vii.] WHAT is INSPIRATION? 115 



has thoughts, waking or sleeping, which he cannot 

 readily account for, he thinks that these are similarly 

 suggested to him by some ghostly demon or deity. 

 The daimonion of Sokrates was a specimen of just 

 this sort of barbaric psychology. 



Now, in modern times and among Christian peo- 

 ples, this primitive philosophy of Nature is pretty 

 thoroughly superseded. The tendency of modern 

 thought is strongly towards a very strict monotheism. 

 An imperfect monotheism had long ago driven out 

 the general notion of innumerable ghost-deities ; but 

 Christianity arose at a time when the primitive 

 philosophy was still very strong, and so Christianity 

 has always been more or less incrusted with heathen 

 conceptions. In recent times, however, the prolonged 

 study of physical science has begun to tell power- 

 fully upon all our habits of thought ;.and one effect 

 of this is, that we have at last really begun to 

 grasp the conception of the unity of God, in the 

 only sense in which such a conception can have 

 any validity. We have begun to conceive of Divine 

 action as uniform, incessant, and general, throughout 

 each and every region of the universe, however 

 vast or however tiny, so that the infinite whole is 

 animated for ever by one immutable principle of life ; 

 and this conception we call, in common parlance, 



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