NATURE WORSHIP THE CAUSE OF HENOTHEISM. 43

were once not unseen beings, but visible things, bound within the limits which included their special phenomena. The indication in this or the other instance may be slight; it accumulates, as we find a hundred examples; and when, following the creed back to its more primitive forms, or comparing it with some kindred system which is less advanced, we see the god, whose personality at one time seemed so clear, fading gradually away till he dissolves in air, or cloud, or rain, or sunshine, the inference with respect to the total genesis of belief grows so exacting that we cannot choose but receive it.

If it be true-and who will deny it ?-that no idea can be clearly grasped unless there be a word to express it, we must confess that the Aryas, in the condition in which we now suppose them, were still without a god. The word which expressed the thing they worshipped meant also the sky, or it meant the wind, or the sea, or the earth. When they saw these things they worshipped; when the phenomena were absent they were forgotten. For the memories of savages are short; their emotions are very transitory, and are almost always under the immediate influence of outward sensations. Even in later times, when the god is a personality and has a name of his own, so long as he is associated with phenomena, he will suffer the same kind of alternate reverence and neglect. Gubernatis notices concerning Indra, the storm god, that in some of the Vedic hymns he is only reverenced when he is active; when he is inactive he is scarcely thought of.1

As one by one the phenomena pass in review each one while it is present seems to be the god, and is worshipped with all the ardour of which the suppliant is capable. When we read the votary's prayers to any part of nature, we might fancy he worshipped no other part. But this is not the case. The explanation of this seeming changeableness from god to god lies in the shortness of the savage's memory and the difficulty which he finds in realising any1 Letture sopra la Mittologia Vedica, p. 28.

thing but his present sensation. The sun is at one moment his only god; but it sinks to rest, and now he prays to the heaven, studded with its thousand stars. Again these are overclouded, and from the clouds issues the blinding flash or the awful roll of thunder; and then the pure sky is forgotten and he prays to the lightning and the storm. A stage of belief such as this, when each divinity seems for the time to stand by himself and to be prayed to alone, has been called by Mr. Max Müller henotheism. The cause of henotheism, then, lies in the worship of actual physical phenomena. The same nature origin of the gods affords a satisfactory explanation of polytheism; and polytheism is a state of belief not so easily accounted for as some suppose.

The belief in one god is a thing not difficult to understand; for-whether it be true or false-it is a belief of which we have a hundred examples around us. The god-idea is a distinct creation of the human mind: it is a conception in itself. The very essence of this conception is the difference between god and man. But to what instinct does the belief in many gods respond? The difference between god and god cannot be an observed difference, as that between tree and tree or between man and man. The general terms tree and man express an aggregate of qualities found to be common to a great number of different objects, as these objects come within the range of our experience. But god is not a general term of this class. The god-idea does not include anything which is a part of outward experience. If there were a great many different gods, our knowledge of them would not be of an external, experimental kind. Our abstract word 'god' would not have been obtained by means of a generalisation of the qualities which the polloi theoi had in common, in the same way that tree' is a generalisa

''If we must have a general name for the earliest form of religion among the Vedic Indians, it can be neither monotheism nor polytheism, but only henotheism.'—Hibbert Lectures, p. 260.

NATURE WORSHIP THE CAUSE OF POLYTHEISM.

45

tion of the qualities of many trees. On the contrary, the many gods would owe their common name to the fact that they shared in some inward quality which we had previously determined was essential to divinity. But to what in this case would the polloi theoi owe the difference of their natures? Why should Zeus be unlike Hermes, and why Apollo different from both? The explanation once universally given, and even now thought 'generally sufficient,' is that the characters of the gods are the result of mere invention, and in fact the children of fancy. But such a notion is, as we have before agreed, inconsistent with the seriousness of true belief. It was the explanation which Sidney gave of the birth of the Chimæra and of the Furies; and if the explanation was insufficient for the beings which people the outer circles of mythology, far less sufficient is it for those who occupy the central place in a creed.

When, however, we realise that the gods were once confounded with natural phenomena, all difficulty in accounting for their characters is taken away. Apollo is not like Hermes because the sun is not like the wind. Just so long as the natures of both are connected with outward nature will their characters remain apart, and yet the belief in both remain real. When they become altogether abstract conceptions, either the two will merge in one or one of them will lose his divine character. He will then become a subject for fancy and for the invention of poets; he will no longer be an object of worship.

This nature-worshipping stage of belief, then, is, so long as it remains pure, the stage of the most pure and unmixed polytheism. So long, and only so long, as the name of the god and the name of the element, the portion of nature, are one; so long as the being is thus identified with earth, or sky, or sea; and so long as no being is worshipped under a name which has ceased to be the expression of an outward thing-the polytheistic belief remains; for while this state continues it is impossible that the

deity of one element can have control over the god of another, seeing that each is, of necessity, confined to his own province.

Evidently the nature-worshipping stage of belief is a change and an advance upon fetichism. The more the deity is raised above the level of common things, the more great and high does he become; and becoming thus greater, the more does he tend to absorb into himself the thoughts of the worshipper. He approaches so much the nearer to an abstract god.

The third and last stage in early religious development is the anthropomorphic stage, which links nature worship on to monotheism. We have seen how, while the nature worship remained, the creed was purely polytheistic; how, as the sea could have no control over the sky, nor the sky over the earth, the gods who represented these things must remain apart. But in time the change does come. Then Zeus and Zio no more recall to those who use their sacred names the overspreading heaven; all they suggest is the idea of beings having, in some way, the character of the sky, in an obscure and mystic way not obvious to the sense of the worshipper. Zeus and Zio have grown into proper names, designations of persons and not of things; and the gods stand out as clear and as thinkable, in virtue of this name, as any absent friend may be. The Aryans have made an immense step forward when they have arrived at this point.

Through the natural changes which time works in every mythic system may be traced this process of finding a name for that aggregation of ideas which is gradually settling into what we understand by the word god. With the Greeks and Romans Dyâus remained the chief god, because in his changed names, Zeus and Jupiter, he no longer represented the sky; in India, on the contrary, because Dyâus did recall some natural appearance he ceased to be the chief divinity, and his place was supplied

by Indra, for Indra's name has not a direct physical meaning.'

Had the Indians and the Greeks continued always in the same spiritual condition the name of their highest god might indeed have changed-such changes are in the nature of mythology-but no change would have been effective to abstract their thoughts from the phenomena of sense. The alterations would have been in a direction the very opposite to that which they actually took. Dyâus would have remained the chief god of the Indians, and another old Aryan god, Varuna (in the form Ouranos), would have become the chief god of the Greeks; because Dyâus and Ouranos, in Sanskrit and Greek, still stood for the sky.

one.

Suppose Dyâus, then, to have become a proper name. We have not yet seen how it grows to be a generic This last consummation cannot be far off. When a phenomenon, a thing, is changed into a person, and baptised with an appellation of its own, the tendency will arise to call other phenomena of nature by the same name. We shall have a sea Zeus, an earth Zeus, while men will mean thereby only what we understand by the words sea god, earth god. We do see survivals of such a method of nomenclature in the pantheons of Greece and Rome-in such a name, for example, as Zeus Chthonios, which is really synonymous with Hades, and designates a different personage from the Zeus Olympios; in the Zenoposeidon, of whom we have some traces, and in the use by the Latins of the word Junones as a synonym for goddesses. An example of the same kind is the association of Indra's name with almost all the other gods of the Veda-e.g. Indragni, Indrasomo, Indravayu, Indravaruno. These must mean merely God Agni, God Soma, &c. But of course the essential part of the process had been com

2

1 For the suggested etymologies of the word Indra see Ch. III. 2 Athenæus, ii. 42. Cf. also the Zeùs Mnλwoios of Paros and Corcyra; Boeckh, Corpus In. Gr. ii. 1870, 2418; and Maury, Rel. de la Grèce, i. 53.