bb MAira'EES AOT3 FASHTOX. 



slightest suggestion to ascribe unknown joowers to any ob 

 ject and make a fetish of it ; their conceiotions of liuman- 

 ity and its capacities were necessarily vague, and without 

 specific limits. The man who by unusual strength, or cuii 

 ning, achieved something that others had failed to achieve, 

 or something which they did not understand, was considered 

 by them as differing from themselves ; and, as we see in the 

 belief of some Polynesians that only their chiefs have souls, 

 or in that of the ancient Peruvians that their nobles were di- 

 vine by birth, the ascribed difference was apt to be not one of 

 degree only, but one of kind. 



Let them remember next, how gross were the notions 

 of God, or rather of gods, prevalent during the same era 

 and afterwards — how concretely gods were conceived as 

 men of specific aspects dressed in specific ways — how their 

 names were literally " the strong," " the destroyer," " the 

 powerful one," — how, according to the Scandinavian my- 

 thology, the "sacred duty of blood-revenge" was acted 

 on by the gods themselves, — and how they were not only 

 human in their vindictiveness, their cruelty, and their 

 quarrels with each other, but were supposed to have amours 

 on earth, and to consume the viands placed on their altars. 

 Add to which, that in various mythologies, Greek, Scandi- 

 navian, and others, the oldest beings are giants ; that ac- 

 cording to a traditional genealogy the gods, demi-gods, 

 and in some cases men, are descended from these after the 

 human fashion ; and that while in the East we hear of sons of 

 God who saw the daughters of men that they were fair, 

 the Teutonic myths tell of unions between the sons of men 

 and the daughters of the o^ods. 



Let them remember, too, that at first the idea of death 

 differed widely from that which we have ; that there are 

 btill tribes who, on the decease of one of their number, at* 

 tempt to make the corpse stand, and put food into his mouth ; 

 that the Peruvians had feasts at which the mummies of their 



