The Chinese, when[1] their prayers are not answered, beat their idols. The deities of the Laplanders are any large stone which they meet with of an extraordinary shape[2]. The Egyptian mythologists, in order to account for animal worship, said, that the gods, pursued by the violence of earth-born men, who were their enemies, had formerly been obliged to disguise themselves under the semblance of beasts[3]. The Caunii, a nation in the lesser Asia, resolving to admit no strange gods amongst them, regularly, at certain seasons, assembled themselves compleatly armed, beat the air with their lances, and proceeded in that manner to their frontiers; in order, as they said, to expel the foreign deities[4]. Not even the immortal gods, said some German nations to Cæsar, are a match for the Suevi[5].
Many ills, says Dione in Homer to Venus wounded by Diomede, many ills, my daughter, have the gods inflicted on men: And many ills, in return, have men inflicted on the gods[6]. We
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