154 THE POPULAR SCIE^''CE MONTHLY. 



The mind i^roceeds from the known to the unknown. This is the 

 highway that leads to science, but on condition that the traveler does 

 not wander from it to launch himself into hasty conclusions. The 

 philosophers of the last century, seeking to explain how primitive 

 man fell under the yoke of positive religions, maintained that they 

 were invented by the priests ; some added, and by kings. It is true 

 that priests and governments have used religions too much for per- 

 sonal or political interests. But that is no reason for believing that 

 they invented them. 



Good sense teaches that the existence of the priest is posterior to 

 the birth of the religious sentiment. Besides this, nothing is more 

 contrary to the tendencies of contemporary science than to regard man 

 as a lump of dough indefinitely plastic in the hands of legislators 

 and mystagogues. Not only is it henceforth averred that all known 

 peoples have religious faiths, in the sense that they admit the exist- 

 ence of superhuman powers intervening in the destiny of the indi- 

 vidual, but I shall also have occasion to show that they all possess — at 

 least in a rudimentary state — the essential elements of worship, prayer, 

 saci'ifice, and symbols ; and that these elements are clad with analo- 

 gous forms among the most diverse races, and that, wherever we can 

 trace the course of religious evolution, we see faiths passing through 

 phases, if not identical, coming under general laws. Religions make 

 themselves, and are not invented. 



From the fact that some kings and heroes have been deified, a few 

 philosophers have concluded that all the gods were deified men. In 

 this way, according to Evem^re, among the ancients, the first chiefs 

 or the first sages, having obtained domination by means of their physi- 

 cal or intellectual superiority, have had a supernatural power attributed 

 to them, and have consequently received divine honors. If we had 

 asked this philosopher whence the first believer derived the idea of the 

 supernatural and divine to apply it to kings and priests, he would have 

 been greatly embarrassed to answer us. Evemere's school, resting 

 upon a tradition that Zeus once reigned in Crete, and on the fact that 

 his tomb is shown there, maintained that the master of Olympus was 

 an ancient Cretan sovereign, deified by his subjects. We know now 

 that Zcvs iraTTjp is found among the Romans, the Hindoos, and the 

 Germans, under the names respectively of Jupiter, Dyaus-Pitar, Zio, 

 or Tyr, and with the general character of Heaven-father, the first form 

 of " father who is in heaven." * 



Another school obtained a better conception of the real character 

 of the gods, when it associated them with Nature deified in its phe- 

 nomena. As early as the sixth century before our era, Theogenes of 

 Rhegium declared that Apollo, Helios, and Ilephaestos were fire 

 under different aspects — Hera the air, Poseidon water, Artemis the 



*■ M. J. Darmcstctcr identifies him also with the Ahura Mazda of the Persialis and the 

 Svarogu of the Slavs, 



