Tu or Myit-ngè, which rises on the Irrawaddy-Salween watershed,
not far from the latter river, and flows westwards through the state
into Taungbaing or Thibaw, and eventually into the Irrawaddy at
Amarapura. The Nam Mao or Shweli only skirts the state, but
it receives a considerable tributary, the Nam Paw, which has its
entire course in Theinni territory, and is large enough to be barely
fordable in the dry weather, and only passable by boats in the
rains. The deforestation caused by years of upland cultivation
has dried up many of the springs, but as a whole North Theinni
is very well watered. Considerable deposits of coal, or rather of
lignite, exist in both North and South Theinni, but do not appear
to be of high quality. Gold is washed in many of the streams
in a fitful way. Limestone exists in large quantities. No valuable
timber exists to any considerable extent. There is some teak in
the Nam Yao valley, and scattered wood-oil trees exist. Pine
forests cover some of the ranges, but, as elsewhere in the Shan
states, varieties of the oak and chestnut are the commonest forest
trees. The climate of the state as a whole is temperate. In the
plains of the uplands there are yearly frosts in January, February
and March, but in the greater part of the state the thermometer
rarely falls to freezing-point, and in the hot weather does not
exceed ninety degrees for any length of time. The average rainfall
seems to be about 60 in. yearly. After the disruption of the ancient
Shan empire at Tali by Kublai Khan, Theinni seems to have been
the centre of the independent Shan kingdom, with various capitals
in the Shweli and Nam Tu valleys. This kingdom of Kawsampi
was ended by the Burmese about 1738, and the country was divided
into various states, with appointment orders from Ava. Numerous
rebellions and civil wars have reduced Theinni from its position as
the most powerful and populous Shan state to a condition of fearful
desolation. It has regained much population since the British
occupation in 1888, but is still far from its old prosperity. Much
may be expected from the cart roads that have been made, and
from the Mandalay-Kun long Railway.
Hsenwi, the capital of North Theinni, stands near the north bank of the Nam Tu. The ruins of the old capital lie at a short distance, and show it to have been a large and well-built town, with a number of houses variously estimated at from three to ten thousand. Möng Yai is the capital of South Theinni, with a population of about 2060. Lashio, the headquarters of the superintendent of the Northern Shan State, is in North Theinni. The races found in Theinni comprise Shans, Kachins, Chinese, Burmese, Lihsaws, Wa, Palaungs and Yanglam. The Shans and Kachins vastly predominate, and are nearly equal in numbers. (J. G. Sc.)
THEISM (Gr. θεός, god), literally, and in its widest sense, the belief in a god or gods. The term has had several changes
of meaning. (1) It appears for the first time in 18th-century
English as an occasional synonym for “deism” (q.v.), and
therefore as applying to those who believed in God but not in
Christianity. Later criticism, orthodox and heterodox, upon
the English deists inclines to charge them with the conception
of a divine absentee, who wound up the machine of nature and
left it to run untended. That was the general 18th-century
way of thinking. God was apt to be thought of as purely
transcendent, not immanent in the world. (2) In the 19th
century theism is generally used of positive belief in God,
either with or without belief in the claim of Christianity to be
a revelation, but unassociated with any peculiarities of 18th-century
deists. If the word “deism” emphasizes a negative
element—rejection of church Christianity—“theism” generally
emphasizes the positive element-belief in God. (3) There is
also a third usage. “Theism” was reclaimed by Theodore
Parker, F. W. Newman, Frances Power Cobbe, and others,
for their more modern speculative belief in God, which, while
non-Christian or at least non-orthodox, held to an immanent
God, continually revealing himself—in the moral consciousness.
The ambiguity cannot be cured. We use the word in this
article in the second sense.[1]
I. From this point of view theism is a synonym for Natural Theology, or almost so. But the expression Natural Theology itself has a history. (1) The “three theologies”— recognized by the early Roman Stoics—probably on the suggestion of a passage in Aristotle’s Metaphysics,[2] xi. 8—are named by St Augustine (Latinizing the Greek terms) Natural Theology. mythical, natural, and civil or political (City of God, iv. 27). There is probably a malicious echo in a well-known passage of Gibbon (Decline and Fall, chap. ii.): “The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true, by the philosopher as equally false, and by the magistrate as equally useful.” Augustine rejects all three “theologies” as pagan figments, and not a few church writers follow him in this-borrowing his learning without naming him (e.g. the Protestant Grotius in his notes on Rom. i. 20). Yet the natural or physical theology of the philosophers—in contrast to mere myths or mere statecraft—seems a straightforward effort to reach faith in God on grounds of scientific reason. It deserves the name, in the modern sense, of Natural Theology. (2) Raymond of Sabunde’s Liber naturae sive creaturarum (1434–36) bears also the title Theologia Naturalis—but not from the author’s own hand,[3] though his introduction to the book in question, the Prologue, put upon the Index at Rome for its daring, describes the “book of nature” as “connatural to us,” in contrast with the “supernatural” book, the Bible, which belongs to the clerics. Laymen may read the book of nature, and Man himself is the most important “leaf” in it. Raymond attempts to demonstrate the whole of church theology upon principles of reason. That is a task quite beyond what is generally recognized as Natural Theology. (3) With Francis Bacon (Advancement of Learning, 1605) the expression Natural Theology emerges in what has become the modern sense-as standing for a part of Christian theology, attainable by reason, and contrasted by most theologians with the “mysteries” of faith (Bacon uses that term too) on the principles of Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas (see Apologetics).
[It is not clear that Bacon is the first to use the term in the now accepted sense; but he and Theophilus Raynaudus, S. J., in his Theologia Naturalis (1622), of which there is a copy in the Bodleian, must at least be among the first in their respective communions to do so. Raynaudus’s authorities, in favour of the recognition of a natural theology and against it, do not, so far as the present writer has been able to consult them, use the expression. So too H. Alsted, an early Protestant writer on Natural Theology (in his Methodus Theologiae, 1611, and in later works), defines it as moderns do—some of the contents of his Natural Theology are fantastic enough—and his authorities, again so far as consulted, differ upon the place to be assigned to Natural Theology within a system of study, but do not employ the term.]
In later times the expression is common; it is used e.g. by Locke, Leibnitz and Wolff. Wolfi’s influence made the usage habitual[4] though Schleiermacher and Ritschl, like the Socinians earlier, deny the existence of a natural theology. Following the text and ordinary interpretation[5] of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, it is believed that Aristotle alreadyRoman Catholic grouping. identified metaphysics with a theology: accordingly modern Roman Catholic learning, which owes a great debt to Aristotle through the school men, includes Natural Theology in philosophy, not in theology properly so called. With Natorp’s article W. Wallace’s Gifford Lecture,[6] chap. i., may also be consulted; but Wallace does not distinguish the unusual sense which the term bears as applied to Raymond’s book. R. Flint has remarked that Natural Theology ought not merely to prove the being of God, but to give a full systematic view of what (it is contended) can be learned of theological truth from the “light of nature” (St Augustine, and
- ↑ Imm. Kant's distinction of “deist” and “theist” may be found in the Critique of Pure Reason, “Transcendental Dialectic,” Book II. chaps. iii. and vii. It is curious, but, unless for the study of Rant, unimportant.
- ↑ Cf. Theology. Natorp’s article quoted there gives the reference to the passage in Aristotle, but does not recognize its connexion with the later Stoical distinction.
- ↑ See art. “Raimundus Sabiende” by Schaarschmidt in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopädie (ed. 1905). At this point we must also call to mind the wide currency given to the term theology by Abelard, and his editors or copyists.
- ↑ A. Harnack and some others use the expression in a wider sense. Any supposed principles (even if not worked out into a system of inferences) used as ready-made clues for the study and interpretation of Christianity are described by this school as natural theology (cf. Theology).
- ↑ Challenged by Natorp; see Theology.
- ↑ Published in Lectures and Essays.
