6 CROONIAN LECTURES 



there be light, and there was light." The 

 firmament, the waters, and the earth, were 

 made as light was made ; that is, in its creation, 

 light or force was regarded as perfectly separable 

 from matter. 



In other ancient nations, or in savage tribes, 

 we may see how ideas of matter and force were 

 distinctly separated, by observing how the 

 different phenomena of nature were worshipped 

 as separate personal deities, according to the 

 distinctness of their action on the senses. 



Wherever we come to the dawn of ideas, we 

 find man raising the forms or forces of matter 

 which he perceives around him until he makes 

 them into heroes or deities, to which he gives a 

 body and qualities like those he finds in himself. 

 Thus time, or night, or day, the heaven, the 

 earth, the sea, or light, darkness, fire, or life, 

 become incarnate gods, capable of doing good 

 or evil. 



By reversing the process, we can descend 

 from the deities to the ideas from which they 

 came ; and everywhere we shall find that, in the 

 earliest ideas, force is regarded as self-existing,, 

 and altogether separable from the idea of matter. 



The Vedas were perhaps compiled in the 



