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Updated: June 26, 2025
Whatever reality, much or little, the personifications of Greek Nature-worship had for the ancient world, there is no doubt that for a certain modern temperament, more frequently met with every day, those personifications are becoming increasingly significant, and one might almost say veritably alive.
The absurd idolatry which had generally prevailed through Western Asia for two thousand years a nature-worship which gave the sanction of religion to the gratification of men's lowest propensities was shaken to its foundation; and everywhere men were striving after something higher, nobler, and truer than had satisfied previous generations for twenty centuries.
The nature-worship, which was probably practised throughout the whole archipelago, became part of the system as government and society were made uniform on the Yamato model. It seems at least possible, if Buddhism had not come in so soon, that the ordinary features of a religion, dogmatic and ethical codes, would have been developed.
In the religion of the Greeks, however, the moral element, although not passed over and in the Greek epic and tragedy not seldom expressed in grand characters, stood nevertheless too little in the foreground, so that the worship of the divine, as in the older nature-worship, especially in the feasts in honor of Dionysus and Aphrodite, was marked by immoral practices.
The Vedic writings constitute the most ancient documents available to illustrate the growth of religious beliefs founded on pure Nature-worship, which translated themselves into a polytheistic and pantheistic idea of the universe and, in spite of many subsequent transformations, are found to contain all the germs of modern Hinduism as we know it to-day and, indeed, of all the religious thought of India.
Yea and on the Sun I call, Whose orb scans all things; look on me and see How I, a god, am wronged by gods. Lewis Campbell, line 85 sq. The minor Nature-worship has to do with rivers and springs, with trees and groves, with crops and fruits, with rocks and stones, and with the lower animals.
The exclusive admirer of the hypothesis of Totemism will find evidence for his belief in worship of the golden calf and the bulls. The partisan of nature-worship will insist on Jehovah's connection with storm, thunder, and the fire of Sinai.
It is plain that, with the decline of female power, and the consequent stimulation of the animal instincts in man, the pure creative principles involved in Nature-worship gradually became unsuited to the sensualized capacities and tastes of the masses; but in addition to this were other reasons why the female principle in the Deity should be concealed.
This involuntary conscience that reproaches us with such laxity in our Nature-worship witnesses how instinctive that worship is, and how much we unconsciously depend on Nature for our impulses and our moods.
I have always maintained, quite seriously, that the Lord is not in the wind or thunder of the waste, but if anywhere in the still small voice of Fleet Street. I sincerely maintain that Nature-worship is more morally dangerous than the most vulgar man-worship of the cities; since it can easily be perverted into the worship of an impersonal mystery, carelessness, or cruelty.
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