Anthropomorphism

“ Finally, I may again protest against the fallacy of supposing that theriomorphism always precedes anthropomorphism: for an ever-increasing mass of evidence forces one to the conviction that they are often co-existent and always compatible one with the other; if this is so, it is rash and unscientific to say, as is so easy to say and is so often said, when one meets in the Mediterranean or elsewhere a human god or goddess accompanied by a lion or a cock, that the anthropomorphic divinity has been evolved from the animal. ”

“ Anthropomorphism.—"Man is inclined to make everything after his own likeness. When the heathen made themselves gods, the latter resembled their creators in all their defects and sins. That is called Anthropomorphism. The artist who paints a portrait, always puts something of his own into it. I know a sculptor who always used to model his own undersized figure with its two short legs, whether he was representing mountaineers, fauns, men of science, or kings. ”

“ Here we have the material form provided by means of which the ideals of the succeeding period were to find their artistic expression—such a typical or normal human form is, in fact, the logical expression of anthropomorphism in its most literal sense—the making of gods after man's image. ”

“ The teleological anthropomorphism which judges all things according to their correspondence with human purposes, must be transcended, equally with the speculative anthropomorphism which frames the unseen world in the likeness of the phenomena of our present experience. But to attempt to escape from what is sometimes called anthropomorphism—the reference of [277] the nature and purpose of things to self-consciousness, as expressive of the ultimate reality—is to attempt to escape from thought itself, and makes one's thinking from the beginning void and contradictory. ”

“ In all these teleological conceptions, and similarly in all histories of creation which the poetical phantasy of men has produced, gross Anthropomorphism is so evident, that we may leave the denial of this Creation-idea to the insight of any general reader who thinks for himself, and is not too far involved in traditional prejudices. ”

“ All men, after the example of the inspired writings, make frequent use of the figure called anthropomorphism, attributing to the Deity a human body, human members, human passions, etc., and that is done, not to imply that God is possessed of form, limbs, etc., but simply to make spiritual things or certain truths more intelligible to man. ”

“ We are all of us born in sin, in that sin which is to science "the seventh and deadliest," anthropomorphism, we are egocentric, ego-projective. Hence necessarily we make our gods in our own image. Anthropomorphism is often spoken of in books on religion and mythology as if it were a last climax, a splendid final achievement in religious thought. ”

“ All the different ideas which we may form of a separate and independent origin of the individual organic species by creation lead us, when logically carried out, to a so-called anthropomorphism, that is, to imagining the Creator as a man-like being, as was shown in our last chapter. ”

“ On the other hand, anthropomorphism and the realizing sense of an animistic propensity in material are less obtrusively present in the life of the peoples at the cultural stages which precede and which follow the barbarian culture. The sense of status is also feebler ”

“ The causes which led to the growth of transcendental ideas in prehistoric man have the same effect upon the civilized man of today, although sometimes they exert their influence in the sphere of the Unconscious. Anthropomorphism has still an influence upon every mind which does not watch over the conception and growth of its ideas with the strictest severity ”

“ Following Plato's example, I wish to take my stand with those who replace the term anthropomorphism by the term myth, and to speak therefore of mythopoiesis, which is contrasted with critical, scientifically precise thought and behaviour of human beings vis-à-vis the world. ”

“ And while it may be legitimate for man to expect to find some of his feelings among the vertebrates which have the most evident relationship with him, that inverse anthropomorphism has a curious appearance which lends our thoughts, wishes, needs, senses, and affections to beings so different from us in all respects. ”

“ The hypothesis that these wonderful creatures are of like nature to itself is speedily forced upon the child's mind; and this primitive piece of anthropomorphism turns out to be a highly successful speculation, which finds its justification at every turn. ”

“ Probably of course human evolution in this matter must have been perfectly continuous from stages presenting the very feeblest or an absolutely deficient animistic sense to the very highest manifestations of anthropomorphism ”

“ In so far, that is, as the term indicates a belief in divine beings corresponding to our PRESENT conception of ourselves—that is as separate personalities having each a separate and limited character and function, and animated by the separatist motives of ambition, possession, power, vainglory, superiority, patronage, self-greed, self-satisfaction, etc.—in so far as anthropomorphism is the expression of that kind of belief it is of course destined, with the illusion from which it springs, to pass away. ”

“ Be this as it may, we are justified in saying, indeed we are compelled to recognise, that in mythology, all the world over, we see a process of reflection at work, by which the beings, originally apprehended as [21] superior to man, come first to be anthropomorphised, that is to be apprehended as having the parts and passions of men, and then, consequently, to be seen to be no better than men. This discovery it is which in the long run proves fatal to anthropomorphism. ”

“ Anthropomorphic is a term derived from the Greek ἄνθρωπος, meaning man, and μορφἠ, meaning shape or form, and is used to describe the tendency of people to [2] represent invisible forces as having human form (for example, the Deity) , or natural forces like fire and wind as being animate, volitional agents. ”

“ The last of all creation as both revelation and science testify. The image is mental and moral and spiritual. No such image in any other species.
The body chosen was higher and better than the form of any animal. It resembles the bodies of mammals of the highest type. Why should it not? The vast number of animal species, of almost every conceivable size and shape, could not furnish a form so well adapted to the use of man as that which the Creator gave him. Would it have been better if man had been created in the form of a fish, a lizard, a serpent, a dog, or a horse, or a bird? ”

“ During the discussion a variety of theories were advanced by the prominent members, embracing involution and evolution, to account for the infinitesimal size of the Animalculan race of humanity, and causes of reduction. Some advocated psychological condensation of the souls of our race after death, the degrees of perfection being indicated by the gradations of size distinguishing the castes of giantesco, medium, and tit. Others that they were the concentrated essences of our human vitality in happy translation exonerated from the corruptions of organic support. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This phenomenon, moreover, is but the anthropological expression of a more general biological law, in virtue of which human races, in order to adapt themselves to the medium in which they are developed, assume a uniform physical type and character, which persists, or repeats itself anatomically and psychically through the ages, in spite of the external forms of their civilization ”

“ But the theory we are discussing involves not merely the personification of heavenly bodies and natural phenomena but their complete anthropomorphisation [406] —a very doubtful process in the best of cases—whereas the story which it seeks to explain bears no trace even of derivation from a folk-tale. In other words we are asked to assume a most complex and precarious hypothesis [Pg 266] in order to account for a story for which parallels are to be found very frequently in almost all stages of human society. ”

“ In a word, in looking upon this race, and upon the other recorded varieties of our species, from the woolly-headed African to the long-haired Asiatic, from the blue-eyed and white-haired Goth to the black-eyed and black-haired North American, and from the gigantic Patagonian to the dwarfish Laplander; we are led to believe, that the human species must radically have been as various as any other species of animated beings; and it seems as unphilosophical as impious, to limit the powers of creation to pairs of one kind, and to ascribe their actual varieties to the operations of chance. ”

“ Anthropology.—The men who people the earth do not possess exact resemblances, some differing from others in stature, the form of the limbs and the head, the features of the face, the color of the hair and eyes. Other differences are found in language, intelligence, and sentiments. These variations permit us to separate the inhabitants of the earth into several groups which we call races. A race is the aggregate of those men who resemble one another and are distinguished from all others. The common traits of a race—its characteristics—constitute the type of the race. ”

“ In short, we are spectators of this tendency: a fusion or intermixture of characteristics that is tending to establish one single human type, which is no longer an original racial type, but the type of civilisation. It is the unique race, the resultant human race, the product of the fusion of races and the triumph of all the elements of beauty over the disappearance of those ugly forms which were characteristic of primitive races.
Are the dominant forces in the human germinative cells those which bring a contribution of beauty? ”

“ But all human races and tribal types, known to us either from historical monuments, or who still live to-day in their primitive homes, in spite of climatic and cultural influences, have reproduced their original types in such a way that the anthropologist can tell, at a glance, the different types of humanity, according to their physiological and psychical characteristics. ”

“ FORMATION OF HUMAN RACES UNDER THE SOLE INFLUENCE OF CONDITIONS OF LIFE AND HEREDITY. I. The first men who peopled the centre of human appearance must at first have differed from each other only in individual features. At their beginning and during an indefinite lapse of time, mankind could only have been homogeneous, as is every animal and vegetable species which is restricted to an area of small extent.
At the present time, we find mankind composed of numerous groups, which have peculiar characters, and constitute so many distinct races. ”

“ The anthropological classification of mankind is thus zoological in its nature, like that of the varieties or species of any other animal group, and the characters on which it is based are in great measure physical, though intellectual and traditional peculiarities, such as moral habit and language, furnish important aid. Among the best-marked race-characters are the following:—
The colour of the skin has always been held as specially distinctive. ”

“ Think of a man seeing the fossilized skeleton of an animal split out of a quarry, his teeth worn down by mastication, and the remains of food still visible in his interior, and, in order to get rid of a piece of evidence contrary to the traditions he holds to, seriously maintaining that this skeleton never belonged to a living creature, but was created with just these appearances; a make-believe, a sham, a Barnum's-mermaid contrivance to amuse its Creator and impose upon his intelligent children! ”

“ There are many ways beside skin marks in which the idea of image making might have suggested itself to primitive man, inheriting as he perhaps did from an animal ancestry a strong instinct for imitation—the shadow, reflection in water, actual fossils of animals, the etching of sunburn, the silhouette of a tree or animal against the horizon, natural stone forms, tracks in clay, etc.—but in skin marks, natural or artificial, we see the transition process in actual operation. ”

“ 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 ”

“ In the great system of creation that divided races and subdivided them according to mysterious laws, apportioning special qualities to each, the varieties of the human race exhibit certain characters and qualifications which adapt them for specific localities. ”

“ But what reason is there to expect that natural and sexual selection, or the advance of civilization, or the extermination of the savage races of mankind, or all such causes combined, are going to change essentially the structure of the human body to something superior to or fundamentally different from the Caucasian individual? We have had a tolerably long recorded history of the human [Pg 105] body as it has existed in all states of civilization or barbarism. ”

“ Could there be any modifications exhibited by the last survivors of that race other than those which are familiar to us among the varieties of the human species which have never separated themselves from their race, and between whom and their ancestral stock, wherever it was originally placed on this globe, we recognize no fundamental difference of structure, whatever may have been the changes of habitat or conditions of life? ”