IX.] Mr. Buckle's Fallacies. 169 



We shall find, to begin with, that it is not appli- 

 cable to the theological state. When man first looked 

 upon the wonders of Nature, his untaught imagination 

 gave birth to weird, fantastic shapes innumerable, 

 peopling the air, the streams, the forest, and the 

 mountain-chasm. Just awakened, as it were, to self- 

 consciousness, and feeling his own life thrilling within 

 him, he ascribed that life to everything around him. 

 He looked upon the wide, dark surface of the " many- 

 sounding sea," and saw there a mighty, restless, earth- 

 upheaving Power, which refinement afterwards person- 

 ified, and called Poseidon. Gazing above him on the 

 blue expanse which seemed to encompass the *'' plain 

 of the earth," he came to recognise there a Divinity 

 of light and warmth, a Devas, a paternal Zeus. When 

 the bright clouds flitted along the sky, it was Hermes 

 driving the celestial cattle to the milking ; when the 

 north-wind arose, cold and blustering, it was Boreas 

 storming in his wrath ; when the stars came out 

 at night, there were countless deities to whom this 

 primitive man made sacred the days of the week. 

 The changes of the seasons, the ceaselessly recurring 

 death and resurrection of Nature, were typified in 

 wild legends of Jemshid and Zohak, of Osiris and 

 Thammuz, of Hylas and Orpheus. The whole uni- 

 verse was thinking, feeling, and willing. Nothing was 



