Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 23.djvu/256

Rh heart of the devout may be directed exclusively to the power of the powers, the God in the gods, God simply, the Divinity. The formation of names expressing Divinity in the abstract is an evidence of the existence of such a process, and names of the kind are to be found even among very rude peoples. But there are more obvious and con clusive indications. In one of the most ancient of books, for example, and probably the oldest manuscript in the world, the maxims of Patah-Hotep, a wise Egyptian prince of the fifth dynasty, God simply (nutar) is often spoken of without a name or any mythological characteristic, and in a way which is in itself quite monotheistic. "If any one beareth himself proudly he will be humbled by God, who maketh his strength." "If thou art a wise man, bring up thy son in the love of God." "God loveth the obedient, and hateth the disobedient." Sentences like these standing alone would be pronounced by every one monotheistic; and even when standing alongside of refer ences to "gods" and "powers" they show that said gods and powers were not deemed by the Egyptian sage incon sistent with oneness of power and godhead or exhaustive of their fulness. In Babylonian- Assyrian religious history there are also distinct traces of the rise of the spirits of worshippers above particular deities, simply to deity. Sometimes they appear with special clearness in con nexions which tell of awakened and afflicted conscience, of the pressure of a sense of sin and guilt forcing on the heart, as it were, a conviction of One with whom it has to deal, of its need of the forgiveness and favour, not of this god or of that, but of God. The following passage may be cited as an instance. " O my Lord, my sins are many, my trespasses are great, and the wrath of the gods has plagued me with disease, and with sickness and sorrow. I fainted, but no one stretched forth his hand! I groaned, but no one heard! O Lord, do not abandon Thy servant; in the waters of the great stream do Thou take his hand; the sins which he has committed do Thou turn to righteousness." Many parallel passages might be drawn from Hindu, Greek, and other sources. Clearness of moral perception is decidedly favourable to monotheistic belief. The practical reason contributes as well as the speculative reason, and precisely in the measure of its healthiness and vigour, to the formation of a true idea of the Divine. It was due more to their moral earnestness and insight than to their intellectual superiority that the Persians came nearer to monotheism than any other people of heathen antiquity. Ahriman was entirely evil, and therefore only to be hated and combated; while Ahuramazd was abso lutely divine, perfectly good, and therefore to be supremely worshipped and obeyed. This moral dualism approached more closely to true monotheism than the later speculative monism, which placed above both Ahuramazd and Ahriman Zervanakarene, boundless time, indeterminate being, an ethically indifferent destiny. Finally, reason in striving to understand and explain the world tends towards mono theism. The mind cannot be expected to recognize the unity of God until it recognizes the unity of nature; when it sees nature to be a whole, a universe or cosmos, it cannot but form a conception of it which will be panthe istic, if the unity of substance, law, and evolution be alone acknowledged, and monotheistic if a unity of causality, rational plan, and ethical purpose be also apprehended. In the measure in which reason advances either on the path of scientific investigation or of philosophical specu lation, polytheism must retreat and disappear; in the measure in which it discerns unity, order, system, moral government, indications of spiritual character and design in the world, monotheism must rise and spread. Now, in the chief progressive heathen nations reason, it can be proved, has gradually gained on imagination. Hence the polytheisms which they built up in their youth have been undermined and broken down by them in their maturity.

A monotheistic movement can be clearly traced in ancient Greece. The popular religion of Greece, as it appeared in the Homeric poems, was as distinctly polytheistic and as little monotheistic as any known religion.Its gods were all finite, begotten, and thoroughly indi vidualized beings. The need of unity was responded to only by the supremacy of Zeus, and Zeus was subject to destiny, surrounded by an aristocracy far from orderly or obedient, and participant in weakness, folly, and vice. To its eternal honour the Greek spirit, however, was not content with so inadequate a conception of the Divine, but laboured to amend, enlarge, and elevate it. The poets and dramatists of Greece purified and ennobled the popular myths, and, in particular, so idealized the character and agency of Zeus as to render them accordant with a true conception of the Godhead. The Zeus of ^Eschylus and of Sophocles was not only not the Zeus of Homer, but was a god belief in whom was inconsistent with belief in any of the Homeric gods. The dramatists of Greece did not assail the popular conception of Divinity, but they sub stituted for it one which implied that it was without warrant or excuse. They developed the germs of mono theism in the Greek religion, while leaving untouched its polytheistic assumptions and affirmations. These, how ever, were not only persistently undermined, but often directly attacked by the philosophers, some of whom eventually reached a reasoned knowledge of the one absolute Mind. Xenophanes, Empedocles, and Anaxagoras were among the pre-Socratic philosophers who, on grounds of reason, rejected the polytheism and anthropomorphism of the current mythology, and advocated belief in one allperfect divine nature. Socrates, although avoiding all attacks on the popular religion calculated to weaken the popular reverence for divine things, had real faith only in the one supreme Reason, the source and end of all things; and the best representatives of later Greek philosophy were in this respect his followers. Plato attained by his dialectic a conception of God which will always deeply interest thoughtful men. God he deemed the highest object of knowledge and love, the source of all being, cognoscibility, truth, excellence, and beauty, the One, the Good. The controversy as to whether his conception may be more correctly designated theistic or pantheistic will, perhaps, never be brought to a decisive conclusion, but in its general truth and grandeur it must be admitted far to transcend either the monotheism of the vulgar or any popular form of pantheism. Aristotle's character istic cautiousness of judgment showed itself in the very meagreness of his theology. The representation which he gives of God hardly meets at all the demands of affection and of practical life, yet so far as it goes will be generally regarded as thoroughly reasonable. It is more unequivo cally theistic than that of Plato. It sets forth God as without plurality and without parts; free from matter, contingency, change, and development; the eternal un moved mover, whose essence is pure energy; absolute