to the worshipper--so too anthropomorphism,
notwithstanding the consequences to which, in mythology, it led, did
contain, or rather, was based on, one element of truth, viz. that the
divine is personal, as well as the human. Its error was to set up, as
divine personalities, a number of reproductions or reflections of
human personality. It leads to the conclusion, as a necessary
consequence, that the divine personality is but a shadow of the human
personality, enlarged and projected, so to speak, upon the clouds, but
always betraying, in some way or other, the fact that it is but the
shadow, magnified or distorted, of man. It excludes the possibility
that the divine personality, present to the common consciousness as
the object of worship, may be no reproduction of the human
personality, but a reality to which the human personality has the
power of approximating. Be this as it may, we are justified in saying,
indeed we are compelled to recognise, that in mythology, all the world
over, we see a process of reflection at work, by which the beings,
originally apprehended as superior to man, come first to be
anthropomorphised, that is to be apprehended as having the parts and
passions of men, and then, consequently, to be seen to be no better
than men. This discovery it is which in the long run proves fatal to
anthropomorphism.

We have seen, above, the reason why fetishism becomes eventually
distasteful to the common consciousness: the beings, superior to man,
which are worshipped by the community, are worshipped as having the
interests of the community in their charge, and as having the good of
the community at heart; whereas a fetish is sought and found by the
individual, to advance his private interests, even to the cost and
loss of other individuals and of the community at large. Thus, from
the earliest period at which beings, superior to man, are
differentiated into gods and fetishes, gods are accepted by the common
consciousness as beings who maintain the good of the community and
punish those who infringe it; while fetishes become beings who assist
individual members to infringe the customary morality of the tribe.
Thus, from the first, the beings, of whom the community is conscious
as superior to man, are beings, having in charge, first, the customary
morality of the tribe; and, afterwards, the conscious morality of the
community.

This conception, it was, of the gods, as guardians of morality and of
the common go