ANTHROPOxMORPHISM INEVITABLE. 145 



the nature of man, and what human reasoning can 

 fail to render the pecuHarities of the human reason ? 

 Thus the prohibition of anthropomorphic reasoning 

 is the prohibition of all reasoning in the supposed 

 interests of a fiction of un-anthropomorphic thought 

 (probably of the Unknowable ?) which can never be 

 known to exist, and which, if it existed, would be 

 utterly inconceivable to us. Surely it is too plain 

 for words that all our thought and all our feeling 

 must be anthropG7norphic. The proposal to avoid 

 anthropomorphism is as absurd as the suggestion 

 that we should take an unbiassed outside view of 

 ourselves by jumping out of our skin, 



§ 7. If, then, everything we think is of necessity 

 anthropomorphic, the only possible distinction which 

 can be made is not between thought which is 

 anthropomorphic and thought which is not, but 

 between good and bad anthropomorphism. Bad 

 anthropomorphism is of several sorts, and we may 

 distinguish between xh.^ false and the confused. By 

 false anthropomorphism is meant the ascription to 

 beings other than ourselves of qualities or attributes 

 which we know they cannot possess because of their 

 difference from ourselves. This is exemplified by 

 the attribution of specifically human qualities to the 

 animals below, and to God above us. When, e.g., I 

 assert that my dog worships me as a god, my an- 

 thropomorphism is false, because I have no reason 

 to ascribe religious emotions to dogs. Similarly, 

 when I expect God to eat the flesh of sacrificial 

 victims, my anthropomorphism is false, for I know 

 that God is a spirit and not a fact in the phenomenal 

 world. 



§ 8. By confused anthropomorphism is meant that 

 which arises when, starting from some obvious human 



R. of S. L 



