Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/323

3. The next stage in the objectifying process is reached when man recognises and finds an independent power outside of himself in what has life. Life, even the life force in a tree, and still more in an animal, is a higher principle than the nature of the sun or of a river. This is why it has come about that among a very large number of peoples animals have been reverenced as divinities. This appears to us as the least worthy form of worship, but, as a matter of fact, the principle of life is higher than that of the sun. Animal life is a more exalted, a truer form of existence than any such existing natural object, and it is in so far less undignified to reverence animals as divinities than rivers, stars, &c. The life of an animal gives token of an active independence of subjectivity, and it is that which is the main point here. It is his self-consciousness which a man makes objective to himself, and life is the form, the mode of existence, which is undoubtedly the most nearly related to the spiritual one. Animals are still worshipped by many peoples, especially in India and Africa. An animal has the calm independence, the vitality which does not throw itself away, which has a preference for this or for that; it has accidental arbitrary movement; it is not to be understood; has something secret in its modes of action, in its expressions; it is alive, but not comprehensible as man is to man. This mysteriousness constitutes the miraculous element for man, so that he is able to look upon animal life as higher than his own. Serpents were still reverenced among the Greeks; from ancient times they had the prepossession in their favour of being esteemed as good omens. On the west coast of Africa a serpent is to be found in every house, and it is the greatest crime to murder it. On the one hand, animals are thus held in veneration, and on the other hand they are, notwithstanding this, subject to the most capricious treatment in respect of the veneration shown to them. Negroes use whatever animal comes first to