"Polytheism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... than any other sort of theology,[29] for its error is only that it supposes the existence of life wherever it finds activity—an error which can "easily be brought to the test of verification" and corrected. "We can show it to be an error, and so get rid of it." But Polytheism, seeking for greater generality, refers phenomena to beings who are not identified with them, to "indirect wills belonging to beings purely imaginary," whose "existence can no more be decisively disproved than it ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... in the first place, an increased emphasis laid upon this line of thought, in common with religious subjects in general, and the reasons for the belief in the existence of the gods (for the Greek schools never transcended polytheism—when they speak of {theos} they mean simply the abstract divinity of the many separate divinities) seems, so far as we may judge from the comparatively scanty remains that have come down to us, to have been discussed at great length; critically and negatively ...
— The Basis of Early Christian Theism • Lawrence Thomas Cole
... savages before it disappears, 6 sq.; a portion of savage religion the theme of these lectures, 7 sq.; the question of a supernatural revelation dismissed, 8 sq.; theology and religion, their relations, 9; the term God defined, 9 sqq.; monotheism and polytheism, 11; a natural knowledge of God, if it exists, only possible through experience, 11 sq.; the nature of experience, 12 sq.; two kinds of experience, an inward and an outward, 13 sq.; the conception of God reached historically ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... conception of which is so simple as that of an all-embracing reality. This highest cause, then, we regard as absolutely necessary, because we find it absolutely necessary to rise to it, and do not discover any reason for proceeding beyond it. Thus, among all nations, through the darkest polytheism glimmer some faint sparks of monotheism, to which these idolaters have been led, not from reflection and profound thought, but by the study and natural ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... thus brought about, of any conceivable system of religion, prepared the way for a true revelation. Within that little river territory, amid those obscure morasses of the Rhine and Scheld, three great forms of religion—the sanguinary superstition of the Druid, the sensuous polytheism of the Roman, the elevated but dimly groping creed of the German, stood for centuries, face to face, until, having mutually debased and destroyed each other, they all faded away in the pure light ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... change that is real. The mere transfiguration of institutions, as from military and priestly dominance to commercial and scientific dominance, from commercial dominance to proletarian democracy, from slavery to serfdom, from serfdom to capitalism, from monarchy to republicanism, from polytheism to monotheism, from monotheism to atheism, from atheism to pantheistic humanitarianism, from general illiteracy to general literacy, from romance to realism, from realism to mysticism, from metaphysics to physics, are all but changes from Tweedledum to Tweedledee: ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... thought and conduct. . . . A formal and precise definition of Judaism is a matter of some difficulty, because it raises the question, What is the absolute and irreducible minimum of conformity? . . . Judaism denounces idolatry and polytheism. It believes in a universal God, but it is not exclusive. It believes that this world is good, and that man is capable of perfection. He possesses free will, and is responsible for his actions. Judaism rejects any mediator and ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... Hedonism will pass the pragmatic test as well as Stoicism. Up to a certain point every social principle that is not absolutely idiotic works: Autocracy works in Russia and Democracy in America; Atheism works in France, Polytheism in India, Monotheism throughout Islam, and Pragmatism, or No-ism, in England. Paul's fantastic conception of the damned Adam, represented by Bunyan as a pilgrim with a great burden of sins on his back, corresponded to the fundamental condition of evolution, which is, that life, including human life, ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... with the original forms of nature, the rocks, the earth, and the sky. It is not the poetry of action or heroic enterprise, but of faith in a supreme Providence, and resignation to the power that governs the universe. As the idea of God was removed farther from humanity and a scattered polytheism, it became more profound and intense, as it became more universal, for the Infinite is present to everything: "If we fly into the uttermost parts of the earth, it is there also; if we turn to the east or the west, we cannot escape from it". Man is thus aggrandized in the image ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... knew how little men deserved that the world of prose should receive its polytheism of love ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... paganism—its basic immorality, or, if you like, its unmorality. Like our scientism of to-day, it was unable to lay down a system of morals. It did not even try to. What Augustin has written on this subject in The City of God, is perhaps the strongest argument ever objected to polytheism. Anyhow, pages like this are very timely ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... there must inevitably spring up a new poetry. Previously—- we beg pardon for setting forth a result which the reader has probably already foreseen from what has been said above—previously, following therein the course pursued by the ancient polytheism and philosophy, the purely epic muse of the ancients had studied nature in only a single aspect, casting aside without pity almost everything in art which, in the world subjected to its imitation, had not relation to a certain, type of beauty. ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... true inference would be that both doctrines are meaningless aggregations of words, and therefore not capable of being in any true sense either 'believed' or 'disbelieved.' So again the view of the external world suggests to Newman 'atheism, pantheism, or polytheism.' Almighty benevolence has created a world of intelligent beings, most of whom are doomed to eternal tortures, and having become incarnate in order to save us, has altogether failed in His purpose. The inference is, says Fitzjames, that 'if Dr. Newman was thoroughly honest ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... complete antithesis between the imagination that has created the clear-cut and definite polytheism of the Greeks and that whence have issued those fluctuating divinities that allow the presentation of the future doctrine of Maya, of universal illusion—another more refined form of the diffluent imagination. Finally, let us note that the Hellenic imagination realized its gods through ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... who objected to the word homoousios conceived that those who approved it favored the opinion of Sabellius and Montanus; they therefore called them blasphemers, as subverting the existence of the Son of God. And again those who defended the term, charging their opponents with polytheism, inveighed against them as introducers of heathen superstitions. Eustathius, bishop of Antioch, accuses Eusebius Pamphilius of perverting the Nicene creed; Eusebius again denies that he violates that exposition of the faith, and accuses Eustathius of introducing the opinion of Sabellius. ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... PRIMUS IN ORBE DEOS FECIT TIMOR, points to the relation of animism first to the belief in ghosts, thence to Polytheism, and ultimately to Monotheism. I must apologise to those of the transcendental school who, like Max Muller for instance (Introduction to the 'Science of Religion'), hold that we have 'a primitive intuition ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... efforts of the Saracens. If we judge of the intentions of Providence by the events and the revolutions of this world, we are compelled to believe that it is quite indifferent about the different religions which exist on earth. During thousands of years Paganism, Polytheism, and Idolatry have been the religions of the world; we are assured today, that during this period the most flourishing nations had not the least idea of the Deity, an idea which is claimed, however, to be so important to all men. The Christians pretend that, ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... the Jewish religion? Practical needs, egoism. Consequently the monotheism of the Jew is in reality the polytheism of many needs. Practical needs or egoism are the principle of bourgeois society, and they appear openly as such so soon as bourgeois society gives birth to the political state. The God of practical needs ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... by treating of the races of mankind as descended from Shem, Ham, and Japhet, and therein of the early condition of man in his antique form. He then dwelt on the pre-eminence of the Greeks in Art and Philosophy, and noticed the suitableness of polytheism to small insulated states, in which patriotism acted as a substitute for religion, in destroying or suspending self. Afterwards, in consequence of the extension of the Roman empire, some universal or common spirit became necessary for the conservation of the vast body, ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... the thought from another, though he made it his own. Plato, in The Republic, as a critic of Homer, by way of fitting Homer the better for the use of the schoolboys of the ideal city, is ready to sacrifice much of that graceful polytheism in which the Greeks anticipated the dulia of saints and angels in the catholic church. He does this to the advantage of a very abstract, and as it may seem disinterested, certainly an uninteresting, notion of deity, which is in truth:—well! one of the dry sticks of mere "natural theology," ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater |
