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Updated: May 23, 2025
It seemed to him as unreal as though one had personified the Great Western Railway into a sort of gigantic form, striding westward, covered with packages of merchandise, and carrying a typical human being, as St. Christopher carried the sacred child across the flood. It was pure Anthropomorphism. Hugh could understand a personal relation, even the passionate idealisation of an individual.
In order to prove this, we certainly must take a course which is prohibited by many as anthropomorphism, i.e., we must try to study the connection of ends and designs, and the possibility of such a connection where we are able to observe in general not only the accomplishment of purposes, but also the forming of purposes; and the only realm of this kind which we know of, is the realm of human action.
"But because I know you are not much swayed by names and authorities, I shall endeavour to show you, a little more distinctly, the inconveniences of that Anthropomorphism, which you have embraced; and shall prove, that there is no ground to suppose a plan of the world to be formed in the Divine mind, consisting of distinct ideas, differently arranged, in the same manner as an architect forms in his head the plan of a house which he intends to execute.
Here we have the material form provided by means of which the ideals of the succeeding period were to find their artistic expression such a typical or normal human form is, in fact, the logical expression of anthropomorphism in its most literal sense the making of gods after man's image.
Even the works of Darwin which, according to the opinion of these opponents of anthropomorphism, destroy anthropomorphism and teleology, are the most striking proof in favor of it. The discovery of the general reign of the law of causality invalidates, as they say, the reign of the category of teleology; for the one category contradicts the other.
As a matter of fact, you will discover, on mature reflection, that on this theory the Creator is at bottom only playing the part of a clever mechanic or watch-maker; all these familiar teleological ideas of Creator and creation are based, in the long run, on a similar childlike anthropomorphism.
Philosophical thought was antagonistic to anthropomorphism, which, as we have seen, was the most characteristic feature of popular religion in Greece, and which was essential to Greek religious art. As soon as the human form is a mere symbol, no longer regarded as the express image of the god and the embodiment of his individuality, it loses touch with reality.
The whole city blossoms with statuary, like a cosmopolitan 'Arriet who cannot get enough flowers and feathers on her Sunday hat. A certain comic anthropomorphism is to be seen, even on the balustrades of the castle, where the good Emperor William is posed as Jupiter, the Empress Augusta as Juno, Emperor Frederick as Mars, and his wife as Minerva!
Next in importance to the proof of God's existence, unity and incorporeality, is the doctrine of attributes. It was important to Jew, Christian and Mohammedan alike for a number of reasons. The crude anthropomorphism of many expressions in the Bible as well as the Koran offended the more sophisticated thinkers ever since Alexandrian days.
Just as fetishism developed and persisted, because it did contain, though it perverted, one element of religious truth the accessibility of the power worshipped to the worshipper so too anthropomorphism, notwithstanding the consequences to which, in mythology, it led, did contain, or rather, was based on, one element of truth, viz. that the divine is personal, as well as the human.
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