ra. v.] EELIOION AS ADJUSTMENT. 459 



adequately to represent in imagination the overpowering 

 emotions of mingled doubt and dread which must have 

 seized the primitive thinker when brought face to face with 

 this omnipresent, but to him utterly incoherent, universe. 

 Where certainty is for us, for him was uncertainty. The 

 same resistless forces which to us bring expected benefits 

 weje for him productive mainly of unlooked-for calamities. 

 We, holding in our grasp the Aladdin s lamp of physical 

 knowledge, may find them obedient slaves : to him, who had 

 not unearthed the talisman, they proclaimed themselves in 

 exorable masters. Hunger and disease, exposure to heat and 

 cold, to the attacks of savage beasts and of unseen enemies, 

 were stern realities of daily experience. There were neither 

 houses for shelter and defence, nor cities for the common 

 protection, nor arts to insure exemption from physical dis 

 comfort. Language had not yet found need for words to 

 denote some of the most necessary implements and some ot 

 the most ordinary processes of life. Nature was unmanage 

 able as well as unknown, a stumbling-block as well as a 

 riddle. 



Thus the unclassed phenomenon came to be a source of 

 terror ; for experience had taught that it was quite as likely 

 to bring disaster as good fortune. Thus the volitional 

 agencies by which fetishism sought to account for surround 

 ing phenomena came to be regarded as capricious and male 

 volent agencies, whose wrath must be averted by prayer or 

 sorcery, and whose favour must be bought by sacrifice. 

 Thus arose the conception of God as a consuming fire. Thus 

 it was that in Egypt deprecating prayers were addressed 

 to the crocodile, and in Syria to the serpent ; that Hindu 

 mothers threw their children into the Ganges, while Cartha 

 ginians burned their new-born infants in front of the brazen 

 image of Moloch. 



ernsterfullten Ansicht der Dinge, dass das Unenvartete, Ausserordentliche, 

 HUT Furcht, iricht Freude oder HofFimng erregt. * Kosmos. torn. i. p. 119. 



