The ease with which most men pass, without knowing it, from a genuine belief in God to one which is merely conventional or is maintained for aesthetic or moral reasons is a fact as amazing as it is pregnant with sociological consequences. One may observe among us at present the passage from a vital belief in the traditional personal God to a survival-belief of the kind just mentioned.[1]
Subclass Id.—The idea of creation, it seems, should lead more directly than any other to the conception of beings possessing the attributes of divinities; for the notion of a Maker includes from the first power, dignity, authority, and some degree of benevolence. Yet this very early and potent source of the idea of great unseen beings has been very insufficiently taken into account. The idea of a mighty Maker of things may safely be attributed to men as low in general intelligence as are the lowest tribes now extant, for it appears very early in the child. The first definite inquiries about causes are usually made towards the end of the second year. After that time the question "What makes that?" is for many months frequently on the child's lips. At first his inquiries bear upon particular things and not upon the origin of things in general. Moreover, he does not necessarily think of personal causes. A little later on, however, he passes from particular problems to the general
- ↑ The theory of Max Müller and of Adelbert Kuhn, according to which the starting point of religion was the personification of the more striking natural objects, bears only a superficial resemblance to the theory that the origin of superhuman beings was by the direct, spontaneous personification with which we are concerned. The process of personification which these authors describe is an accident due to the distorting action upon thought of an insufficiently definite language. Natural objects, they explain, were originally described by their effects, in terms similar to those used to name the actions of human beings. The sun, for instance, was "the one which darts shafts of light." The one, because of linguistic indefiniteness and the natural tendency to conceive movement as arising from a personal cause, came to be understood in a personal sense. Thus, according to this theory, arose the nature-gods and the myths clustering around them.
