The philosophic theory of polytheism is “one centre, many emanations.
” Iamblicus and Porphyry defend it on this line against the monotheism of early Christianity. Hermes Trismegistus, according to St. Augustine, says the Egyptians regarded images as being merely the bodies of the gods. In India there may be seen any day of the week the ceremony of praying a spirit of Vishnu or of Shiva Into a statue, or into a symbolic stone, by the Brahmin priest. The priestly theory is one of “consubstantiation,” like the Lutheran theory of the Eucharist, the difference being between the spiritual indwelling in material bread and material wine In the one case, and material wood and stone in the other. The gods, thus made visible to the common people, are endowed, by the popular consent, with human passions and human prejudices. Each represents one or more of these human propensities. Some are emblems of the reproductive powers of nature--fertilizers of the flocks and fields. Their worship, pure at the first possibly, became beyond all telling, licentious and abominable. (F. Sessions.)
