Theanthropos

“ But how to put the supernatural faculties of elevated persons in real, actual, substantial communication with the infinite and the finite in all their relations, so that the supernatural term may live, be unfolded, and transformed into them? By the real substance, presence, and communication of the Theanthropos, who in his single individuality realizes the infinite and the finite in all their relations to each other. ”

“ For, if the supernatural term precedes substantial creation in excellence and perfection of being, if it is its end and its type, it is evident that, in the general order and harmony of the cosmos, its natural place is between the Theanthropos and substantial creation. ”

“ When human persons are thus fitted and prepared, he by his substantial presence incorporates them into himself, and enables their supernatural being to live and develop itself by being put in real, actual communication with all the proper objects of its faculties. Thus, the cosmos of personalities, perfected in its initial supernatural state, can act and develop itself—the Theanthropos himself, through his moral agents, organically constituted, governing and directing its action to the safest and speediest acquirement of its last perfection. ”

“ This medium must be such as will preserve the dignity and the prerogatives of the Theanthropos, as will befit the nature of human personality, as will fulfil the object which the supernatural term is intended to attain. ”

“ What if the beginnings of true civilisation in this unique, abnormal, diseased, unsatisfied, incomprehensible, and truly miraculous and supernatural race we call man, had been literally, and in actual fact, miraculous and supernatural likewise? What if that be the true key to the mystery of humanity and its origin? What if the few first chapters of the most ancient and most sacred book should point, under whatever symbols, to the actual and the only possible origin of civilisation, the education of a man, or a family by beings of some higher race than man? ”

“ Thus, then, Anthropology and its handmaids, Ethnology, Philology, and History, have wrought out, beyond a doubt, proofs of the upward evolution of humanity since the appearance of man upon our planet. ”

“ These results alone will in time yield convincing proofs of the unity of origin of mankind. The mental history of the human race, which is revealed in institutions, inventions and discoveries, is presumptively the history of a single species, perpetuated through individuals, and developed through experience. Among the original germs of thought, which have exercised the most powerful influence upon the human mind, and upon human destiny, are these which relate to government, to the family, to language, to religion, and to property. ”

“ Everything appeared to him in an anthropomorphic form of thought; and thus the first primitive concepts regarding the world came into being, in which the stone, the mountain, the heavenly orbs, were viewed as animate anthropomorphic beings endowed with will-power, and willing to help man or threatening to endanger him. The observation [Pg 19] of the activities of man’s own body and of his mind led to the formulation of the idea of a soul independent from the body; and with increasing knowledge and with increasing philosophic thought, religion and science grew out of these simple beginnings. ”

“ Here hast thou that noble human race, that delightful creation, which has been granted sense and immortality. How it bears on it the image of the infinite God, and the likeness to Him, that wilt thou recognise by the variety of His creations. As in a looking-glass wilt thou see the worth of this thy human race. ”

“ Into the composition of these gods enter not only the old magical and bestial notions, and the notion of great personal forces of Nature, but also what we may call the departmental theory. The larger divisions of natural phenomena and of human interests have now their presiding deities, gods or goddesses of love, of war, of agriculture, of commerce, or of art. These ideal persons supersede or mingle with the other and presumably older members of the national pantheons, and share their supernatural accomplishments. ”

“ But the day will come when science will raise to the dignity of a new sexual morality the physiological function which to-day is considered material and shameful—and that comprehends the most sublime of human conceptions. In it are to be found the words which ancient races deposited in their religious tabernacles: creation, eternity, mystery. And in it are also to be found the most sublime conceptions of modern races: the destiny of humanity, the perfectionment of the human species. ”

“ It is precisely the same in the science of humanity, which we may call anthropology. In order to prepare the way for 'applied anthropology' whereby we may dominate the immaterial world, the minds and tempers of men, we must begin with 'pure anthropology'; that is to say, we must idealize and speak of man not as he is but as he would be if certain tendencies which we see in him conducive to social order and individual development, could be infinitely—yes, and we must add, if we limit our horizon to this present life, impossibly—extended. ”

“ The purely psychological branch of the subject takes up half of the space allotted to Geist in the Encyklopädie. It falls under the three heads of anthropology, phenomenology and psychology proper. Anthropology treats of the mind in union with the body—of the natural soul—and discusses the relations of the soul with the planets, the races of mankind, the differences of age, dreams, animal magnetism, insanity and phrenology. ”

“ Like intelligence and morality, religious feeling has, moreover, its several degrees and manifestations. To seek for these manifestations, to determine their nature and intensity in the various human groups, must be the task of the anthropologist. ”

“ Philology, Anthropology, and Geology testify to mental progress, even in the human species; and if such a progress is a fact, it cannot have been without influence upon the moral nature of man, even supposing the latter to be God-given. ”

“ In so far, then, as anthropology deals with culture, which is, after all, the only distinctly human phenomenon in the objective sense, it conceives of it as historical phenomena and this conception is in so far the soul of its method. But anthropology is something more than the study of culture ”

“ But what can we learn of the state of anthropological knowledge in the days before Herodotus wrote?
The task of the anthropologist is, in its essence, to find an answer to these principal questions:—What is Man? What kinds of Men are there? and how and by what agencies are they formed, and distributed over the lands, as we find them? How is human life propagated under parental sanction, maintained by social institutions, and made tolerable by useful arts? ”

“ And the strength of this view, which was possible even to that gifted race just because of the restrictedness of its knowledge concerning the length and breadth of nature and of history, and still more with regard to the depths of the human character and conscience, consists in its freshness, completeness, and unity. ”

“ On the other hand, the significance of this first Earthly Life of the Race, considered in itself and apart from all other Life, and as the Life of the Race not individual Life,—this, as the middle sphere of this domain of Religion, may be conceived and has been conceived by us ”

“ A vivid imagination, a relatively complex society with different traditions, a diversified landscape, an inviting climate, and a leisurely, yet vigorous life were necessary to the highest efflorescence of this poetic power to weave human motives into nature and into the conduct of supernatural powers conceived after the manner of men. ”

“ But the special class of stories regarded by the primitive as sacred, his sacred myths, are embodied in ritual, morals, and social organization, and form an integral and active part of primitive culture. ”

“ While, from this theoretical point of view, anthropology must devote itself to the investigation of human types and human activities and thought the world over, its actual field of work is much more restricted. Biology and psychology on the one hand, and history, economics, sociology, and philology on the other, have taken up anthropological problems, each from its own point of view, and each in connection with its own subject of investigation. ”

“ I do not mean by this that mesmerism and spiritualism combined with mechanical physiology constitute anthropology: far from it. Both mesmerism and spiritualism are rich but empirical collections of facts, in which there is a large amount of material, but very little that can be called philosophy or satisfactory science.
Anthropology is established by investigating the centre of man's existence—the seat of his conscious life—the brain, in which the spiritual comes into contact with the physical, and is subject to analogous laws. ”

“ A firm basis for the development of the intellectual, the moral, and the physical life can thus be laid at this time by a wise use of the experiences of the race when it was laying the foundations upon which our civilization rests. ”

“ What theology calls original sin, modern philosophy the brute inheritance—the ape, and the goat, and the tiger—is dying out of man. The perfecting of human nature and of human society stands out as the goal of creation. In a sense, all creation waits for the manifestation of the sons of God. ”

“ We have further proof in the stem-history of the soul, which we gather from the comparative psychology of the lower and higher mammals, and of savage and civilised races. Modern ethnography shows us in actual existence the various stages through which the mind rose to its present height. ”

“ The transference of human faith and worship from vague nature-powers, dimly recognized as personal agencies, to veritable personalities, endowed with consciousness and will, and distinguished by diversity of attribute, moral and intellectual, constitutes, as we have seen, the second great stage in the history of human progress. ”

“ The ultimate, and what we may in a general sense term the classical, form in which this sense of the community of the Life principle found expression was that which endowed the vivifying force of Nature with a distinct personality, divine, or semi-divine, whose experiences, in virtue of his close kinship with humanity, might be expressed in terms of ordinary life. ”

“ In the end, if we go patiently onward, we shall find that 'pure anthropology' will be of immense practical importance in helping us to control and develop ourselves and individuals around us and all communities of men. ”

“ Philology and comparative mythology and ethnography have already made numerous contributions to the history of the evolution and development of religious thought, and psychology has been successful in its attempt to distinguish those qualities in the soul which compelled primeval man to the conception of the supernatural, which is still retained by the man of culture of today. ”

“ By 'anthropology' is meant not the anthropology of modern writers, who use the name to denote mainly the history of human culture in its more rudimentary stages, and as exhibited chiefly in material products, but the study of those aspects of psychology which are most closely allied with physiological conditions. ”

“ For this knowledge we are indebted to the so-called "anthropological" method, which is based on the assumption that mankind is essentially uniform, and that this essential uniformity justifies us in drawing inferences about very ancient thought from the very primitive thought of the barbarous and savage peoples of our own day. ”

“ If my theories are correct, they prove the ontological character of historical evolution and the value of the study of history for the comprehension of the human soul. I have shown in a specific and highly important domain that that which we are fond of regarding as the characteristic quality of man was not present from the beginning, but has gradually been evolved in historical time. In other words: history can and must teach us the origin and evolution of the spirit and soul of man, as anthropology teaches us the construction of the body. ”

“ Anthropomorphism, and the personification of the things and phenomena of nature, and their images and specific types, were the great source whence issued superstitions, mythologies, and religions, and, also, as we shall presently see, the scientific errors to be found among all the families of the human race. ”

“ Ethnology thus treats of the resemblances and differences of the modifications of the human species in their relations to each other, but anthropology, as now understood, has a far wider scope. It treats of mankind as a whole. It investigates his origin and his relations to the rest of the universe. It invokes the aid of the sciences of zoölogy, comparative anatomy, and physiology ”

“ The studies of anthropology, whose final object is to solve the problems of the evolution of the human race and man's place in nature, begin with analysis, or the examination of particular characteristics. Human characteristics may be arranged, according to their bearing on anthropology and ethnography, in five orders: External physical traits ”

“ So likewise in hygiene and medicine, in ethics and religion, in language and arts, in painting, architecture, sculpture and music, the full import and often unconscious intention of human activity can only be understood, and directed in the most productive channels, by such a careful historical and physical analysis as Anthropology aims to present. ”

“ The growth of the animal organism from conception to maturity is along the same line of progression, from the bottom of the scale, toward the top. In the growth of human civilization and the mental, moral and spiritual elevation of the race, the same general law of evolution holds good. The elevating influence must reach the people through their environments. The real man and the real woman, is the ego or spirit. The physical body is the outermost environment of the individual being. ”