vii HASISADRA'S ADVENTURE 257 



heathen,'* mere creations of a wicked and idolatrous 

 imagination ; and, along with them, they disown, 

 as senseless, the crude theology, with its gross 

 anthropomorphism and its low ethical conception 

 of the divinity, which satisfied the pious souls of 

 Chalda3a. 



I imagine, though I do not presume to be sure, 

 that any endeavour to save the intellectual and 

 moral credit of Chaldsean religion, by suggesting 

 the application to it of that universal solvent of 

 absurdities, the allegorical method, would be 

 scouted ; I will not even suggest that any inge- 

 nuity can be equal to the discovery of the antitypes 

 of the personifications effected by the religious im- 

 agination of later ages, in the triad Anu, Ea, and 

 Bel, still less in Istar. Therefore, unless some 

 plausible recon dilatory scheme should be pro- 

 pounded by a Neo-Chaldsean devotee (and, with 

 Neo-Buddhists to the fore, this supposition is not 

 so wild as it looks), I suppose the moderns will 

 continue to smile, in a superior way, at the griev- 

 ous absurdity of the polytheistic idolatry of these 

 ancient people. 



It is probably a congenital absence of some 

 faculty which I ought to possess which withholds 

 me from adopting this summary procedure. But 

 I am not ashamed to share David Hume's want of 

 ability to discover that polytheism is, in itself, 

 altogether absurd. If we are bound, or permitted, 

 to judge the government of the world by human 



106 



