IVHAT DO THEY MEAN? 255 



Large brass pots, wliicli have some sacred meaning, stand 

 about, and with them a curious trident-shaped stand, about 

 four feet hi^-h, on the horns of which o-arlands of flowers are 

 huno- as offerino'S. The visitor is told that the male figufes 

 are Mahadeva, and the female Kali: we could hear of no 

 other deities. I leave it to those who know Indian mythology 

 better than I do, to interpret the meaning or rather the past 

 meaning, for I suspect it means very little now of all this 

 trumpery and nonsense, on which the poor folk seem to 

 spend much money. It w^as impossible, of course, even if one 

 had understood their language, to find out what notions they 

 attached to it all ; and all I could do, on looking at these 

 heathen idol chapels, in the midst of a Christian and civilized 

 land, w^as to ponder, in sadness and astonishment, over a 

 puzzle as yet to me inexplicable : namely, how human beings 

 first got into their heads the vagary of worshipping images. 

 I fully allow^ the cleverness and apparent reasonableness 

 of M. Comte's now famous theory of the development 

 of religions. I blame no one for holding it. But I can- 

 not agree with it. The more of a "saine appreciation," as 

 ^I. Comte calls it, I bring to bear on the known facts ; 

 the more I "let my thought play freely around them,*' 

 the more it is inconceivalde to me, according to any laws of 

 the human intellect which I have seen at work, that savage 

 or lialf-savaLLC folk should have invented idolatries. I do 



