Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 4.djvu/765

 DEITY

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DEITY

could emljrace the pantheism of Stoic philosophy, teacliiiig the one creative all-ruling power of Nature — itself a personification — and at the same time permit the ignorant to personify and worship as distinct deities the various acts and phases by which this power was manifested.

(5) A political element enters into the multiplication of deities in the Pagan world. To make a nation, several tribes must unite. Each has its god, and the nation is apt to receive them all equally in its Pan- theon. Or in time of war the victorious nation was not content to impose laws and tribute upon the con- quered; it must displace the conquered deities by its own. Again, where ancient nations, each having its own religion and mythologj', were brought by com- merce into close contact, the deities who showed a certain similarity were identified, and even their names were adopted by one language from another. According to Max Miiller, Durga and Siva are not natural developments, nor mere corruptions of Vedic deities, but importations or adaptations from without. A striking illustration is furiiLshed in the history of Rome. In the earlier times the chief deities were general nature-powers or mere abstractions of the State or family. They had no real personality. Thus the Lares came from Etruria, the chief of them being the LarFamiliaris, the divine head of the family, the per- sonification of the creative power assuring the duration of the family; Vesta, the fire of the domestic hearth, the protectress of the family, became identified later with the Greek Hestia. Afterwards, when Rome spread out into a world-power, it received into its Pantheon the deities of the nations conquered by its armies. Again, the political element becomes a more potent factor when deities are created by human enact- ment. Thus, in ancient Rome the pontifices had the right and care of making new deities. And in China to-day the Government orders posthumous honours and titles and deifications of men, gives titles and re- wards to deities for supposed public service, and exer- cises a control over Buddhist incarnations. The Emperor of China uses the monopoly of deification as a constitutional prerogative, like the right of creating peers;

(6) A final explanation can be found in language. The words employed by the mind to designate spirit- ual facts are all drawn from conscious individual ex- perience. In the beginning man naturally expressed the power and attributes of the deity in different words drawn from nature and from life. According to de la Saussaye the opinion is even expressed in the Rig- Veda that the many names of the gods are only different ways of denoting a single being. Now the tendency of language is to become crystallized. Words gradually lose their etymological force, and their original meaning is forgotten. They stand out as distinct and independent facts in our mental life. What was at first a sign becomes itself an object. Thus in the Vedic religion the Sun has many names — Surya, Savitri, Mitra, Pushan, Aditya. Each of these names grew by itself into some kind of active person- ality after its original meaning had been forgotten. Originally all were meant to express one and the same object viewed from different points; e. g. Surya meant the Sun as offspring of the sky; Snvitri. the Sun as quickener or enlivener; Mitra the bright Sun of the mom; PMs/ian the Sun of the shepherds; Varunawaa the sky as all-embracing; Aditya the sky as boimdless. In this sense the Hindu gods have no more right to substantive existence than Eos or Nyx; they are nomina, not nutnina; i. e. words, not deities. So also in Egypt the Sun is Ilorus in the morning, Ra at mid- day. Turn in the evening, Osiris during the night. In another manner language may lead into error, :i.s when Bancroft remarks that in many of the .tVmerican lan- guages the same word « used for storm and god. Brinton writes, "The descent is almost imperceptible

which leads to the personification of \\'ind as god". Goldzeher states that the Baghirami in Central Africa use the same term for storm and deity. The .Akra people on the Gold Coast of .Africa say, " Will God come?" for "Will it rain?" Here we have the same word with two meanings. Thus the Odjis, or Ashan- tis, call the deity by the same word as the sky, but mean a personal god who created all things and is the giver of all good things.

All pagan religions have zoomorphic, or partially zoomorphic, idols, deities in the shape of lower ani- mals. Especially is this true of the Egyptian deities. But it is the sphere of totem-lore or mythology to ex- plain these strange metamorphoses, which scandalized philosophers, and which Ovid set in verse for the cul- tured of his time.

II. — The human race has at all times and in divers ways sought to express the notion of the deity. The history of religions, however, lays bare another truth, viz., that the farther back we go in the history of re- ligioas thought, the purer becomes the notion of the deity. In the Rig- Veda, the most ancient of the Hindu sacred books, traces of a primitive monotheism are clearly shown. The Deity is called "the only ex- isting being" who breathed, calmly self-contained, in the beginning before there was sky or atmosphere, day or night, light or darkness. This being is not the barren philosophical entity found in the later Upanis- hads, for he is called "our Father", "our Creator", omniscient, who listens to prayers. Father Calmette maintains that the true God is taught in the Vedas. Again, "That which is and is one, the poets call in various ways ", and it is declared to exist "in the form of the unborn being". Traces of a nature-religion are found in the Vedas. To a later date, however, must be ascribed the mythology of the Vedic hjoims in which the " bright ones " (the heavens and earth, the sun and moon, ^vith various elemental powers of storm and wind) are the only distinctly recognized deities. D'Har- lez, F. C. Cook, and Phillips hold that the moral and spiritual basis is older. Pictet, A. B. Smith, Baner- gia, Ellingwood, Wilson, Muir do not hesitate to de- clare that the loftier conceptions of the Vedas are unquestionably the earlier, and that they show clear traces of a primitive monotheism. The use of differ- ent divine names in the Vedas does not warrant us in concluding without other evidence that different deities are designated. On this basis we could con- clude, with Tiele, that the Jews at different times worshipped three different gods, e. g. Elohim, Yah- weh, Adonai. The use of the different names may be due to personification of natural forces or to crj-stal- lization of language, but such a use marks a later stage in religious thought. Why could not these names originally be employed to express the many perfec- tions and attributes of the great God? Thus the Vedic poet writes, "Agni, many are the names of Thee, the Immortal One"; and, "The father adoring gives many names to Thee, O Agni, if thou shouldst take pleasure therein". Of the Egyptian deity Ra it is WTitten, " His names are manifold and unknown, even the gods know them not". Famell states that "many deities, some of whom were scarcely known outside a narrow area, were invoked as TroXviimiie, all possible titles of power being summed up in one word". Thus, the farther back we go in the historj' of the Indian people, the purer becomes the form of religious belief. Idolatry Ls shown to be a degenera- tion. " It is true", says Sir A. C. Lyall, " that in India, as elsewhere, the idea of one Supreme Being, vaguely imagined, stands behind all the phantasmagoria of supernatural personages". A luminous proof of this inference is furnished by an analysis of the word Jupi- ter. Jupiter in Latin is Zeus pater in Greek and is Ih/aus pilar in Sanskrit. The Teutonic form is Tiu. The meaning is " Heaven-Father". The designation of the Deity in all these branches of the Aryan family