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21. Natural Objects merely so regarded. 
In the present day, when knowledge and research have so 
vastly extended, and when whole hooks are written on single 
divinities, it is of course utterly impossible in a brief paper to 
give anything like a complete representation of the facts, or a 
full justification of the views adopted. But it is quite possible 
to indicate a general method of treatment, and, I venture to 
add, to advance very strong arguments in its favour. Nor is 
further investigation either into the researches of original 
students, or by such students themselves, likely, in my judg- 
ment, to turn the monotheistic position here adopted. We 
have a number of names, an apparent polytheism, but in 
origin a real monotheism. To begin with Infinite Space, 
Heaven, Earth, Dawn, Wind, and Tempest, six of these 
twenty-six figures : as far as I am aware there is no passage 
in the Rik which necessarily implies that any one of them 
was regarded by any poet as an absolutely sentient being of 
divine nature. As to Aditi, the infinite, she is of course in 
one point of view mother of everything and of every personage 
which infinite space contains ; but she is no real divinity, 
being essentially a mere negation, the not-bounded, and space 
itself is mainly unsubstantial extension. Heaven and earth, 
again, bi’oadly regarded as the two halves of the all, heaven 
being all that is above, and earth all that is below, are, anthropo- 
morphically speaking, father and mother of men and things 
in many a kosmogony; but, as in the case of Aditi, and as in 
that of the Greek Ouranos and Gaia, this is a mere figure of 
speech. Thus, the ancient song of Dodona ran, “ The earth 
sends forth her fruit, therefore call the earth mother.” Dyaus, 
in the East, is but a name ; in the West he is the true god-father, 
Zeus. Conversely, Ouranos in the West is but a name ; in the 
East he is the true god-father, Varuna the A sura. Dr. Muir 
is of opinion that epithets of “ a moral or spiritual nature ” are 
applied to the Yedic Dyaus and Prithivi, but such terms as 
“ innocuous, beneficent, wise, promoters of righteousness,” by 
no means necessarily contain such an implication. Thus, for 
instance, the righteousness spoken of is merely kosmic order ; 
of which heaven and earth are, of course, the two great sup- 
porters. The wisdom of heaven is no more than that of the 
physical sun who “ sees all things/’ and therefore is said to 
know all things. Beautiful hymns are addressed to Ushas, the 
dawn; but there is little, if anything, in them which a modern 
poet might not have written, and there is not a tittle of evi- 
dence to show that the ancient poet regarded Ushas otherwise 
