694 ECCLESIASTICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



The saying that one half the world does not know how tho 

 other half lives, may be paralleled by the saying that one 

 half the world has no idea what the other half thinks, and 

 what it once thought itself. Habitually at a later mental 

 stage, there is a forgetting of that which was familiar at an 

 earlier mental stage. Ordinarily in adult life many thoughts 

 and feelings of childhood have faded so utterly that there is 

 an incapacity for even imagining them ; and, similarly, from 

 the consciousness of cultured humanity there have so com 

 pletely disappeared certain notions natural to the conscious 

 ness of uncultured humanity, that it has become almost in 

 credible they should ever have been entertained. But just as 

 certain as it is that the absurd beliefs at which parents laugh 

 when displayed in their children, were once their own ; so 

 certain is it that advanced peoples to whom primitive con 

 ceptions seem ridiculous, had forefathers who held these 

 primitive conceptions. Their own theory of things has arisen 

 by slow modification of that original theory of things in 

 which, from the supposed reality of dreams, there resulted 

 the supposed reality of ghosts ; whence developed all kinds 

 of supposed supernatural beings. 



587. Is there any exception to this generalization ? Are 

 we to conclude that amid the numerous religions, varying in 



these traditions are congruous with that deification of kings, priests, minoi 

 potentates, and, in a sense, even ordinary persons, which Egyptian history at 

 large shows us; yet all this evidence is disregarded from the desire to ascribe 

 a primitive monotheism or a primitive nature-worship. For these the sole 

 authorities are statements made by the later Egyptian priests or contained in 

 certain of the inscriptions statements, written or spoken, which were neces 

 sarily preceded by a long period during which the art of recording did n t 

 exist, and a further long period of culture statements which naturally 

 embodied relatively advanced conceptions. It would be about as wise to deny 

 that the primitive Hebrew worship was that prescribed in Leviticus because 

 such worship is denounced by Amos and by Hosea. It would be about as 

 wise to take the conception of Zeus entertained by Socrates as disproving 

 the gross anthropomorphism &amp;lt;?f the primitive Greeks. It would be about as 

 wise to instance some refined modern version of Christianity, like that of 

 Maurice, as showing what mediaeval Christians believed. 



