THE LOWER EACES OF MAN. 361 



those of the tropics consider liiui as evil; himting' races worship the 

 moou, agriculturists the sun; again, in free communities thought is free, 

 and, consequently, progressive; despots, on the contrary, by a natural 

 instinct, endeavor to strengthen themselves by the support of spiritual 

 terrors, and hence favor a religion of sacrifices and of priests rather 

 than one of prayer and meditation. 



Lastly, the character of the race impresses itself on the religion. 

 Poetry especially exercises an immense influence, as, for instance, has 

 been well shown by Max ]\Iiiller and Cox to have been the case with the 

 Greeks, the names of the Greek gods reapi)earing in the earlier Vedic 

 poetry as mere words denoting natural objects. Thus, Dyaus, in ancient 

 Sanscrit, means simply the sky ; and the expression, the " sky thunders," 

 meant originally no more than it does with us. The Greeks and 

 Romans, however, iiersonilied Dyaus, or Zeus; thus, they came to 

 regard him as a deity, the god of thunder, the lord of heaven, and thus 

 built up a whole mythology out of what were at first mere poetical 

 expressions. Time, however, does not permit me to enter on this inter- 

 esting part of the subject. I trust, however, that what I have said shows 

 that the opinions of savages, as regards religion, differ essentially from 

 those prevalent among us. Their deities are scarcely more powerful 

 than themselves ; they are evil, not good ; they are to be propitiated by 

 sacrifices, not by prayer; they are not creators; they are neither omnis- 

 cient nor all-powerful ; they neither reward the good nor i^unish the 

 evil; far from conferring immortality on man, they are not even, in all 

 cases, immortal themselves. 



Where the material elements of civilization developed themselves with- 

 out any corresponding increase of knowledge, as, for instance, in Mexico 

 and Peru, a more correct idea of Divine power, without any correspond- 

 ing enlightenment as to the Divine nature, led to a religion of terror, 

 which finally became a terrible scourge of humanity. 



Gradually, however, an increased acquaintance with the laws of nature 

 enlarged the mind of man. lie first supposed that the deity fashioned 

 the earth, raising it out of the water, and i^reparing it as a dwelling- 

 place for man; and subsequently realized the idea that land and water 

 were alike created by Divine power. After regarding spirits as alto- 

 gether evil, he rose to a belief in good as well as in evil deities, and 

 gradually subordinating the latter to the former, worshii)ped the good 

 spirits alone as gods, the evil sinking to the level of demons. 



From believing only in ghosts, he came gradually to the recognition 

 of the soul ; at length uniting this belief with that in a beneficent and 

 just being, he connected morality with religion, a step the importance 

 of which it is scarcely possible to over-estimate. 



Thus we see that as men rise in civilization their religion rises with 

 them ; that far from being antagonistic to religion, without science, true 

 religion is impossible. 



The Australians dimly imagine a being, spiteful, malevolent, but v/eak, 

 and dangerous only in the dark. 



The Negro's deity is more powerful, but not less hateful. Invisible, 

 indeed, but subject to pain, mortal like himself, and liable to be made 

 the slave of man by enchantment. 



The deities of the South Sea Islanders are some good, some evil ; but 

 on the w hole, more is to be feared from the latter than to be hoped from 

 the former. They ftishioned the land, but are not truly creators, for 

 earth and water existed before them. They do not punish the evil, nor 

 reward the good. They watch over the aiiairs of men ; but if, on the 

 one hand, witchcraft has no power over them, neither, on the other, can 



