Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 4.djvu/763

 DEITY

68.3

DEITY

' Tracts" (1730). Ho is also responsiblp for the senti- incnts of " The Case of Deism Fairly Stated ", an anon- ymous tract which he revised.

Henri/ St. John, Vinmiint BoUnghroke (1678-17.51), liclongs to the deists chiefly by reason of his posthu- nuMis works. They are ponderously cynical in style and generally dull and uninteresting, containing argu- ini>iits against the truth and value of Scriptural his- iiiry, and asserting that Christianity is a system Inisted upon the unlettered by the cunning of the I li igy to further their own ends.

Pder At\net (l(i9.i-1769) was the author, among Ciller works, of "Judging for Oun^elves, or Freethink- ing the great Duty of Religion" (17.'i9). "The Resur- n-ction of Jesus Considered" (1744), " Supernaturals Examined" (1747), and nine numbei's of the "Free Knqviirer" (1761). In the second of these works he denies the Resurrection of Christ and accuses Holy W rit of fraud and imposture.

Hrnry D(><lirell (d. 1748), who wrote "Christianity nut Founded on Argument", is also generally reck- iiicd, with Annet, as among the representative deists. Si o God; Providence; Rationalism; Scepticis.m ; Theism.)

I.KLAND, A View of the Principal Deistical Writers (London 1 :.)4 ), 6; Stephen. History of English Thought in the Eightemth '■ 'i/)/ry (London, 1876), ^KFI TON Ophwmnchr'; or Dn^m Re r.uled (London, 17491 F\ri \r \ ( I 11 ' f e

Th.jnghULondon, 1863) Hi 1 // It

ui I-^ngtand (London, 1870 I

.I'll Deinmus iStuttgart Is 11 / I

' li'-uses qui se sont ntes (1 iii 1^ I I te

\faUrialismus (Leipzig ISbb ! 1 ii

16.51); Locke, Works (Lon i k<s

iiilon, 1738); Berkelei ilcipl U /

i'.r (London, 1732) bee also h \ ( h j ^ w

li.rkrlnj. 348 sqq.; Clarke 443 Bobbin L'7; Skellon, 333.

L'latui li, Locke

FnANcis Ambling.

Deity (Fr. dHtf; L. L. deitas; Lat. deus, divus, he divine nature", "godhead", "god"). — The i^inal meaning of the word is shown in the San- rit dyau.i. gen. divas, root div, which root ap- irs in an adjective formation as deva, "bright", leavenly" — attributes of God — hence devas, "the iglit beings", or, as a noun substantive, dyaus. In substantive form, dyaus is either masculine — e. g. icaven", "sky" — or feminine, as Heaven (personi- d). Hence, in the Avesta dacva, "evil spirit"; th. deva, "a god"; Gael, and Irish dia, "god"; O. lit. tiu; A. S. Tiw (e. g. Tuesday, i. e. Tiwesday); . Zci/! (gen. Ai6s) ; Lat. Jupiter (i. e. Jov-pater). From ' same root we have the Lat. names of deities: <ina, Janus, Juno, Dis, the genitive Jovis {Diovis), 1 the word dies.

Ihe present article is confined to the non-Christian tion of the Deity. The Christian idea is set forth dir the title God. The data, therefore, are drawn ■Ml the new science of the history of religions. They 1 1 'race written records, customs, laws, life, language. ir earliest documents of history show that religion I long existed at the time of their composition. r a long time some deity had been adored, had re- \ cd sacrifices, and no one could recall the beginning the.se ancient rites. Many histories of religion blished in recent years are made up of hypotheses re and simple; often far removed from the facts

which they are based ; often absolutely arbitrary, scientific spirit demanfLs statements of facts

'ied beyond dispute or inductions in accord with Thus viewed, the history of religions shows on

subject of the Deity: (1) as an actual fact, the n Idling of polytheistic and monothei.sticelements; (2) it the farther back we go in the history of religious 'light, the purer becomes the notion, so that traces ,1 primitive monotheism are forced upon us; (3) it the ghost-theory, advanced by Spencer and other It ITS, to account for the origin of the Deity is now, partial, and unscientific.

Religion, in its most general sense, is a universal phenomenon of mankind. The assertion of Lubbock, that tribes exist who have no notion of the Deity, is refuted by Tylor and Roskoff. At times this concep- tion appears lofty and pure, again it is comparatively crude and involved in a mass of superstitious fancy. Yet, however imperfect and childish the expression may seem, it represents the highest idea of the Deity which the mind, for the time and under the cir- cumstances, grasped.

I. — Religious life among savage peoples of to-day, as among pagan nations before Cnristianity, resem- bles the entangled confusion of a forest where trees, brambles, and creepers, of all ages and sizes, are to be seen interlacing, supporting and crushing each other W'ith their earthy growths, while, above the topmost branches, is caught a glimpse of the blue sky of heaven. The religion of paganism in general is Poly- theism, which has been accounted for by theo- ries of Animism, Fetishism, Naturism, and the con- crete forms of .Anthropomorphism and Idolatry. The advocates of these various theories should be classed as theorists rather than historians. Taking the theory of evolution as a common starting-point, they hold that man arose from the brute and that he is a brute gradually transformed. They differ only in the cause and nature of the religious develop- ment which resulted in the notion of the Deity. Here w'e reject all presuppositions and deal only with the historical aspect of the problem. In the words of Waitz, the primitive man of modern anthropology is "a pure fiction, however convenient a fiction he may be".

Paganism presents not a doctrine, but a grouping of customs and teachings different and often opposed, an incoherent mass of beliefs with various origins. Close analysis enables the student to separate the doctrinal streams and trace them to their proper sources. The luminous truth presented by this study is the corruption of religious ideas on the nature of the Deity by the tangled confusion of human growth. Sir A. C. Lyall (Asiatic Studies, Ser. II, p. 234), while rejecting the theory of a primitive revelation, admits that " beyond doubt we find many beliefs and traditions running downward, spreading .at a level much below their source". The causes which con- tributed to produce this tangled profusion in the pagan conception of the Deity are: —

(1) Deification of nature aiul her powers and of sen- sible objects. Of necessity the result was an inex- haustible variety of deities. As time went on, the divine assumed thousands of fanciful and fortuitous images and forms. Deification of the powers of nature led first to the worship of the elements. One divinity of the heavens stood in contrast with one of the earth. Fire, as the warming, nourishing, consuming, and des- troying power, was early worshipped as a separatedeity. Hence the Vestal Virgins in Rome, the Vedic Agni, the Fire-worshippers of Mazdeism, and the sacred fire of Shintoism. So also moisture or water, not only in general, but in its concrete forms, e. g. sea, lake, river, spring, cloud; and thus was had a fourth elemental deity. In the East, /\strolatrj-, or Sabseism, i. e. the worship of the stars that illumine the earth, developed, above all the worship of the sun. Where soil and vegetation w;us rich, the earth was regarded as a nurs- ing mother, and Geolatry in many forms arose. In the ^'edic hymns we can trace the transition from natural phenomena into natural deities — e. g. Agni, i. e. fire, Varuna, i. e. lieavcn, Indra, i. e. the rain-clouds — but even then doubts spring up, and the poetic writers ask themselves whether, after all, there are such things as the Devas. In Homer and Hesiod the forces of nature are conceived as persons, e. g. IJranos, i. e. heaven; Nyx, i. e. night; Ilypnos, i. e. sleep; Oneiros, i. e. dream; Oceanos, i. e. ocean; the answer of .Vchilles to the river Scamander "in human form, confessed before his eyes" (Iliad, XXI), and his