Note 40.1 — Chapter II · Statement of the Problem and the Evidence.

As I said in a previous lecture,40.1 “we must regard the religious structure to which the cults of Anatolia and Mesopotamia belonged as morphologically the same as the Hellenic.” The grounds of this judgment may be now briefly shown. In his Histoire des anciennes Religions, Tiele classifies most of these together under the category of Nature-Religions, which he distinguishes from the ethical: he is thinking of the distinction between that religious view in which the divinity is closely associated, or even identified, with some natural object, and that in which the divinity is a moral being merely, stript of all attributes that are derived from the world of nature. Serious objection may be taken to the terms in which this classification of religions is expressed. The only religions which would fall under the ethical class would be the Judaic, the Moslem, and the Christian: and yet the Hebrews in the most exalted period of their religion prayed to their god for rain and crops, and the Christian Churches do the same to this day. A deity whose interest is purely ethical has only existed in certain philosophic systems: he has never had an established cult. On the other hand, a nature-religion, at the stage when personal deities have been somewhat developed, which is not also moral, has yet to be discovered. Religion, in its origin possibly non-moral, must, as society advances, acquire the closest relations with the social moral code. A Sun-god or Thunder-god—Shamash, for instance, of Babylon, Mithras of Persia, Sol Invictus of the later Roman Empire—may become a great divinity of an ethical cult and yet retain his association with the element. And it is fruitless to classify higher religions at least on such a basis of distinction as “moral” and “non-moral.”41.1