322 THE FUTURE OF RELIGION AND MORALS. 



we find the law-givers and founders of religions, in their 

 several sacred books, affirming that they had received 

 the moral precepts inculcated by them from heaven. 

 But not the less was morality a matter of man's inven- 

 tion, and practised long before the pretended revelations 

 which afterwards came in to reinforce and confirm it; 

 of human invention like the mechanical arts, but so 

 obviously and instinctively apparent in its necessity, 

 that where even two or three human units were aggre- 

 gated together, there morality was sure to arise in the 

 midst of them. Social necessity was the mother of 

 morality, as individual necessity of the mechanical arts ; 

 but necessity was as much the mother of the one species 

 of invention as of the other. 



Very early, too, but not till they had quite parted all 

 company with their non-human relations, our forlorn 

 and helpless ancestors must have experienced some dim 

 religious feelings, begotten of fear, and awe, and ignorance, 

 and blind dumb wonder, which Nature and her for- 

 midable forces, sometimes terrible and destructive, 

 sometimes again seemingly beneficent and kindly dis- 

 posed, would naturally stir within them. The primitive 

 man found himself cast helpless into a universe fraught 

 with manifold dangers, where all was uncertain, and 

 the sentiment of absolute dependence on Nature and 

 her capricious powers, unless he could find some way 

 to placate them, was borne deeply in upon him. But 

 haply, by figuring the powers of Nature as beings like 

 himself, as he would naturally do, they would be con- 

 ceived as capable of being moved in a human way and 

 rendered more favourably disposed. Hence came religion 

 into the world, born of fear, as Epicurus truly declared ; 

 and hence religious practice soon followed, in the shape 

 of ceremony, sacrifice, and supplication to please the 

 powerful demons and deities. 



