"Polytheistical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... three stages, in which Fetishism, Polytheism, and Monotheism successively prevail. The chief social characteristics of the Polytheistic period are the institution of slavery and the coincidence or "confusion" of the spiritual and temporal powers. It has two stages: the theocratic, represented by Egypt, and the military, represented by Rome, between which Greece stands ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... considered the whole history of polytheism in a tone of philosophy, which, without subscribing to all his opinions, we may be permitted to admire. "The boasted tolerance of polytheism did not rest upon the respect due from society to the freedom of individual opinion. The polytheistic nations, tolerant as they were towards each other, as separate states, were not the less ignorant of the eternal principle, the only basis of enlightened toleration, that every one has a right to worship God in the manner which seems to him the best. Citizens, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... theologic races have the conception of 'a jealous god,' who would not tolerate the presence of a rival. We cannot date this conception earlier than Mosaism, and this idea struggled hard against polytheistic toleration. This view acknowledges the reality of other gods, but ignores their claims. The still later view was that other gods were non-existent, a position started by the Hebrew prophets in contempt of idolatry, ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... against the theory that tribes transfer their earthly polity to the heavenly city; for monotheism is found where monarchy is unknown. "God cannot be a reflection from human kings where there are no kings; nor a president elected out of a polytheistic society of gods, where there is as yet no polytheism; nor an ideal first ancestor where men do not worship their ancestors." To the substantiating of these facts Mr. Lang then applies himself, and shows us how among the Australians, Red Indians, Figians, ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... fancy-dress, in the grey cloak of a church or the green cloak of a meadow. He is always behind, His form makes the folds fall so superbly. And that is what the savage old Hebrews, alone among the nations, guessed, and why their rude tribal god has been erected on the ruins of all polytheistic civilisations. For the Greeks and Norsemen and Romans saw the superficial wars of nature and made the sun one god, the sea another, the wind a third. They were not thrilled, as some rude Israelite was, one night in the wastes, alone, by the ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... first evening as to whether it meant that there was more than one God. And Clytie's view—that God called himself "Us" in the same sense that kings and editors of newspapers do—at length prevailed over the polytheistic ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... was against him," said an old man. Aavehie is the god of fishermen, who was always propitiated by intending anglers in the polytheistic days and who ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... state after death—a doctrine hardly to be lost when once imparted—seems to have been so prominent in the one faith while it was so much the reverse of prominent in the other. 3. That there was no connection between the mythology of Egypt and that of Greece. Subtract what is common to all polytheistic systems, and what is common to all systems of natural religions, and absolutely no similarity remains. On the one side are forms of human beauty, majesty, and passion, in which the original groundwork of nature-worship is as much as possible concealed by the working ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... which, resolving the personages of the Pantheon into the powers of nature, reconciled the apparent multiplicity of gods with monotheism, or even with atheism. So far, however, as outward appearances were concerned, the worship was grossly polytheistic. Various deities, whom it was not considered at all necessary to trace to a single stock, divided the allegiance of the people, and even of the kings, who regarded with equal respect, and glorified with equally exalted epithets, some fifteen or sixteen personages. Next to these principal ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... in nature is as firmly rooted today as it was in the dawn of man's intellectual development. The form in which the idea has been presented has changed with the ages. Mythology succeeded animism, and has in turn yielded to many curious and vanished theories, polytheistic, gnostic, pantheistic, and the rest. Now, the belief in distinct beings behind natural phenomena has virtually disappeared. Not so the belief in some form of universal life or consciousness—of which belief representative ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... Phallic worship, reads as follows "In early ages the sexual emblems were adored as most sacred objects, and in the several polytheistic systems the act or principle of which the phallus was the type was represented by a deity to whom it was consecrated: in Egypt by Khem, in India by Siva, in Assyria by Vul, in primitive Greece by Pan, and later by Priapus, in Italy by Mutinus or Priapus, ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... Sanskrit, "the language of the gods," alias the Latin of India, it has been translated into all the Prakrit or vernacular and modern dialects of the great peninsula. The reason why it has not found favour with the Moslems is doubtless the highly polytheistic spirit which pervades it; moreover, the Faithful had already a specimen of that style of composition. This was the Hitopadesa, or Advice of a Friend, which, as a line in its introduction informs us, was ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton |
