CHAP. Xn. ABSTRACT IDEAS BECAME GODS. 17-3 



Upon this principle it is probable, that Gods 

 were made of the virtues, the senses, and, in short, 

 every abstract idea which had reference to the 

 Deity or man ; and we may therefore expect to find, 

 in tliis catalogue, intellect, might, wisdom, creative 

 power, the generative and productive principles, 

 thought, will, goodness, mercy, compassion*, divine 

 vengeance, prudencC; temperance, fortitude, fate, 

 love, TTodog, hope, cliarity, joy, time, space, infinity, 

 as well as sleep, harmony t, and even divisions of 

 time, as the year, month, day, and hours, and an 

 innumerable host of abstract notions. 



These, in like manner, were admitted into the 

 Pantheon of Greece and Rome, with the addition 

 of some not very delicate or elegant personages; 

 who were frequently permitted to supersede and 

 usurp the place of the more respectable divinities 

 of earlier times. 



There were also numerous physical Deities in the 

 Egyptian Pantheon, as earth, heaven, the sun and 

 moon, and others, revered for the benefits they con- 

 ferred on man : though the view they took of the 

 elements mentioned by Seneca, a])pears rather to 

 have been a metaphysical than a religious doctrine ; 

 and if they divided each of the four elements into 

 two, making one masculine, the other feminine, it 

 was in order to establish a distinction which ap- 

 peared to correspond to a difference in their nature, 



* The rahman, and rciliim of the Arahs. 



■j- Phitarcli says Harmony was the offspring of Mars and Venus : de 

 Is. s. 48. Tin's, as tlie idea of Minerva sjjringing from the head of Jove, 

 and other simihir fables, shows that many of tlie Greek (iods were, in 

 like manner, personifications of ideas, and attribntes of the Deity. 



