THREEFOLD BRANCHING OF PRmiTIVE GOVERNMENT. 83 



few or of one kind, little faith could have been placed in 

 the inference. But numerous as they are, alike in the case 

 of titles, in that of complimentary phrases, and in that of 

 salutes — similar and simultaneous, too, as the process of de-- 

 preciation has been in all of these ; the evidences become 

 strong by mutual confirmation. And when we recollect, 

 also, that not only have the results of this process been vis- 

 ible in various nations and in all times, but that they are 

 occurring among ourselves at the present moment, and that 

 the causes assigned for previous depreciations may be seen 

 daily working out other ones — when we recollect this, it 

 becomes scarcely possible to doubt that the process has 

 been as alleged ; and that our ordinary words, acts, and 

 phrases of civility were originally acknowledgments of sub- 

 mission to another's omnipotence. 



Thus the general doctrine, that all kinds of government 

 exercised over men were at first one government — that the 

 political, the religious, and the ceremonial forms of control 

 are divergent branches of a general and once indivisible 

 control — begins to look tenable. When, with the above 

 facts fresh in mind, we read primitive records, and find that 

 " there were giants in those days " — when we remember 

 that in Eastern traditions Nimrod, among others, figures 

 in all the characters of giant, king, and divinity — when we 

 turn to the sculptures exhumed by Mr. Layard, and con- 

 templating in them the effigies of kings driving over 

 enemies, trampling on prisoners, and adored by prostrate 

 slaves, then observe how their actions correspond to the 

 primitive names for the divinity, " the strong," "the 

 destroyer," " the powerful one " — when we find that the 

 earliest temples were also the residences of the kings — and 

 when, lastly, we discover that among races of men still liv- 

 ing, there are current superstitions analogous to those which 

 old records and old buildings indicate ; we begin to realize 

 «he probability of the hypothesis that has been set forth. 



