The heathen religion in its popular and symbolical development

Front matter

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Dedication

TO YOU,

WHOSE INTELLIGENCE RAISES YOU ABOVE VULGAR PREJUDICES J

"WHOSE JUDGMENT IS ENLIGHTENED,

Chap. I. The Topography of Religious Objects, regarded as Deified .16

II. The Worship of the Gods 21

SECTION in.

SACRED PLACES AND RELIGIOUS FESTIVALS.

Chap. I. Sacred Places . 36

II. Eeligious Festivals 40

XIV CONTENTS.

SECTION, IV.

PRIESTS AND IDOLS.

Chap. I. The Priests 45

II. Idols 54

SECTION V.

THE CLASSIFICATION AND RELATIVE ANTIQUITY OF THE GODS.

Chap. I. The Classification of the Gods .' . . . .66 II. Their relative Antiquity ...... 73

SECTION YL

THE NATURE OR ATTRIBUTES OF THE GODS, AND THEIR MORAL AND PHYSICAL ADMINISTRATION OF THE WORLD.

Chap. I. The Nature or Attributes of the Gods ... 82

II. Their Moral and Physical Administration of the

World . 92 section yn.

THE ORACLES, DIVINATIONS OR AUGURIES, AND ARUS- PICY OF HEATHENISM, AND THE FUTURE JUDGMENT OR REWARDS AND PUNISHMENT DISPENSED BY THE GODS.

Chap. I. The Oracles, Divinations or Auguries, and Aruspicy

of Heathenism 99

II. The Euture Judgment, or Rewards and Punishment

dispensed by the Gods 112

Book II The Heathen Religion In Its Symbolical

DEVELOPMENT,

Prologue 137

CONTENTS. XV

DIVISION I.

THE ASTRONOMICAL GODS, OR PHYSIC O-ASTRONOM- ICAL THEOLOGY.

SECTION I.

THE ORIGIN AND CHARACTER OF THE EGYPTIAN RELIGION.

Chap. I. Osiris and Isis, Typhon and Nephthys, . . .139 Paragr. I. The Interpretation of the Myth, or- the

Egyptian year 151

II. The Symbology of the Myth . . . 159 Chap. II. The Concluding Remarks on the Personification and Symbology of the Egyptian year, considered in its Sideral and Agrarian Attributes . . .169

Paragr. I. Osiris 170

II. Hercules 174

HI. Typhon 178

Chap. HI. The Egyptian Theory of the World, and the Wor-

sbip of Sacred Animals, or Hiero-Zoolatry . 182

Paragr. I. Their Theory of the World . . 182 II. The Worship of Sacred Animals, or

Hiero-Zoolatry 185

SECTION n.

THE COSMOGONY AND THEOLOGY OF THE HINDOOS.

Chap. I. The Cosmogony of the Hindoos . . . .193 II. The Theology of the Hindoos . . . . 198

SECTION m.

THE RELIGIOUS CREED OF THE SCANDINAVIANS.

Chap. I. The Scandinavian Deities. Prologue . . .211

H. The Scandinavian Gods in their Planetary Relations

to Mankind 225

HI. The Scandinavian Cosmogony .... 228

IV. Asgard and the Golden Age 235

V. The Providence of the Scandinavian Gods . . 238 VI. The Yggdrasill, the Mundane Snake, the World-mountains, and the Pillars and Pyramids of the

World 241

XVI CONTENTS.

Paragr. I. The Yggdrasill 241

II. The Yggdrasill and Nidhogg illustrated from the doctrines of the Grecian and Oriental Mythologies of the Mundane Tree, the Mundane Snake, together with an investigation of the World-mountains, and the Pillars and Pyramids of the World 251

DIVISION II.

THE GODS O-F THE HEATHENS, REPRESENTED IN MYTH- OLOGY AS THE MUNDANE SOURCES AND DISPENSERS OF LIGHT AND FIRE, AND CONSIDERED IN RELATION TO THEIR PNEUMATICAL ATTRIBUTES, OR THEIR SPIRITUALITY, AND ETHICAL AND INTELLECTUAL CHARACTER.

' SECTION I.

THE MITHRAS AND MITRA OF THE PERSIANS 274

Section II. Vesta, Her Fires And Priestesses ; Zeus, Or Jupiter

Chap. I. Vesta, her Pires and Priestesses 290

II. Zeus, or Jupiter 301

Paragr. I. The Zeus, or Jupiter of the People . . 303

II. The Zeus, or Jupiter of the Priests . 315

DIVISION III.

The Olympic Games 335

DIVISION IV.

The Eleusinian Mysteries .... 352

BOOK I.

IN ITS

POPULAR DEVELOPMENT.

SECTION I.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS IDEAS IN THE HUMAN

MIND, AND THE LIGHT IN WHICH RELIGIOUS

OBJECTS ARE CONTEMPLATED.

CHAPTER I.

RELIGIOUS IDEAS.

One of the most remarkable phenomena of the human race, is the universal existence of religious ideas : a belief in something supernatural and divine, and a worship corresponding to it. The account of historians and travellers, purporting that they have met with savage tribes or barbaric nations, who were utterly destitute of all traces of religion, must be regarded as the result of superficial observation or hasty inference, and which cannot, therefore, be admitted as an exception to the general rule, until it shall have been corroborated by future investigations. To what cause, then, is this decided religious element, this predominant creed of mankind, in a sacred principle or spiritual power that is everywhere pervading and controlling the universe, to be ascribed? Shallow theorists are not wanting, who have advanced the puerile doctrine that the heathen religion owes its origin and influence in human society to the artful devices of selfish and heartless demagogues, who, it seems, were as skilful and unscrupulous in the manufacture of the gods, as they were successful in making slaves of their unsuspecting dupes. " Not thus," cries the self-conceited infidel ; " priestcraft has practised its juggling tricks, and the world has been made to believe a lie, and to worship a phantom ! " Such hypotheses are too evidently ludicrous to require a labored refutation, and I need but state that though religion may be recognized and developed, it can never be produced or originated by man ; while, at the same time, it is just as natural for him to be impressed with religious convictions, as it is to think or to utter articulate sounds. Carlyle, having remarked that quackery and imposition have indeed fearfully abounded in the latter and corrupt period of the pagan religion, adds : " But quackery was never the originating influence in such things ; it was not the health and life of such things, but their disease, the sure precursor of their being about to die! Let us never forget this. It seems to me a most mournful hypothesis, that of quackery giving birth to any faith, even in savage men. Quackery gives birth to nothing; gives death to all," etc. Some, on the other hand, have not hesitated to assert a supernatural revelation as the primeval source of all the diversified forms of religion that have prevailed upon the earth ; and that the knowledge of such a relation, communicated to an individual, or a people, has been gradually and successively transmitted to the whole human family, through the ductile and everwidening channel of tradition. This opinion, though

IN ITS POPULAR DEVELOPMENT. O

supported by an array of respectable names, is untenable, because it is destitute of the least historical basis ; and because, also, the Apostle Paul, whose authority in a question of this kind no one will presume to dispute, lays down the following axiom in direct contradiction to the theory of a revelation antecedent to a religious manifestation among mankind : " For," says the inspired minister of the Son of God, " when the Gentiles, who have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves." In a more extended sense, religion may be properly considered as the result of supernatural endowment, inasmuch as our development towards perfection, in which the religious element forms an integral and essential part, is a revelation, of which the fertile germ was originally implanted in the human breast by the Creator : this is a standing, an innate, and a growing revelation, responding to the apocalypse of God in nature, and manifesting itself among all men in all ages. It is the revelation to which the sacred writer, already referred to, thus adverts in his epistle to the Romans : " For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness, because that which may be known of God is manifested in them ; for God hath showed it unto them ; for the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse," etc. Here we have a proof of the revelation of God in nature, adapted to the religious faculties 1* b THE HEATHEN RELIGION

of man, stamped upon his soul by the Deity, and designed to be the recipient organs of divine communications, through the laws and phenomena of the external world ; and it is thus that man ascends " through nature up to nature's God." It is in this manner that nature becomes the oracle of God, and that her ceaseless and constantly augmenting instructions, gradually impress a more noble and perfect image of the Creator upon the soul : a process of human development which is the common birthright of our race. Of this apocalypse of the Supreme Being to mankind, through the medium of his handiworks, Pope thus speaks in the following pithy and elegant stanza : —

" Nor think, in nature's state they blindly trod ; The state of nature was the reign of God."

Hence the incipient part of religion, or religion considered genetically, is to be imputed to nature, and, of course, to God, its omnipotent and adorable author ; but viewed in its subjective form, or as the fruit of human spontaneity, religion owes its reflex origin, its practically more estimable part, to the reproductive energies of the human mind. No one who has any knowledge of the subject, will deny that religion is as materially affected by climate and the genius of nations, as language or civil institutions. Nor can we overlook the modifying and controlling influences which different degrees of civilization, the character of the soil, the quality of the food, and the style of dress; the amusements and political relations ; the state of education and of the arts ; a warlike spirit, or the cultivation of peace and the enjoyment of domestic tranquillity ; an idle, erratic life, or the steady and peaceful prosecution of productive industry, must exercise over the nature, the tendency, and the importance of the religious ideas, which distinguish the individual or the nation. " Hence the attempt," remarks Kaiser, in his biblische Theologie, " everywhere to find the same mythological divinities, would be futile, and no less incongruous than if one should refer the epic poems of Homer and Virgil, relating to Troy, to the Jericho of the Jews, or the Avaris of the Egyptians." A question of some interest is the inquiry, What causes, objectively- considered, mainly excite the religious faculties of the soul, and inspire acts of devotion ?

Timor fecit deos, is an adage of classic celebrity, yet it must be received with some qualification ; for though the terrible manifestations of nature, as thunder and lightning, earthquakes, tempests, etc., impress the untutored mind with sentiments of the most intense alarm and anxiety, and suggest to it the necessity or the propriety of a propitiatory offering to the offended or destructive god, they are by no means the only exciters of the religious principle, but constitute a mere, though important unit, in a series of causes resulting in the same great end. Such, for instance, are all those striking displays in the external world, which create wonder, surprise, or aversion; fill the soul with delight or gratitude ; overwhelm it with a sense of its insignificance and helplessness ; carry conviction of guilt and danger to a slumbering conscience ; or excite a feeling of admiration for the romantic and the beautiful. All such, and similar outward causes, conspire to stimulate the soul into a genial sympathy ; to call forth in it the reflections and emotions which will insure its religious culture; and to bring it into a constantly increasing proximity to God. Viewed subjectively, we may enumerate among the religious susceptibilities of our race, the human character contemplated in its attribute of perfectibility; our various intellectual faculties and moral, sentiments ; the principle of self-preservation ; the desire of knowledge, and the use of language ; the social propensity, and the natural and irrepressible instinct to be happy.

Chapter II. The Light In Which Religious Objects Are Contemplated

The religious history of our race, uninfluenced by a direct revelation, bears very striking evidence to the fact that man, in the infancy of his mind, and the absence of a wholesome experience, is prone to contemplate most of the objects and phenomena of external nature, in the light of fetiches* a phrase

* Kaiser, the author above designated, derives the term fetich from the Portuguese fetisso, an oracle or revelation of the gods, and makes it synonymous with fatum or fate, which is deduced from /an, to speak, and signifies an oracle,f as also the order and

IN ITS POPULAR DEVELOPMENT. V

which at once implies an idol and an oracle, and which denotes something that enchants or charms, not something that is enchanted or charmed, as is sometimes erroneously taught, and which — forcibly attracting the attention, inspires man with sentiments of religious awe, while it suggests to him the propriety of a suitable homage ; and therefore the part which he acts in this sacred drama, may likewise be denominated a fascination or charm. For his childish theory of physical nature, plainly premises an extraordinary reciprocal influence between the laws and manifestations of the external world and himself. The objects and phenomena of nature being generally regarded by him, not only as animate and sentient, but also as endowed with thought, passion, and the gift of speech ; and as being either of a beneficent or of a hostile character. According to his unpractised eyes, the visible universe resembles, to some extent, at least, the human microcosm. Thus, the stars are the eyes of heaven, or the god Uranus, and while darkness shrouds the earth, they act the part, of sentries in the celestial dome, and

series of causes observable in the universe, and which are commonly called the course of nature. Hence, fetich, fate, and fairy = an enchantress, are correlative terms.* When the gods are represented in pagan mythology as subject to fate, the fact is to be regarded as a great and beautiful truth, as will appear more fully hereafter ; for being virtually intended as the mere symbols of the manifestations of the divine attributes and character, as displayed in the visible world, they are of course subject to those laws which God has seen fit to impose both upon himself and upon every part of the vast universe.

* The Latin fabula or fable, is also a branch of this family of words.

keenly survey the actions of mankind. Lamps, too, have been recognized in them, which, it is presumed, are lighted up in the evening, and extinguished at the approach of day. The moon has apparently a human physiognomy; is a female deity, and named Luna. She is believed to be in a pleasant humor as long as she presents her lustrous face towards the earth, but when she veils it under an eclipse, she is angry at her votaries, and they have reason to dread her wrath while she is unpropitiated.

Columbus and his crew being no longer supplied with food by the natives as heretofore, and threatened with starvation, the wily discoverer of a new world concerted his measures in accordance with this infantine faith, and, announcing to the simple aborigines of Santa Gloria the approaching eclipse of the moon, represented this phenomenon as the symbol of the severe indignation which the God of the Spaniards felt against them, on account of their refusal to furnish the invaders of their country, and the despoilers of their liberty, with the necessaries of life. The artifice had its desired effect, and so great was the consternation of the poor Indians when the predicted lunar obscuration took place, that they brought provisions in the greatest abundance, from all parts of the country to the treacherous strangers, of whose celestial origin they had but recently had some well founded doubts, praying only that their dutiful behavior might merit the forgiveness of the offended Divinity.

Beside these instances in point, I may further remark, in illustration of this topic, that the wind moans or howls ; the stream leaps or runs ; the tree nods or beckons ; the rains arc tears, which heaven, in sorrow or in anger, sheds upon the earth ; and the fantastic cloud-forms are so many ghostly warriors, ominously hovering over the human domicil. Besides, the fire bites: its flames are tongues, which — like the serpent-locks of Medusa — encircle and devour their victim. Hail is the algid missile of some shaggy or sullen frost-king, the Joetun Rime, for. example, in Scandinavian mythology. The earth is a mother, producing and nourishing an innumerable progeny, and hence called Ceres, or Alma Nostra. Here we find not only impersonation, but also apotheosis ; and the reason is, that man, more sentient than rational, is restricted in the unfolding process of his inner life, to the intercourse with the objects of sense, unable as yet to rise to abstract ideas. " You remember," writes the author On Heroes, Hero -Worship and the Heroic in History, " that fancy of Aristotle's, of a man who had grown to maturity in some dark distance, and was brought, on a sudden, into the upper air to see the sun rise. What would his wonder be," says the philosopher, " his rapt astonishment at the sight we daily witness with indifference! With the free, open sense of a child, yet with the ripe faculty of a man, his whole heart would be kindled by that sight, he would discern it well to be godlike, his soul would fall down in worship before it.

Now, just such a childlike greatness was in the primitive nations. The first Pagan Thinker among rude men, the first man that began to think, was precisely the child-man of Aristotle. Simple, open as a child, yet with the depth and strength of a man. Nature had, as yet, no name to him ; he had not yet united under a name the infinite variety of sights, sounds, shapes, and motions, which we now collectively name universe, nature, or the like, and so with a name dismiss it from us. To the wild, deep-hearted man, all was yet new, unveiled under names or formulas ; it stood .naked, flashing in on him there, beautiful, awful, unspeakable. Nature was to this man, what to the Thinker and Prophet it forever is, preternatural. This green, flowery, rock-built earth, the trees, the mountains, rivers, many-sounding seas ; that great deep sea of azure that swims overhead ; the winds sweeping through it; the black cloud fashioning itself together, now pouring out fire, now hail and rain : what is it ? Aye, what ? At bottom we do not yet know ; we can never know at all. It is not by our superior insight, that we escape the difficulty ; it is by our superior levity, our inattention, our want of insight. It is by not thinking that we cease to wonder at it. Hardened round us, incasing wholly every notion we form, is a wrappage of traditions, hearsays, mere words. We call that fire of the black thunder-cloud ' electricity,' and lecture learnedly about it, and grind the like of it out of glass and silk : but ivhat is it ? What made it ? Whence comes it ? Whither goes it ? Science has done much for us ; but it is a poor science that would hide from us the great, deep, sacred infinitude of Nescience, whither we can never penetrate, on which all science swims as a mere superficial film. This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle ;

wonderful, inscrutable, magical, and. more to whomsoever will think of it."

In the animal kingdom, especially, primeval man presumes he sees creatures endowed with thought and reflection similar to himself, and now and then imagines he discovers among them traces of a wisdom more than human. An instance of this kind, mythology records under the name of the bird of Minerva, or the owl, which it may be supposed, attained to this ornithological preeminence, on account of the superior gravity of its demeanor, and the deep and ominous tones in which it prognosticates the approaching meteorological changes in the atmosphere. The Indian apologizes to the bear, the heart of which he has pierced with the fatal arrow, on account of the deplorable necessity which compelled him to commit so cruel a deed, and expresses the fond hope that his sable victim will not cherish any ill-feelings towards his unfortunate slayer. The sonorous and often mournful lowing of the bull, is deemed significant of a divine presence, and the unsuspecting brute is suddenly promoted to the dignity of a fetich or an idol, while his name is piously enrolled in the list of the gods. The serpent, " more subtle," according to Moses, the Hebrew lawgiver, " than any beast of the field," has had a place from time immemorial in the motley pantheon of heathenism, and has been worshipped either for its benignant or its obnoxious qualities. The polished Greeks paid their homage to iEsculapius, under the form of a serpent, and the sacred snake of the negroes of Whida, owes its deification to the circumstance that it appeared to them at the favorable 2 moment when they had gained a decisive victory over the people of Ardra.*

* Captain Walter M. Gibson, the account of whose sufferings and romantic adventures among the Dutch and Malays, is still fresh in the recollection of the public, in an intensely interesting discourse before the American Geographical and Statistical Society, in the city of New York, and in the latter part of the preceding year, among other interesting statements, gave the following account of a most singular race of people residing in the southeastern part of Sumatra, and known as the Orang Kooboos, or Brown Men of Sumatra. Osmin, an independent prince of the island, " called them," says the Captain, " tai orang, the ordure of men." He said that they were born as the lowest of slaves, and this had been the case for hundreds of generations, inasmuch as they were the descendants of slaves and burden-carriers of the army of Alexander. I found them generally called " hamba or hoodak Iskandar " — the slaves of Alexander. It is well known that numberless traditions of Alexander the Great, of "Dou'l Karnain," — "the two-horned," prevail throughout Sumatra, as well as in the Asiatic Continent, etc. He adds : "I was informed by a fellow-prisoner at Weltevreden, by one Captain Van Woorden, who had been four years commanding at the small post of Lahat, in the interior of Sumatra, and who had had frequent opportunities to observe the Orang Kooboos, both male and female, sit round a buluh batang, or species of bamboo, that attains to a great size, and would all in concert, as many as could, strike their heads repeatedly against the trunk of the tree, and utter some rude, grunting ejaculations ; this he observed took place whenever any one, or all of the band got hurt, or received any special gratification, but mostly when injured. Now, it is well known that a large portion of the semi-civilized, semi-pagan Sumatrans, believe that in the enormous tufts of the buluh batang, as well as in the marringin tree, there exist widadiri doAvas and rakshashas, or good and evil supernatural beings ; and, what is remarkable, that throughout Sumatra, all the beings of their pagan mythology are of the feminine gender. I have heard described by their orang menyanyee, or pantunverse-singers, some most ravishing pictures of the widadiri, or good wood-nymphs of the buluh batang." * " Tlie Chingalas of Ceylon," writes the author of A Comparison of the Institutions of Moses with those of the Hindoos, etc., i: worship a tree called Bogaha, in the form of which they believe that Budda was manifested. — Ezourvedam, vol. ii. p. 47. Under this tree, they light lamps and place images. — Delaport's Voyages, vol. iii. p. 395."

* New York Universe.

SECTION II.

THE TOPOGEAPHY OF EELIGIOUS OBJECTS, EEGAEDED

AS DEIFIED, AND THE WORSHIP WHICH

IS BESTOWED UPON THEM.

CHAPTER I.

THE TOPOGRAPHY OF RELIGIOUS OBJECTS, REGARDED AS DEIFIED.

Wherever the universe displays its prolific empire, there may be found the religion and the gods of the heathen. Upon, above, or beneath the earth ; in the aerial and empyreal heavens ; on the snow-capt mountain, and in the fathomless abyss ; in the verdant glen, the shady grove, or the crystal fountain : all nature teems with divinities — the symbols of God made manifest in his works, and earth, heaven, and hades, are filled with the diversified and multitudinous objects of religious worship. On this interesting topic, Kaiser makes the following judicious remarks. Speaking of primeval man, whose vivid imagination reigns supreme among the faculties of his soul, he adds : " To conceive the surrounding objects of the world under the idea of a totality, he (io)

is "incapable. Like a child he stares at the novel and strange sights which he beholds, and startles with surprise at the various sounds, which greet his ears in mystic strains. His mind is powerfully affected by the different phases which the earth assumes at each successive revolution of the seasons, and he contemplates with a mingled feeling of fear and wonder, the alternate vicissitudes of growth and decay, of life and death, to which her cherished offspring are doomed. Especially is his slumbering attention aroused by whatever is distinguished for its lustre, its velocity, its huge size, or prodigious strength. Hence the first piece of wood, a stone, an animal, a star, which impresses his imagination with the idea of the preternatural, and seems either to promise protection or to demand obedience, his excited and overwhelmed feelings prompt him to elevate to the rank of a god, or to recognize in it at least a fetich, animated by a spirit or demon, and proclaiming oracles to mankind."

The gods, it may be observed here, are of different sexes, and stand related to each other according to the usual tables of consanguinity common among mortals. They, of course. " marry, and are given in marriage." Some of the celestial families, as may readily be supposed, are more powerful and influential than others, precisely as is the case among men; for the gods are divided agreeably to their rank and dominion, into superior and inferior orders, and rise gradually in power and dignity from the diminutive Penates of the domestic hearth, or the black stone of the Arabs, to the lofty and severe majesty of the Olympian Jupiter. Not only every division, but often, even, every individual object in the visible creation, has had its presiding genius or reigning god; and therefore the religion of the heathen, in its more primitive form, is rather pantheistic than polytheistic. In his mythological researches, as it appears from his " Northern Antiquities," M. Mallet arrived at results which are strikingly cognate to the facts here laid down. "Each element," he writes, " was, according to the faith of primeval man, under the guidance of some being peculiar to it. The earth, the water, the fire, the air, the sun, moon, and stars, had each their respective divinity. The trees, forests, rivers, mountains, rocks, winds, thunder, and tempests, had the same ; and merited, on that score, a religious worship, which, at first, could not be directed to the visible object, but to the intelligence with which it was animated."

The ancients, and especially the Athenians, paid particular attention to the winds, and offered them sacrifices, as to deities, under the name of Venti. The four principal winds were, the south-cast, or Eurus, represented as a young man flying with great impetuosity, and often appearing in a playsome and wanton humor; the south wind, or Auster, that appeared as an old man with gray hair, a gloomy countenance, a head covered with clouds, a sable vesture, and dusky wings: he is the dispenser of rain, and of all heavy showers; the west wind, or Zephyrus, that is described as the mildest of all the windy deities. He is young and gentle, and his lap is filled with vernal /lowers. He married the goddess Flora, with whom he is said to have enjoyed the most perfect felicity. As to the north wind, or Boreas, fame

IN ITS rOPULAR DEVELOPMENT. 19

has stigmatized this divinity with the reproach to be invariably rough and chilly. He is the father of snow, hail, and tempests, and is always represented surrounded by impenetrable clouds. The other gods, Solanus, Africus, Corus, and Aquilo, who also belonged to this category, were of inferior note, except iEolus, who was emphatically the storm-king, whatever claim others might advance to this distinction.

Perhaps it will puzzle the curious reader to understand how nearly every constituent part of the universe could be separately or collectively deified, and yet at the same time, be under a foreign or superior deific influence. The solution of the problem is not difficult. The human mind ill its ascending struggles, gradually perceived the impropriety of ascribing to an almost unlimited extent, the attributes and functions peculiar only to gods properly so called, to the various objects and powers of nature ; and it therefore wisely contented itself by assigning to many of them a secondary rank, or a mere passive agency, and placing them under the tutelar care and supervision of the superior powers. In this way only could they satisfactorily explain to themselves many of the wonderful and mysterious phenomena and influences, which everywhere struck their attention with awe or astonishment, alarmed their fears, or filled their souls with hope and joy, and essentially affected their weal or woe. Instead, therefore, of continuing to confer divinity on the isolated tree, as had formerly been the practice, the collective forest had a god impost upon it under the comprehensive appellation of Pan : a bearded, horned, and cloven-footed divinity, in the similitude of the goat, and constituting the embryo of the future Jupiter and Pater-Deus of the Greeks and Romans ; and the ocean, instead of being any longer parcelled out among a multitude of supreme local regents, was intrusted to the powerful trident of Neptune, who was, however, chiefly recognized and adored by merchants and mariners, whose lives and fortunes were mainly confided to his vigilant care. If ever he did enjoy the enviable prerogative of absolute god-