152 A N T I E N T M E T A P H Y S I C S. Book IT. 



of corporeal fubftances, and of their operations upon one another. 

 In this wav, they difcovered a difference of bodies, and that one body 

 ads upon another. But it is impofiible that at firft they can have 

 any idea of an inviiible and immaterial principle ading upon body, 

 and in that way conducting the operations of nature, and influenc- 

 ing the affairs of human life. Now, a man who has no idea of this 

 kind, can have no religion, which can only come in procefs of time, 

 by obferving that there are invifible powers infinitely fuperior to 

 any power that he can exert, by which all the wonderful phseno- 

 mena of nature are produced. It may be faid that man, by confidering 

 himfelf and his own powers of adion, might difcuver that there was 

 an invifible power within himfelf, which moved him to adion. But a 

 favage cannot pradife that precept of the wife man in Greece, Knoiv 

 thyfelf^ which was infcribed on the frontifpiece of the temple at 

 Delphi, and was underftood to be an addrefs by the God to thofe 

 who came to vifit his temple*. Some I am affraid, even of our 

 modern philofophers, know fo little of themfelves, as not to know 

 that the principle, which moves their bodies, is an immaterial prin- 

 ciple t- Religion therefore muft have come among men only in 

 procefs of time, after they had lived together for a confiderable 

 time in a well regulated fociety, and had not only invented fome of 

 the neceflary arts of life, but had learned to reafon and to fpecu- 

 late upon caufes and effeds. And indeed, to me it is inconceivable, 

 how a creature only capable of intelled, which is the cafe of man 

 in his natural ftate, (liould immediately upon acquiring the ufe of 

 it without the exercife of it for fome confiderable time upon dif- 

 ferent fubjcds, form an idea of the Supreme Intelligence, or of in- 

 teUi^'ences fuperior to his ovi'n, or even of his own. 



This 



• See p. 8. of this vol. See alfo Plutarch in his Treatlfe upon the Infcription of 

 EI. on the entry to the temple at Delphi, 

 f Vol. V. of Origin of Language, p. 422. and 423. 



