semi-tangible

Updated: May 4, 2025

Then second, semi-tangible objects; such as trees, mountains, rivers, the sea, the earth, which supply the material for what may be called semi-deities. And third, intangible objects, such as the sky, the stars, the sun, the dawn, the moon; in these are to be seen the germs of deities.

Allan Menzies - History of Religion: A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems

Mr. Muller has a long list of semi-tangible objects 'overwhelming and overawing, like the tree. There are mountains, where 'even a stout heart shivers before the real presence of the infinite'; there are rivers, those instruments of so sudden a religious awakening; there is earth. These supply the material for semi-deities.

Andrew Lang - Custom and Myth

Max Müller seems to share this view when he says that man was led from the worship of semi-tangible objects, which provided him with semi-deities, to that of intangible objects, which gave him deities proper.

Allan Menzies - History of Religion: A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems

What outward objects first awoke that dormant faculty in his breast? Mr. Max Muller answers, that man has 'the faculty of apprehending the infinite' that by dint of this faculty he is capable of religion, and that sensible objects, 'tangible, semi-tangible, intangible, first roused the faculty to religious activity, at least among the natives of India.

Andrew Lang - Custom and Myth