CHAPTER VIII.

SECOND PHASE: POLYTHEISM.-DEVELOPMENT OF THE THEOLOGICAL AND MILITARY SYSTEM.

MONOTHEISM Occupies so large a space in the view of modern minds, that it is scarcely possible to form a just estimate of the preceding phases of the theological philosophy; but thinkers who can attain to anything like impartiality in their review of religious periods may satisfy themselves by analysis, and in spite of appearances, that polytheism, regarded in its entire course, is the principal form of the theological system. Noble as we shall find the office of monotheism to have been, we shall remain convinced that polytheism was even more completely and specially adapted to satisfy the social needs of the corresponding period. Moreover, we shall feel that, while every state of the theological philosophy is provisional, polytheism has been the most durable of any; while monotheism, being the nearest to the entire cessation of the theological régime, was best fitted to guide civilized humanity through its transition from the ancient to the modern philosophy.

Our method must be to take an abstract view of each of the

essential properties of polytheism; and then to True sense of examine the various forms of the corresponding Polytheism. régime. In doing this, I shall regard Polytheism in the broad popular sense, as it was understood by the multitude and expressed by Homer, and not under any allegorical aspect that erudite and imaginative minds may find in it. It is only under a monotheistic view that the ancient gods can be symbolically regarded. In the infant state of human reason, a great number of gods was required for a great variety of objects, their special attributes being correspondent to the infinite diversity of phenomena; and they were perfectly distinct and independent of each other. This view, prescribed by analysis, is confirmed by all contemporary records, in which I suppose our scholars will hardly look for the hazy symbolism which they themselves propose.

We have seen that, intellectually speaking, fetichism was more closely incorporated with human thought than any other religion; so that the conversion into polytheism was in fact a decline. But the effect of polytheism

Its operation on the human

Mind.

upon human imagination, and its social efficacy, rendered the

second period that of the utmost development of the religious spirit, though its elementary force was already impaired. The religious spirit has indeed never since found so vast a field, and so free a scope, as under the régime of a direct and artless theology, scarcely modified, as yet, by metaphysics, and in no way restrained by positive conceptions, which are traceable at that period only in some unconnected and empirical observations on the simplest cases of natural phenomena. As all incidents were attributed to the arbitrary will of a multitude of supernatural beings, theological ideas must have governed minds in a more varied, determinate, and uncontested way than under any subsequent system. If we compare the daily course of active life as it must have been with the sincere polytheist, with what it is now to the devoutest of monotheists, we cannot but admit, in opposition to popular prejudice, that the religious spirit must have flourished most in the first case, the understanding of the polytheist being beset, on all occasions and under the most varied forms, by a multitude of express theological explanations; so that his commonest operations were spontaneous acts of special worship, perpetually kept alive by a constant renewal of form and object. The imaginary world then filled a much larger space in men's minds than under the monotheistic system, as we may know by the constant complaints of Christian teachers about the difficulty of keeping the disciples of their faith up to the true religious point of view: a difficulty which could scarcely have existed under the more familiar and less abstract influence of a polytheistic faith. Judged by the proper criterion of all philosophy, its degree of contrast with the doctrine of the invariableness of natural laws, polytheism is much more imperfect than monotheism, as we shall see when we have to consider the diminution of miracles and oracles wherever even the Mohammedan form of monotheism has prevailed. Visions and apparitions, for instance, are exceptional things in modern theology, reserved for a few privileged persons here and there, and for important purposes; whereas every pagan of any mark had personal intercourse with various deities, on the most trifling subjects, some of his divinities being probably his relations, more or less remote.-The only specious objection to this estimate, as far as I know, is that monotheism is superior to polytheism in inspiring devotion. But this objection (besides that it leaves other arguments unaffected) rests upon a confusion between the intellectual and the social power of religious beliefs; and then upon a vicious estimate of the latter, from bringing the ancient and modern habits of thought too near together. Because polytheism pervaded all human action, it is difficult to determine its share in each social act; whereas under monotheism its co-operation may be much less, while it is more marked, under the clearer separation of the active from the speculative life. It would also be absurd to look to polytheism for the particular kind of proselytism, and there

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fore of fanaticism, which is proper to monotheism, whose spirit of exclusiveness inspires a repugnance towards all other faiths, which could not be felt in the same degree by men who, admitting a multitude of gods, could not much object to recognize a few more, whenever their admission became possible. The only way of estimating the moral and social efficacy of polytheism is by comparing it with its assigned function, in promoting human progress,

that function being very unlike the one appointed to monotheism. In this view, we shall find that the political influence of the one was certainly not less extensive or indispensable than that of the other so that this consideration leaves untouched the various concurring proofs of polytheism being the greatest possible development of the religious spirit, which began to decline, directly and rapidly, on assuming the form of monotheism.

In our examination of polytheism, I shall take first the scientific point of view; then the poetic or artistic; and finally the industrial.

It is easily seen how unfavourable to science must be that theological philosophy which represses all scientific Polytheistic expansion under the weight of detailed religious science. explanations of all phenomena; thereby affixing the stigma of impiety to every idea of invariable physical laws. The superiority of monotheism in this view will be apparent hereafter; but, however great that superiority may be, it is not the less true that scientific education began under polytheism, and cannot therefore be incompatible with it, nor without some encouragement from it.

The first consideration is of the importance of the step taken by human reason in rising from fetichism into polytheism,—the first effort of speculative activity, and the greatest. In this, the distinct intellectual life of our race began; and this was the indispensable preparation, without which the conception of invariable natural laws could never have been formed. When all bodies were no longer supposed to be divine in their nature, the secondary details of phenomena were set free for observation, without theological intermixture; and the religious conception related to beings distinct from the body, and residing elsewhere. The general conception of destiny or fate, introduced by polytheism, was also a substantial primitive ground for the principle of the invariableness of natural laws. While phenomena must then have appeared more irregular than we can conceive, polytheism exceeded its aim by presenting such a crowd of heterogeneous and unruly divinities as could not be reconciled with so much of regularity in the external world as must be admitted; and hence the creation of a particular god of immutability, whose supremacy must be acknowledged by all the rest, amidst their proper independence. Thus was the notion of Fate the necessary corrective of polytheism, from which it is naturally inseparable ;-to say nothing of the aid it afforded

all times been distinct, even before they had obtained their proper denominations, and during the long period when they were cultivated by the same individual minds,—if we except what no one means by poetry-the mnemonic expedient by which religious, moral, and scientific formulas were versified, to aid their transmission. Through all gradations of savage life, the social influence of poetry and the other fine arts was secondary to the theological, to which it lent aid, and by which it was protected, but which it could never supersede. Homer was, after all that has been said, no philosopher or sage, and much less a priest or a legislator; but his lofty intelligence was imbued with the best that human thought had produced in all departments, as has been the case since with all men of poetic or artistic genius, of whom he will ever be the most eminent type. Plato, who must have understood the spirit of antiquity, would certainly not have excluded the most general of the fine arts from his Utopia if its influence had been so fundamental in the economy of ancient societies as is commonly supposed. Then, as in every other age, the rise and action of the various fine arts were occasioned by a pre-existing and universally-admitted philosophy, which was only more especially favourable to them in the earliest times. The faculties of expression have never directly overruled those of conception; and any inversion of this elementary relation would directly tend to the disorganization of the human economy, individual and social, by abandoning the conduct of our life to faculties which can do no more than soften and adorn it. The guiding philosophy of that day was very different from ours; but not the less were the men of that day guided by their philosophy; and what is accessory now was, in like manner, accessory then. Many eminent persons in antiquity were almost insensible to the charms of poetry and art, while representing to us very powerfully the corresponding social state; and, conversely, modern peoples are very far from resembling the ancient, though the taste for poetry, music, painting, etc., is purified and extended more and more; far indeed beyond what it could have been in any early society, considering the slaves, who always formed the bulk of the population. This being explained, we may understand how admirable was the influence of polytheism in raising the fine arts to a degree of social power which has never been equalled since, for want of sufficiently favourable conditions. Fetichism favoured the poetic and artistic development of humanity, by transferring the human sense of existence to all external objects; and to apprehend the full meaning of this, we must consider that the æsthetic faculties relate more to the affective than to the intellectual life, the latter not admitting of any expression or imitation which can be strongly felt or fairly judged by interpreter or spectator. Having seen how decided was the preponderance of the affective life under fetichism, we perceive how genial the period must have been to the arts of poetry and

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In a more special and direct way we can see how the polytheistic system aided, in the midst of its fictions and inspirations, the development of a certain capacity of observation and induction, so far, at least, as affording it a vast field and an attractive aim, by connecting all phenomena with the destiny of Man, as the chief object of divine government. The superstitions which now appear the most absurd,-such as divination by the flight of birds, the entrails of victims, etc., had a really progressive philosophical character, as keeping alive the stimulus to steady observation of phenomena, which could not otherwise have offered any permanent interest. However fanciful the objects of all kinds of observation, they were thereby collected for a better use at a future time, and would not have been collected at all in any other way. As Kepler observed, astrological chimeras long sustained the taste for astronomical observations, after having created it; and anatomy may have gained as much by the pretensions of soothsayers to ascertain the future by the study of the liver, the heart, the lungs, etc., of sacrificial animals. There are phenomena even now which, by their want of subjection to any scientific theory, make us almost sorry that this primitive institution of observations, with all its dangers, should have been destroyed before it could be properly replaced, or the mere preservation of its results be guaranteed. Such, for instance, are, in concrete physics, the greater number of meteorological phenomena, and particularly those of thunder, which, for the sake of augury, were the subject of scrupulous and continuous observation in ancient times. An unprejudiced mind may lament the total loss of the observations which the Etruscan augurs, for instance, were collecting through a long course of ages, and which our philosophy could make use of at this day, to far better purpose than our meteorological materials compiled without rational guidance. The registers of the augurs could hardly have been worse kept than ours; and a determinate end being indispensable to all true observation, any theory is better than none. The same course of remark may extend to all orders of facts, without excepting even intellectual and moral phenomena, which had been delicately observed in all their connections, with a view to the interpretation of dreams. Such incessant perseverance as the ancients devoted to this study is to be looked for nowhere else but under the future prevalence of positive philosophy.

Such is the scientific aspect of polytheism, the least favourable of its aspects. Its influence upon the fine arts is more easily appreciable and less disputed. Our concern is however more with the source of the influence than with the results.

Through a confusion of philosophy with poetry, it is a common mistake to attribute too much to the fine arts in an Polytheistic infant state of society, supposing them to be the in- Art. tellectual basis of its economy. But philosophy and poetry have at

VOL. II.

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