degradation and corruption. Thus a critical study of the Aryan beliefs convinces the student that in them we find no illustration of an evolution from a primitive, low, to a later, and higher, form. "The religion of the Indo-European race", writes Darmesteter (Contemp. Rev., Oct., 1879), "while still united, recognized a supreme God, an organizing God, almighty, omniscient, moral. The conception was a heritage of the past."
The same truth is evident from a study of the religions of Egypt and of China. In the most ancient monuments of Egypt the simplest and most precise conception of one God is expressed. He is one and alone; no other beings are with Him; He is the only being living in truth; He is the self-existing one who made all things, and He alone has not been made. Brugsch accepts this view, but calls it Pantheism. The ethical element in the Deity, however, is adverse to this. Renouf finds a similar Pantheism, but prefers the word Henotheism. De la Saussaye admits that "one can maintain that Egyptian Monotheism and Pantheism have never been denied by any serious enquirer, though the majority do not look on them as general and original". The sublime portions of the Egyptian religion are not the comparatively late result of a process of purification from earlier and grosser forms. In the outlines of History of Religion Tiele so taught; but in a later work, Egyptian Religion, he expresses the contrary opinion. Lieblein, Ed Meyer, and Renouf admit degeneration in Egyptian religion. Thus de Rougé, Tiele, Pierret, Ellingwood, Rawlinson, Wilkinson hold that belief in one Supreme Deity, the Creator and Lawgiver of men, is a truth clearly expressed in that ancient civilization, and Polytheism is an aftergrowth and corruption. The popular religion of China rests on the worship of natural powers and of ancestral spirits. Underneath, however, is the conviction of the existence of a higher creative power, which, according to Edkins (Religions in China, p. 95), is a tradition handed down from the earliest period of their history. D'Harlez (New World Dec., 1893) and F.M. James (New World June, 1899) teach that the primitive Chinese worshipped Shang-Ti, the Supreme Lord, one, invisible, spiritual, the only true god. Dr. Legge (Religion of China, p. 18) asserts that Ti was the one supreme object of homage as far back as we can go, and unites with d'Harlez, Faber, Happel in declaring that 5000 years ago the Chinese were monotheists. Lenormant bases the Babylono-Assyrian religion on an original monotheism. He claims to have discovered a reliable trace of this in the word Ilu (el in Babel) which is said originally to mean "the only god". De la Saussaye advances as an objection that "this word is nothing else than the name for the conception of God, just like the Indian Deva and other epithets of the same sort"; yet he holds that "the goddesses of Babylono-Assyrian religion are really only one and the same thing under different names, and these again must be looked on partly as titles".
Even among the lowest and most barbarous tribes illustrations of the same truth are found. "Nothing in savage religion" writes A. Lang, "is better vouched for than the belief in a Being whom narrators of every sort call a Creator, who holds all things in His power, and who makes for righteousness." The aborigines of Canada call Him Andouagne, according to Father Le Jeune. This Being is seldom or never addressed in prayer. The fact of an otiose or unworshipped Supreme Being is fatal to some modern theories on the origin and evolution of the deity. Tylor admits that a Supreme Being is known to African natives, but ascribes it to Islam, or to Christian influence. If this were so, we should expect to find prayer and sacrifice. Fraser holds that the deity was invented in despair of magic as a power out of which something could be got. But how could the savage expect anything from a deity he did not address in prayer? Spencer teaches that the deity was a development out of ancestral spirits. But the Maker of things, not approached in prayer as a rule, is said to exist where ancestor spirits are not reported to be worshipped. William Strachey, writing from Virginia in 1611 says that Okeus was only "a magisterial deputy of the great God who governs all the world and makes the sun to shine ... him they call Ahone. The good and peaceable god requires no such duties [as are paid to Okeus] nor needs to be sacrificed to, for He intendeth all good unto them, He has no image." Winslow writes from New England in 1622 that the god Kiehtan is a being of ancient credit among the natives. He made all the other gods. Canadians, Algonquins, Virginians, and the natives of Massachusetts had a Great Spirit before the advent of the Christian missionaries.
The Australian mystery-rites reveal a moral creative being whose home is in or above the heavens, and his name is Maker (Baiame), Master (Biamban) and Father (Papang). The Benedictine monks of Australia say that the natives believe in an omnipotent Being, the creator of heaven and earth, whom they call Motogon. The Australian will say, "No, not seen him [i.e. Baiamel, but I have felt him". Waitz tells us that the religious ideas of the African tribes are so high that if we do not like to call them monotheistic, we may say at least that they have come very near the boundaries of true monotheism. "However degraded these people maybe," writes Livingstone (Missionary Travels, p. 158), "there is no need telling them of the existence of God or of a future life. These two truths are universally admitted in Africa. If we speak to them of a dead man, they reply: He is gone to God." Among savage tribes, where the supreme Being is regarded as too remote and impassive, he is naturally supplied with a deputy. Thus, e.g., Ahone has Okeus, Kiehtan has Hobancok, Boyma has Grogoragally, Baiame has Tundun, or in places Daramulun, Nypukupon in West Africa has Bobowissi. Sometimes, as in Australia, these active deputies are sons of the supreme Being. In other cases -- e.g. Finnish Num, Zulu Unkulunkulu, and Algonquin Atahocan -- this being is quite neglected in favour of spirits who receive sacrifices of meat and grease. In northwest central Queensland Roth describes Mulkari as "a benevolent omnipresent supernatural being, whose home is in the skies". In Australia the supreme Being cannot have been evolved out of ghost-worship for the natives do not worship ancestral spirits. Sir A.B. Ellis has repudiated his theory of borrowing a god in the case of the Tshi-speaking races. Waitz also denies that the higher religious beliefs of the Australians were borrowed from Christianity. His position is sustained by Howitt, Palmer, Dawson, Ridley, Gunther, and Greenway, who studied the natives on the spot. The esoteric and hidden nature of the beliefs, the usual though not universal absence of prayer, show their indigenous and ancient source.
In "The Golden Bough" (2d ed.), Fraser has raised the question, whether magic has not everywhere preceded religion. Yet among the blacks of Australia, the most backward race known, we find abundant testimony of a belief speculative, moral, emotional, but not practical. These deities are not propitiated by sacrifice and very seldom by prayer, yet they are makers, friends, and judges. In the conception of them the ethical element predominates. An all-knowing Being observes and rewards the conduct of men, He is named with reverence if named at all; His abode is in the heavens; He is Maker and Lord of all things; His lessons soften the heart. Mariner says concerning the Tongan deity Ta-li-y-Tooboo: "Of his origin they had no idea, rather supposing him to be eternal". In Guinea the natives worship "The Ancient One", "The Ancient One in Skyland", "Our Maker", "Our Father", "Our Great Father". Wilson writes that their belief in one supreme Being who made and upholds all things is universal. In America the same truth obtains. To the Indians God is "The Great Spirit". With some the idea of the Deity is very lofty; again it is found in cruder and lower expression. Darwin's description of the Patagonians as having very low religious beliefs is refuted by Giacomo Bove. The Pawnees worship A-ti-us ta-kaw-a, i.e. our Father in all places, or Ti-ra-wa, i.e. the Spirit-Father, with whom they expect to live after death. The Zunis speak of the deity as Awonawilona, i.e. the All-Father. The Indians of Missouri worship "Old Man Immortal" "the Great Spirit", "the Great Mystery". The Tinne of British America have the term Nayeweri, i.e. "He-who-creates-by-thought". The Algonquin speaks of Kitche-Maneto who created the world 'by an act of his will". If the supreme Being in barbarous tribes is regarded as otiose and inactive, so as to become a mere name and a byword, it is due to the fact that He has been thrust into the background by the competition either of ancestral spirits -- e.g. Unkulunkulu of the Zulus -- or of friendly and helpful spirits -- as, e.g., the Australian Baiame and Mungau-ngaur. Thus in West Africa the natives believe in Motogon who created by breathing, he is long since dead and they pay him no worship. From a study of savage tribes Mr. Lang holds that first in order of evolution came belief in a supreme Being by some way only to be guessed at (to him St. Paul's explanation is the most probable); that this belief was subsequently obscured and overlaid by belief in ghosts and in a pantheon of lesser deities; that in many cases the savage creative Being has a deputy, often a demiurge, who exercises authority; that when this is the case, where ancestor worship is the working religion, the deputy easily comes to be envisaged as the first man. If to this we add the tradition, universal both among civilized -- e.g. Hindus, Greeks, Romans -- and savage nations, that formerly heaven was nearer to man than it now is, that the Creator Himself gave lessons of wisdom to human beings, but afterwards withdrew from them to heaven, where He now dwells, the line of reasoning will be even more cogent.
Therefore we can consider as conclusions well established:
Tylor concedes that "the degeneration theory, no doubt in some instances with fairness, may claim these beliefs as mutilated and perverted remains of a higher religion" (Primitive Culture, ed. 1871, p. 305).
III. MODERN ANTHROPOLOGICAL NOTIONS OF DEITY
The modern science of anthropology proposed an explanation of its own for the origin and existence of the Deity. It was called the anthropological theory. Its principal advocates were Tylor and Spencer. In purpose they agree, i.e. to show that the Deity has no real existence outside the mind of men; in method only they differed. With Tylor the method was biological, and we have Animism; with Spencer it was psychological, and we have what is termed the ghost-theory. According to Spencer, primitive man derived the conception of spirit from reflections on phenomena of sleep, dreams, shadow, trance, and hallucionation. In these experiences the ghosts of the departed came to him, he grew to dread them, and so worshiped them. From the departed souls of his kindred, first worshipped, the idea was gradually extended; they then became gods; finally, one of these deities in imagmation became supreme and was regarded as the one only God.
It is a fact that ancestor-worship is found in various nations, in China, India, ancient Greece and Rome it is, or was, an organized system. Here it formed the basis of family religion and of civil law. The Romans had their dii manes, i.e. divine ancestral spirits ("Eos leto datos divos habento" -- Laws of the Twelve Tables as cited by Cicero in "De Leg.", II, ii, 22). As lar familiaris, the first ancestor was considered the protector and genius of the house. In Greece the ancestral spirits of families became theoi patrooi i.e. paternal gods. How the ancestor watches. over the race is shown in the "Antigone". In India we find the pitris, the companions of the devas, and later above the devas. In ancient Persia the fravashis helped Ahura Mazda in all his works. The songs of the Shih-King describe the ancestral festivals of China. With the Slavs was deeply rooted the belief in vampires, the souls of dead people, who suck the blood from the living. Among some savage nations the malignant character of ghosts prevails and gives rise to magic. On these facts Spencer constructs a theory to explain the origin and development of the deity among all nations. The theory is purely materialistic and unscientific.
It is interesting to compare this savage belief with the dii immortales of the Romans, the of the Greeks, theoi athanatoi the Amartya of the Hindus, the deathless gods of Babylonia, and the Egyptian deities, kings over death and the dead. The Banks Islanders have two orders of intelligent beings different from living men: ghosts of the dead and beings who are not, nor ever have been, human. The beings who never were human and who never died are called vui; the ghosts are named tamate. A vui is not a spirit who has been a ghost. This is the usual savage doctrine. The distinction, therefore, between eternal being and ghost is radical and common. The fault of some anthropologists is in neglecting the distinction, in confusing both under the name of spirits, and in deriving both from the ghosts of the dead. In Polynesia the gods are called atua; the spirits and souls of the departed tiki. Their conceptions of the heavenly dwellings of the gods and the underground kingdom of the dead (Po, Pulotu) are greatly developed and not clearly defined. The Fijians have the term kalou, which signifies beings other than men. All gods are kalou, but not all beings that are kalou are gods. Gods are kalou vu, deified ghosts are kalou yalo; the former are eternal the latter subject to infirmity and even death. Their supreme deity, Udengei, is neglected. But so would Jehova have been neglected, and become a mere name, if not for the Prophets. A. Lang says, "The Old Testament is the story of the prolonged effort to keep Jehova in the supreme place. To make and succeed in this was the differentia of Israel." The Zulus believe their first ancestor Unkulunkulu was the Creator and prior to death. Reville does not understand, in Spencer's system, "why, in so many places, the first ancestor is the Maker, if not the Creator of the world, Master of life and death, and possessor of divine powers not held by any of his descendants. This proves that it was not the first ancestor who became God, in the belief of his descendants, but rather the Divine Maker and Beginner of all who, in the creed of his adorers, became the first ancestor." Miss Kingsley maintains that a clear line of demarcation exists between ghosts who are worshipped and gods, that the former never developed into the latter; warns us against confusing the offerings to the dead with sacrifices made to the gods; she says West Africa has never deified ancestors.
Finally, as de La Saussaye states, in Greece other names are applied to the altars, sacrifices, and offerings connected with the dead than those used in the worship of the Olympian gods. The altar of the ancestors is eschara, of the gods Bomos; the offering of sacrifice to the ancestors is enagizein or entemnein to the gods thyein; the libations to the ancestors choai, to the gods spondai. Again, the temples of the gods in Greece were so constructed that the statue in the main shrine should face the rising sun, the temple of the hero opened to the west and looked toward Rebus and the region of gloom. With Aeschylus the homage of the highest gods is kept apart from that of the powers below. The Greeks sacrificed to the gods by day, to the heroes in the evening or by night; not on high altars, but on a low sacrificial hearth, black-colored animals of the male sex were killed for them, and the heads of the victims were not, as in the case of those intended for the gods, turned toward the sky, but pressed down to the ground. M. Müller tells us that in the Vedas the exclamation used in sacrificing to the gods is svaha, to the departed sradha. Rightly, therefore, Jevons holds that the ghost never became a god and rejects the theory that all the deities of the earlier races, without exception, were the spirits of dead men divinized. "If Mr. Spencer", writes M. Muller, "can find a single scholar to accept this view of the origin of Zeus in Greek or Dyaus in Sanscrit, I shall never write another word on mythology or religion." Thus the Ghost-theory is needed only for the rise of ghost-propitiation and genuine ancestor worship. It reveals something in man apart and distinct from the material elements of the body. Thus viewed, its arguments are so many reasons for the belief in the future life of the soul after dissolution of the body.
Thus the history of religion reveals
These truths are found in every nation historically known to us. The latter belief, developed into an animistic ghost-worship, obscures, but does not obliterate, the former. "Christianity", writes A. Lang, "combined what was good in Animism, the care for the individual soul as an immortal spirit under eternal responsibilities, with the One Righteous Eternal of prophetic Israel." John T. Driscoll.