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Updated: May 21, 2025
His nature-gods became thoroughly anthropomorphic; and he probably no more remembered that Achilleus originally signified the sun, than we remember that the word God, which we use to denote the most vast of conceptions, originally meant simply the Storm-wind.
It is only at a later stage of intellectual development that the intelligence of man awakes to the apparent conflict between the anthropomorphic, and what I may call the physical, aspect of nature, and either endeavours to extend the anthropomorphic view over the whole of nature which is the tendency of theology; or to give the same exclusive predominance to the physical view which is the tendency of science; or adopts a middle course, and taking from the anthropomorphic view its tendency to personify, and from the physical view its tendency to exclude volition and affection, ends in what M. Comte calls the "metaphysical" state "metaphysical," in M. Comte's writings, being a general term of abuse for anything he does not like.
The recrudescence of anthropomorphic sentiment also seems to have passed its most acute stage before the close of the eighties. But the learned ritual and paraphernalia here spoken of are a still remoter and more recondite expression of the barbarian animistic sense; and these, therefore, gained vogue and elaboration more slowly and reached their most effective development at a still later date.
In this first rational classification of science by the Greeks, both on its physical and its ideal side, thought sometimes issues in the simple contemplation of manifold nature, while it still continues mythical in its fundamental conceptions and spiritual corollaries; myth, however, instead of being altogether anthropomorphic, begins to become scientific.
It obviously shades off in unbroken continuity into what is recognized as superstitious practice and belief, and so asserts its claim to kinship with the grosser anthropomorphic cults.
Dolls of the most variegated charm peopled his fancy: there were princesses of different degrees of proximity to the throne, fisher maids and mermaids; there were shepherds and shepherdesses, Casperls and lusty imps, dolls with heads of porcelain and dolls with heads of wax, all so faithfully imitated that it would require anthropomorphic skill to detect that they were not human beings.
If the views propounded in the former part of these “Thoughts,” with regard to the conditions under which a revelation must be made, and especially with respect to anthropomorphic views of God, be correct, a revelation must assume, in some measure, a human aspect. But if the human aspect must exist in the presentation, it must also in the record.
Others are not so crude as to think of God in anthropomorphic terms, nor are they polytheists, and yet for the same reason, namely, misunderstanding of Scriptural expressions, ascribe a plurality of essential attributes to God.
He has no suspicion that the wider views of interpretation are as old as Christianity itself, and have always co-existed with the narrower. He regards the Christian idea of God as essentially anthropomorphic.
This noble and more rational theory of eternal and causative Ideas resembles anthropomorphic polytheism in concentrating into one supreme Idea the intellectual Zeus, the Being of beings, according to another mythical and scientific representation by Aristotle, and it was afterwards combined with the Semitic idea of the Absolute.
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