ix.] WORSHIP FROM FEAR. 219 



course, lie sees it now. A Wasp made the world ; which 

 to him entirely new guess might become an integral 

 part of his tribe's creed. That would be their cos- 

 mogony. And if, a generation or two after, another 

 savage genius should guess that the world was a globe 

 hanging in the heavens, he would, if he had imagination 

 enough to take the thought in at all, put it to himself 

 in a form suited to his previous knowledge and concep- 

 tions. It would seem to him that The Wasp flew about 

 the skies with the world in his mouth, as he carries a 

 bluebottle fly ; and that would be the astronomy of his 

 tribe henceforth. Absurd enough : but as every man 

 who is acquainted with old mythical cosmogonies must 

 know no more absurd than twenty similar guesses on 

 record. Try to imagine the gradual genesis of such 

 myths as the Egyptian scarabaeus and egg, or the Hindoo 

 theory that the world stood on an elephant, the elephant 

 on a tortoise, the tortoise on that infinite note of in- 

 terrogation which, as some one expresses it, underlies 

 all physical speculations, and judge : must they not 

 have arisen in some such fashion as that which I have 

 pointed out ? 



This, I say, would be the culminating point of the 

 wasp-worship, which had sprung up out of bodily fear 

 of being stung. , 



But times might come for it in which it would go 

 through various changes, through which every super- 

 stition in the world, I suppose, has passed or is doomed 

 to pass. 



The wasp-men might be conquered, and possibly 

 eaten, by a stronger tribe than themselves. What 

 would be the result ? They would fight valiantly at 

 first, like wasps. But what if they began to fail ? 



