We have seen that primitive man read his surroundings in the light of his own consciousness. Everywhere he saw the evidence of will and anger, desire and caprice. The world was the theater of personal agents not so dissimilar to himself. Technically, we should speak of this outlook as anthropomorphic animism. Perhaps a still lower stage existed in which things are full of _mana_ or a mysterious power for good and evil. As man felt his own powerlessness in the midst of tremendous, and often hostile agencies, which overtopped his own meager powers, he was led to feel the desire to ally himself with these agencies and propitiate them in order that all might be well with him. Man was ever more convinced that his own life was bound up with the plans of the gods. To displease them was to incur the most serious danger. The anger of Jove, or Neptune, or Asshur, or Yahweh was not easily turned aside once it was kindled. The winds which threaten shipwreck, the rains which give increase, the drouth which dries up the earth, the plague which brings death are under the control of the gods; and it behooves man to walk warily in order not to offend them. Thus was the path set in which man was to travel until he reached an ethical monotheism.
As time passed, demons and gods gave way, in theory at least, to the sovereignty of one powerful deity who gathered to himself the powers and activities of the old multiplicity of agents whom man had worshipped and { 112} placated. It is probable that this movement toward a consciously held monotheism reflected the changing political organization of society. The old chaos of superhuman agents, each doing what was right in his own eyes, gave way to a growing heavenly order in which one powerful agent exerted his suzerainty over minor principalities. Yet monotheism has always been relative, for the one god has his agents of subordinate rank--agents, powers and intercessors--just as the most absolute monarch has his ministers. Political imagination cannot go beyond its source.
Christianity is usually regarded as the best type of monotheism; yet the early Church Fathers thought of the old gods as demons working their nefarious will upon man. It is notorious that many of the saints of the calendar are only re-christened pagan deities adopted by the Church to meet popular demands. The peasantry _would_ believe in the agency of local divinities whose reputation had been great for the healing of sickness, or the granting of children to the childless, or the causing of rain to fall in seasons of drouth; and the Church, wisely enough, controlled and adopted what it could not prevent. The old pluralism of agencies refused to give way more than formally to a single agent. The psychology of this resistance is simple enough. Just as the king is unable to give his personal attention to the requests of all his subjects but must delegate authority to officers to look after details, so the one deity cannot give ear and attention to the incessant cries of his myriads of creatures. I cannot help feeling that the pious catholic has more psychological realism in these matters than the protestant sectarian who wearies his deity with all sorts of trivial matters. Surely a { 113} million petitions at the same time would distract any conceivable kind of personal deity!