Or, perchance, by even less speculative reasoning they were led to accept the phenomenal world as the result of a perpetual generation and growth which accorded closely with their everyday experience of nature; whilst a divinity of some kind seemed to lurk in every obscurity and all visible objects to be instinct with a life and intelligence of their own.[1] In either case they believed themselves to be in the presence of beings of superior attributes whom it was desirable or necessary to conciliate by some form of address adapted to gain their favour or to avert their enmity. Hence worship, the parent of some system of ritual likely to become more elaborate in the lapse of time; and the ultimate establishment of a priestly caste who would soon profess to an intercourse with the unseen not vouchsafed to ordinary mortals. Gradually the first vague notions of a celestial hierarchy grew more realistic by imaginative or expedient accretions; and in a
- [Footnote: and other ancient writers, which seem to support the creation-myth of
Genesis; De Veritate Relig. Christ., i, 16. For the Chaldaean or Babylonian variations, and some earlier associations of Adam, see King's Seven Tablets of Creation, Lond., 1903. It appears that the protoplast in the original account was created by Marduk, the tutelary deity of Babylonia, out of his own blood, a circumstance which the "priestly" redactor of Genesis has suppressed, together with many other interesting details; cf. Radau, Creation Story of Genesis i, Chicago, 1903. Margoliouth's attempt to show that Abraham's Jehovah was the male moon-god of Ur is interesting; Contemporary Review, 1896.]
- ↑ In this country the subject of comparative mythology and the origin of theistic notions has been exhaustively treated by Herbert Spencer, Andrew Lang, J. G. Frazer, and others. Nevertheless, it cannot be determined whether the fear of ghosts or the innate bent of the human mind to speculate as to casuality is the germ of religious systems. Their development has, no doubt, always been much indebted to the ascendancy to be gained as the reward of successful imposture in such matters.
