Indian Philosophy v1.c8.s2.16

v1.c8.s2.16

Soon cold reflection sets in. An unconscious effort to penetrate into the inner nature of things results. Man is busy making gods in his own image. The religion of the undeveloped man, the world over, has been a kind of anthropomorphism. We cannot acquiesce in the chaos of the physical world. We try to understand it in some way and arrive at some theory of life with the conviction that some hypothesis is better than none. Naturally we project our own volitional agency and explain phenomena by their spiritual causes.² We interpret all things on the analogy of our own nature and posit wills behind physical phenomena. The theory is not to be confused with animism, for it does not hold to a universal animation of nature. It is a sort of polytheism where striking phenomena of nature, of which India is so full, are deified. The religious instinct reveals itself in this way. In moments of deep religious feeling, when man is delivered from some imminent peril, or realises his utter dependence on the mighty forces of nature, he feels the reality of the presence of God. He hears the voice of God in the tempest and sees his hand in the stilling of the wave. So late as the period of the Stoics we meet with similar conceptions. "The Sun, Moon and Stars and Law and Men who have turned into Gods."¹ It is a good thing that the Vedic Aryan had faith in the reality of an unseen world. He had no doubt about it. Gods are. Naturalism and anthropomorphism seem to be the first stages of the Vedic religion.