IN LOWEE MAN. 209 



India ' in the course of the same year was the subject of an 

 article in the ' Athenaeum.' l 



In the various forms which hero worship takes, the deifi- 

 cation of man by man is daily illustrated by the most refined 

 individuals of the cultured classes of the most highly 

 civilised nations, and has been so illustrated in all times. 

 Such is the admiration of excellence of any kind that many 

 ardent men and women worship its human embodiment or 

 incarnation. Hence they make divinities of poets or no- 

 velists, theologians or philosophers, sculptors or painters, 

 soldiers or sailors. The Rev. Dr. Chalmers, for instance, 

 speaking of Rousseau, says, * Nor were there wanting many 

 admirers who worshipped him while he lived and who, when 

 he died, went like devotees on a pilgrimage to his tomb.' 2 

 Arnold spoke of the ' all but idolatry ' with which he re- 

 garded Bunsen ; and there are hosts of young men who 

 make a god of Carlyle or Ruskin, Darwin or Huxley 

 Shakespeare or Tennyson, Landseer or Millais. In all such 

 cases there is still a respect for power, but it is no longer for 

 mere physical strength; it is a reverence for, or an adoration 

 of, intellectual ability, artistic skill, or moral force. 



The obvious worship of man ~by woman which cha- 

 racterises our own civilisation is interesting as illustrating 

 the sense of dependence, on which, according to Schleier- 

 macher and other authors, religion is mainly based. ' The 

 mere feeling of dependence on a superior being ' is the 

 ' lowest and simplest form of religion,' says Professor Blackie. 

 In endless ways our most highly educated women show that 

 they have such a feeling for their husbands, fathers, sons, 

 brothers, or for, in general, men as men. They lean upon 

 and cling to them in such a way as to manifest their evi- 

 dent consciousness of man's superiority, and superiority not 

 simply as to physical strength. They have faith in his superior 

 wisdom, and they look up to him for guidance in all the 

 more serious affairs of life. Nay, they frequently go so far 

 as to make a veritable idol of him, and worship him with a 

 devotion and intentness worthy of higher objects of reve- 



1 Of February 19, 1876, p. 264. 



2 < Lectures on the Epistle to the Romans,' 1854, vol. i. p. 237. 



