88 [Proc. B.N.F.C., 



yet, while the primitive impressions were thus thickly incrusted 

 by accumulated modifications, they constantly crop up through 

 every covering, and among every people, thereby demonstrating 

 the antiquity and universality of the primary appreciation of a 

 cause for natural phenomena, and a recognition of its author 

 or authors. 



In the history of individuals we know how powerful are the 

 early impressions of youth, and how indelibly they are en- 

 graved on the memory, presenting themselves in all their 

 freshness and vigour amidst all the varying vicissitudes of an 

 extended lifetime. It is even so with the early impressions of 

 the race. The mythology of Greece and Rome, a development 

 of this idea, was composed of a vast assemblage of divinities or 

 celestial beings. The hills and the valleys, the groves and the 

 rocks, the seas, lakes, rivers, and pools had each their attendant 

 divinity. This polytheism was not confined to the peculiarities 

 of the natural world ; it included divinities representative of all 

 the fancied qualities of the ideal world ; even distinguished 

 heroes, sages, and artists were exalted to the position and 

 dignity of deities, and were included amongst the celestial 

 hierarchy ; and the labours of poets and artists were mainly 

 employed in expressing the doings and characters of the gods. 

 The old Norse myths are founded on the imaginary characters 

 and actions of ideal beings who represented the various 

 functions of nature, and in the popular mind these super- 

 natural beings were endowed with qualities and habits for good 

 or evil similar to the people themselves. In a similar manner 

 throughout the world the great tribal or natural gods represent 

 the personified forces of nature — a shadowy world of super- 

 natural beings possessed of the same desires, habits, and 

 passions as the people who worship them. This all-prevailing 

 impression seems to imply a universal inner consciousness of a 

 spiritual world which is awakened in the mind by the more 

 distinctive phenomena of nature, which are therefore wor- 

 shipped as the tangible representatives of living beings who 

 control the destinies of mankind for good or evil. 



