Popular Science Monthly/Volume 28/April 1886/Dawn of Creation and of Worship

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Popular Science Monthly/Volume 28 Volume 28 (1886)
Dawn of Creation and of Worship by William Ewart Gladstone
950855Popular Science Monthly/Volume 28 Volume 28 — Dawn of Creation and of Worship1886William Ewart Gladstone

S U P P L E M E N T.


DAWN OF CREATION AND OF WORSHIP.

REPLY TO DR. RÉVILLE.

By WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE.

AMONG recent works on the origin and history of religions by distinguished authors, a somewhat conspicuous place may be awarded to the "Prolégomènes de l'Histoire des Religions," by Dr. Réville, Professor in the College of France, and Hibbert Lecturer in 1884. The volume has been translated into English by Mr. Squire, and the translation[1] comes forth with all the advantage, and it is great, which can be conferred by an introduction from the pen of Professor Max Müller. It appears, if I may presume to speak of it, to be characterized, among other merits, by marked ingenuity and acuteness, breadth of field, great felicity of phrase, evident candor of intention, and abundant courtesy.

Whether its contents are properly placed as prolegomena may at once be questioned; for surely the proper office of prolegomena is to present preliminaries, and not results. Such is not, however, the aim of this work. It starts from assuming the subjective origin of all religions, which are viewed as so many answers to the call of a strong human appetite for that kind of food, and are examined as the several varieties of one and the same species. The conclusions of opposing inquirers, however, are not left to be confuted by a collection of facts and testimonies drawn from historical investigation, but are thrust out of the way beforehand in the preface (for, after all, prolegomena can be nothing but a less homely phrase for a preface). These inquirers are so many pretenders, who have obstructed the passage of the rightful heir to his throne, and they are to be put summarily out of the way, as disturbers of the public peace. The method pursued appears to be not to allow the facts and arguments to dispose of them, but to condemn them before the cause is heard. I do not know how to reconcile this method with Dr. Réville's declaration that he aims (p. vi) at proceeding in a "strictly scientific spirit." It might be held that such a spirit required the regular presentation of the evidence before the delivery of the verdict upon it. In any case I venture to observe that these are not truly prolegomena, but epilegomena to a History of Religions not yet placed before us.

The first enemy whom Dr. Réville dispatches is M. de Bonald, as the champion of the doctrine that "in the very beginning of the human race the creative power revealed to the first men by supernatural means the essential principles of religious truth," together with "language and even the art of writing" (pp. 35, 30).

In passing. Dr. Réville observes that "the religious schools, which maintain the truth of a primitive revelation, are guided by a very evident theological interest" (ibid.): the Protestant, to fortify the authority of the Bible; and the Roman Catholic, to prop the infallibility of the Church.

It is doubtless true that the doctrine of a primitive revelation tends to fortify the authority of religion. But is it not equally true, and equally obvious, that the denial of a primitive revelation tends to undermine it? and, if so, might it not be retorted upon the school of Dr. Réville that the schools which deny a primitive revelation are guided by a very evident anti-theological interest?

Against this antagonist Dr. Réville observes, inter alia (p. 37), that an appeal to the supernatural is per se inadmissible; that a divine revelation, containing the sublime doctrines of the purest inspiration, given to man at an age indefinitely remote, and in a state of "absolute ignorance," is "infinitely hard" to imagine; that it is not favored by analogy; and that it contradicts all that we know of prehistoric man (p. 40). Thus far it might perhaps be contended in reply, (1) that the preliminary objection to the supernatural is a pure petitio principii, and wholly repugnant to "scientific method"; (2) that it is not inconceivable that revelation might be indefinitely graduated, as well as human knowledge and condition; (3) that it is in no way repugnant to analogy, if the greatest master of analogy, Bishop Cutler,[2] may be heard upon the subject; and (4) that our earliest information about the races from which we are least remote, Aryan, Semitic, Accadian, or Egyptian, offers no contradiction and no obstacle to the idea of their having received, or inherited, portions of some knowledge divinely revealed.

But I do not now enter upon these topics, as I have a more immediate and defined concern with the work of Dr. Réville.

It only came within the last few months to my knowledge that, at a period when my cares and labors of a distinct order were much too absorbing to allow of any attention to archaeological history. Dr. Réville had done me the honor to select me as the representative of those writers who find warrant for the assertion of a primitive revelation in the testimony of the Holy Scriptures.

This is a distinction which I do not at all deserve: first, because Dr. Réville might have placed in the field champions much more competent and learned[3] than myself; secondly, because I have never attempted to give the proof of such a warrant, I have never written ex professo on the subject of it; but it is true that in a work published nearly thirty years ago, when destructive criticism was less advanced than it now is, I assumed it as a thing generally received, at least in this country. Upon some of the points, which group themselves round that assumption, my views, like those of many other inquirers, have been stated more crudely at an early, and more maturely at more than one later period. I admit that variation or development imposes a hardship upon critics, notwithstanding all their desire to be just; especially, may I say, upon such critics as, traversing ground of almost boundless extent, can hardly, except in the rarest cases, be minutely and closely acquainted with every portion of it.

I also admit to Dr. Réville, and indeed I contend by his side, that in an historical inquiry the authority of Scripture can not be alleged in proof of the existence of a primitive revelation. So to allege it is a preliminary assumption of the supernatural, and is in my view a manifest departure from the laws of "scientific" procedure: as palpable a departure, may I venture to say? as that preliminary exclusion of the supernatural which I have already presumed to notice. My own offense, if it be one, was of another character; and was committed in the early days of Homeric study, when my eyes perhaps were dazzled with the amazing richness and variety of the results which reward all close investigation of the text of Homer, so that objects were blurred for a time in my view, which soon came to stand more clear before me.

I had better perhaps state at once what my contention really is. It is, first, that many important pictures drawn, and indications given, in the Homeric poems supply evidence that can not be confuted not only of an ideal but of an historical relationship to the Hebrew traditions, (1) and mainly, as they are recorded in the Book of Genesis; (2) as less authentically to be gathered from the later Hebrew learning; and (3) as illustrated from extraneous sources. Secondly, any attempt to expound the Olympian mythology of Homer by simple reference to a solar theory, or even to Nature-worship in a larger sense, is simply a plea for a verdict against the evidence. It is also true that I have an unshaken belief in a Divine Revelation, not resting on assumption, but made obligatory upon me by reason. But I hold the last of these convictions entirely apart from the others, and I derived the first and second not from preconception, of which I had not a grain, but from the poems themselves, as purely as I derived my knowledge of the Peloponnesian War from Thucydides or his interpreters.

The great importance of this contention I do not deny, I have produced in its favor a great mass of evidence, which, as far as I have seen, there has been no serious endeavor, if indeed any endeavor, to repel. Dr. Réville observes that my views have been subjected to "very profound criticism" by Sir G. Cox in his learned work on Aryan mythology (p. 41). That is indeed a very able criticism; but it is addressed entirely to the statements of my earliest Homeric work.[4] Now, apart from the question whether those statements have been rightly understood (which I can not admit), that which he attacks is beyond and outside of the proposition which I have given above. Sir G. Cox has not attempted to decide the question whether there was a primitive revelation, or whether it may be traced in Homer. And I may say that I am myself so little satisfied with the precise form in which my general conclusions were originally clothed that I have not reprinted and shall not reprint the work, which has become very rare, only appearing now and then in some catalogue, and at a high price. When there are representatives living and awake, why disturb the ashes of the dead? In later works, reaching from 1865 to 1875,[5] I have confessed to the modification of my results, and have stated the case in terms which appear to me, using the common phrase, to be those yielded by the legitimate study of comparative religion. But why should those, who think it a sound method of comparative religion to match together the Vedas, the Norse legends, and the Egyptian remains, think it to be no process of comparative religion to bring together, not vaguely and loosely, but in searching detail, certain traditions of the Book of Genesis and those recorded in the Homeric poems, and to argue that their resemblances may afford proof of a common origin, without any anticipatory assumption as to what that origin may be?

It will hardly excite surprise, after what has now been written, when I say I am unable to accept as mine any one of the propositions which Dr. Réville (pp. 41, 42) affiliates to me. (1) I do not hold that there was a "systematic" or willful corruption of a primitive religion. (2) I do not hold that all the mythologies arc due to any such corruption systematic or otherwise. (3) I do not hold that no part of them sprang out of the deification of natural facts. (4) I do not hold that the ideas conveyed in the Book of Genesis, or in any Hebrew tradition, were developed in the form of dogma, as is said by Sir G. Cox,[6] or in "six great doctrines" as is conceived by Dr. Réville; and (5) I am so far from ever having held that there was a "primitive orthodoxy" revealed to the first men (p. 43) that I have carefully from the first referred not to developed doctrine, but to rudimentary indications of what are now developed and established truths. So that, although Dr. Réville asks me for proof, I decline to supply proofs of what I disbelieve. What I have supplied proofs of is the appearance in the Poems of a number of traits, incongruous in various degrees with their immediate environment, but having such marked and characteristic resemblances to the Hebrew tradition as to require of us, in the character of rational inquirers, the admission of a common origin, just as the markings, which we sometimes notice upon the coats of horses and donkeys, are held to require the admission of their relationship to the zebra.

It thus appears that Dr. Réville has discharged his pistol in the air, for my Homeric propositions involve no assumption as to a revelation contained in the Book of Genesis, while he has not ex professo contested my statements of an historical relationship between some traditions of that book and those of the Homeric poems. But I will now briefly examine (1) the manner in which Dr. Réville handles the Book of Genesis, and (2) the manner in which he undertakes, by way of specimen, to construe the mythology of Homer, and enlist it, by comparison, in the support of his system of interpretation. And first with the first-named of these two subjects.

Entering a protest against assigning to the Book "a dictatorial authority," that is, I presume, against its containing a Divine revelation to anybody, he passes on to examine its contents. It contains, he says, scientific errors, of which (p. 42, n.) he specifies three. His charges are that (1) it speaks of the heaven as a solid vault; (2) it places the creation of the stars after that of the earth, and so places them solely for its use; (3) it introduces the vegetable kingdom before that kingdom could be subjected to the action of solar light. All these condemnations are quietly enunciated in a note, as if they were subject to no dispute. Let us see.

As to the first: if our scholars are right in their judgment, just made known to the world by the recent revision of the Old Testament, the "firmament" is, in the Hebrew original,[7] not a solid vault, but an expanse. As to the second (a), it is not said in the sacred text that the stars were made solely for the use of the earth; (b) it is true that no other use is mentioned. But we must here inquire what was the purpose of the narrative? Not to rear cosmic philosophers, but to furnish ordinary men with some idea of what the Creator had done in the way of providing for them a home and giving them a place in nature. The advantage afforded by the stars to them is named alone, they having no interest in any other purpose for which the stars may exist.

The assertion that the stars are stated to have been "created" after the earth is more serious. But here it becomes necessary first of all to notice the recital in this part of the indictment. In the language of Dr. Réville, the Book speaks of the creation of the stars after the formation of the earth. Now, curiously enough, the Book says nothing either of the "formation" of the earth, or of the "creation" of the stars. It says in its first line that "in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." It says further on,[8] "He made the stars also." Can it be urged that this is a fanciful distinction between creating on the one hand and making, forming, or fashioning on the other? Dante did not think so, for, speaking of the Divine Will, he says:

"Clò ch' Ell cria, e che Natnra face."[9]

Luther did not think so, for he uses schuf in the first verse, and machte in the sixteenth. The English translators and their revisers did not think so, for they use the words "created" and "made" in the two passages respectively. The main question, however, is. What did the author of the Book think, and what did he intend to convey? The LXX drew no distinction, probably for the simple reason that, as the idea of creation proper was not familiar to the Greeks, their language conveyed no word better than poiein to express it, which is also the proper word for fashioning or making. But the lie brew, it seems, had the distinction, and by the writer of Genesis i it has been strictly, to Dr. Réville I might also say scientifically, followed. He uses the word "created" on the three grand occasions (1) of the beginning of the mighty work (v. 1); (2) of the beginning of animal life (v. 21), "And God created great whales," and every living creature that peoples the waters; (3) of the yet more important beginning of rational and spiritual life; "so God created man in his own image" (v. 27). In every other instance, the simple command is recited, or a word implying less than creation is employed.

From this very marked mode of use, it is surely plain that a marked distinction of sense was intended by the sacred writer. I will not attempt a definition of the distinction further than this, that the one phrase points more to calling into a separate or individual existence, the other more to shaping and fashioning the conditions of that existence; the one to quid, the other to quale. Our Earth, created in v. 1, undergoes structural change, different arrangement of material, in V. 9. After this, and in the fourth day, comes not the original creation, but the location in the firmament, of the sun and the moon. Of their "creation" nothing particular has been said; for no use, palpable to man, was associated with it before their perfect equipment. Does it not seem allowable to suppose that in the "heavens"[10] (v. 1), of which after the first outset we hear no more, wore included the heavenly bodies? In any case what is afterward conveyed is not the calling into existence of the Hun and moon, but the assignment to them of a certain place and orbit respectively, with a light-giving power. Is there the smallest inconsistency in a statement which places the emergence of our land, and its separation from the sea, and the commencement of vegetable life, before the final and full concentration of light upon the sun, and its reflection on the moon and the planets? In the gradual severance of other elements, would not the severance of the luminous body, or force, be gradual also? And why, let me ask of Dr. Réville, as there would plainly be light diffused before there was light concentrated, why may not that light diffused have been sufficient for the purposes of vegetation? There was soil, there was atmosphere, there was moisture, there was light. What more could be required? Need we go beyond our constant experience to be aware that the process of vegetation, though it may be suspended, is not arrested, when, through the presence of cloud and vapor, the sun's globe becomes to us invisible f The same observations apply to the light of the planets; while, as to the other stars, such as were then perceptible to the human eye, we know nothing. The planets, being luminous bodies only through the action of the sun, could not be luminous until such a degree of light, or of light-force, was accumulated upon or in the sun as to make them luminous, instead of being

"Silent as the moon,
When she deserts the night
Hid in her vacant interlunar cave."[11]

Is it not, then, the fact, thus far, that the impeachment of the Book has fallen to the ground? There remains to add only one remark, the propriety of which is, I think, indisputable. Easy comprehension and impressive force are the objects to be aimed at in a composition at once popular and summary; but these can not always be had without some departure from accurate classification and the order of minute detail. It seems much more easy to justify the language of the opening verses of Genesis than, for example, the convenient usage by which we affirm that the sun rises, or mounts above the horizon, and sets, or descends below it, when we know perfectly well that he does neither the one nor the other. As to the third charge of scientific error, that the vegetable kingdom appeared before it could be subjected to the action of solar light, it has been virtually disposed of. If the light now appropriated to the sun alone was gradually gathering toward and round him, why may it not have performed its proper office in contributing to vegetation when once the necessary degree of severance between solid and fluid, between wet and dry, had been effected? And this is just what had been described in the formation of the firmament, and the separation of land from sea.

More singular still seems to be the next observation offered by Dr. Réville in his compound labor to satisfy his readers, first, that there is no revelation in Genesis, and secondly that, if there be, it is one which has no serious or relevant meaning. He comes to the remarkable expression in v. 26, "Let us make man in our own image." There has, it appears, been much difference of opinion even among the Jews on the meaning of this verse. The Almighty addresses, as some think. His own powers; as others think, the angels; others, the earth; other writers, especially, as it appears, Germans, have understood this to be a plural of dignity after the manner of kings. Others, of the rationalizing school, conceive the word Elohim to be a relic of polytheism. The ancient Christian interpreters,[12] from the Apostle Barnabas onward, find in these words an indication of a plurality in the Divine Unity. Dr. Réville (p. 43) holds that this is "simply the royal plural used in Hebrew as in many other languages," or else, and more probably, that it is an appeal to the Bené Elohim or angels. But is not this latter meaning a direct assault upon the supreme truth of the Unity of God? If he chooses the former, from whence does he derive his knowledge that this "royal plural" was used in Hebrew? Will the royal plural account for (Gen. iii, 22) "when the man is become as one of us"? and would George the Second, if saying of Charles Edward "the man is become as one of us," have intended to convey a singular or a plural meaning* Can we disprove the assertion of Bishop Harold Browne, that this plurality of dignity is unknown to the language of Scripture? And further, if we make the violent assumption that the Christian Church with its one voice is wrong and Dr. Réville right, and that the words were not meant to convey the idea of plurality, yet, if they have been such as to lead all Christendom to see in them this idea through 1800 years, how can he be sure that they did not convey a like signification to the earliest hearers or readers of the Book of Genesis?

The rest of Dr. Réville's criticism is directed rather to the significance or propriety, than to the truth, of the record. It is not necessary to follow his remarks in detail, but it will help the reader to judge how far even a perfectly upright member of the scientific and comparative school can indulge an unconscious bias, if notice be taken in a single instance of his method of comparing. He compares together the two parts of the prediction that the seed of the woman shall bruise the head of the serpent, and that the serpent shall bruise the heel of the seed of the woman (iii, 15); and he conceives the head and the heel to be so much upon a par in their relation to the faculties and the vitality of a man that he can find here nothing to indicate which shall get the better, or, in his own words, "on which side shall be the final victory" (p. 45). St. Paul seems to have taken a different view when he wrote, "the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly" (Rom. xvi., 20).

Moreover, "our author" (in Dr. Réville's phrase) is censured because he "takes special care to point out" (p. 44) "that the first pair are as yet strangers to the most elementary notions of morality," inasmuch as they are unclothed, yet without shame; nay, even, as he feelingly says, "without the least shame." In what the morality of the first pair consisted, this is hardly the place to discuss. But let us suppose for a moment that their morality was simply the morality of a little child, the undeveloped morality of obedience, without distinctly formed conceptions of an ethical or abstract standard. Is it not plain that their feelings would have been exactly what the Book describes (Gen. ii, 25), and yet that in their loving obedience to their Father and Creator they would certainly have had a germ, let me say an opening bud, of morality? But this proposition, taken alone, by no means does justice to the case. Dr. Réville would probably put aside with indifference or contempt all that depends upon the dogma of the Fall. And yet there can be no more rational idea, no idea more palpably sustained, whether by philosophy or by experience. Namely, this idea: that the commission of sin, that is, the act of deliberately breaking a known law of duty, injures the nature and composition of the being who commits it. It injures that nature in deranging it, in altering the proportion of its parts and powers, in introducing an inward disorder and rebellion of the lower against the higher, too mournfully corresponding with that disorder and rebellion produced without, as toward God, of which the first sin was the fountain head. Such is, I believe, the language of Christian theology and in particular of St. Augustine, one of its prime masters. On this matter I apprehend that Dr. Réville, when judging the author of Genesis, judges him without regard to his fundamental ideas and aims, one of which was to convey that before sinning man was a being morally and physically balanced, and nobly pure in every faculty; and that, by and from his sinning, the sense of shame found a proper and necessary place in a nature which before was only open to the sense of duty and of reverence.

One further observation only. Dr. Réville seems to "score one" when he finds (Gen. iv, 26) that Seth had a son, and that "then began men to call on the name of the Lord"; "but not," he adds, "as the result of a recorded revelation." Here at last he has found, or seemed to find, the beginning of religion, and that beginning subjective, not revealed. So hastily, from the first aspect of the text, does he gather a verbal advantage, which, upon the slightest inquiry, would have disappeared like dew in the morning sun. He assumes the rendering of a text which has been the subject of every kind of question and dispute, the only thing apparently agreed on being that his interpretation is wholly excluded. Upon a disputed original, and a disputed interpretation of the disputed original, he founds a signification in flat contradiction to the whole of the former narrative, to Elohist and Jehovist alike; which narrative, if it represents anything, represents a continuity of active reciprocal relation between God and man both before and after the transgression. Not to mention differences of translation, which essentially change the meaning of the words, the text itself is given by the double authority of the Samaritan Pentateuch[13] and of the Septuagint in the singular number, which of itself wholly destroys the construction of Dr. Réville. I do not enter upon the difficult question of conflicting authorities, but I urge that it is unsafe to build an important conclusion upon a seriously controverted reading.[14]

There is nothing, then, in the criticisms of Dr. Réville but what rather tends to confirm than to impair the old-fashioned belief that there is a revelation in the Hook of Genesis. With his argument outside this proposition I have not dealt. I make no assumption as to what is termed a verbal inspiration, and, of course, in admitting the variety, I give up the absolute integrity of the text. Upon the presumable age of the book and its compilation I do not enter—not even to contest the opinion which brings it down below the age of Solomon—beyond observing that in every page it appears from internal evidence to belong to a remote antiquity. There is here no question of the chronology or of the date of man, or of knowledge or ignorance in the primitive man; or whether the element of parable enters into any portion of the narrative; or whether every statement of fact contained in the text of the Hook can now be made good. It is enough for my present purpose to point to the cosmogony, and the fourfold succession of the living organisms, as entirely harmonizing, according to present knowledge, with belief in a revelation, and as presenting to the rejector of that belief a problem, which demands solution at his hands, and which he has not yet been able to solve. Whether this revelation was conveyed to the ancestors of the whole human race who have at the time or since existed, I do not know, and the Scriptures do not appear to make the affirmation, even if they do not convey certain indications which favor a contrary opinion. Again, whether it contains the whole of the knowledge specially vouchsafed to the parents of the Noachian races, may be very doubtful; though of course great caution must be exercised in regard to the particulars of any primeval tradition not derived from the text of the earliest among the sacred books. I have thus far confined myself to rebutting objections. But I will now add some positive considerations which appear to me to sustain the ancient and, as I am persuaded, impregnable belief of Christians and of Jews concerning the inspiration of the Book. I offer them as one wholly destitute of that kind of knowledge which carries authority, and who speaks derivatively as best he can, after listening to teachers of repute and such as practice rational methods.

I understand the stages of the majestic process described in the Book of Genesis to be in general outline as follows:

1. The point of departure is the formless mass, created by God, out of which the earth was shaped and constituted a thing of individual existence (verses 1, 2).

2. The detachment and collection of light, leaving in darkness as it proceeded the still chaotic mass from which it was detached (verses 3—5). The narrative assigning a space of time to each process appears to show that each was gradual, not instantaneous.

3. The detachment of light from darkness is followed by the detachment of wet from dry, and of solid from liquid, in the firmament, and on the face of the earth. Each of these operations occupies a "day"; and the conditions of vegetable life, as known to us by experience, being now provided, the order of the vegetable kingdom had begun (verses 6-13).

4. Next comes the presentation to us of the heavenly bodies, sun, moon, and stars, in their final forms, when the completion of the process of light-collection and concentration in the sun, and the due clearing of the intervening spaces, had enabled the central orb to illuminate us both with direct and with reflected light (verses 14-19).

5. So far, we have been busy only with the adjustment of material agencies. We now arrive at the dawn of animated being; and a great transition seems to be marked OS a kind of recommencement of the work, for the name of creation is again introduced. God created—

(a) The water-population;

(b) The air-population.

And they receive His benediction (verses 20-23).

6. Pursuing this regular progression from the lower to the higher, from the simple to the complex, the text now gives us the work of the sixth "day," which supplies the land-population, air and water having already been supplied. But in it there is a subdivision, and the transition from (c) animal to (d) man, like the transition from inanimate to animate, is again marked as a great occasion, a kind of recommencement. For this purpose the word "create" is a third time employed, "God created man in His own image," and once more lie gave benediction to this the final work of His hands, and endowed our race with its high dominion over what lived and what did not live (verses 24-31).

I do not dwell on the cessation of the Almighty from the creating and (ii, 1 ) "finishing" work, which is the "rest" and marks the seventh "day," because it introduces another order of considerations. But, glancing back at the narrative which now forms the first chapter, I offer perhaps a prejudiced, and in any case no more than a passing, remark. If we view it as popular narrative, it is singularly vivid, forcible, and effective; if we take it as a poem, it is indeed sublime. No wonder if it became classical and reappeared in the glorious devotions of the Hebrew people,[15] pursuing, in a great degree, the same order of topics as in the Book of Genesis.

But the question is not here of a lofty poem, or a skillfully constructed narrative: it is whether natural science, in the patient exercise of its high calling to examine facts, finds that the works of God cry out against what we have fondly believed to be His Word, and tell another tale; or whether, in this nineteenth century of Christian progress, it substantially echoes back the majestic sound which, before it existed as a pursuit, went forth into all lands.

First, looking largely at the latter portion of the narrative, which describes the creation of living organisms, and waiving details, on some of which (as in verse 24) the Septuagint seems to vary from the Hebrew, there is a grand fourfold division, set forth in an orderly succession of times as follows: on the fifth day—

1. The water-population;

2. The air-population;

and, on the sixth day,

3. The land-population of animals;

4. The land-population consummated in man.

Now this same fourfold order is understood to have been so affirmed in our time by natural science, that it may be taken as a demonstrated conclusion and established fact. Then, I ask, how came Moses, or, not to cavil on the word, how came the author of the first chapter of Genesis, to know that order, to possess knowledge which natural science has only within the present century for the first time dug out of the bowels of the earth? It is surely impossible to avoid the conclusion, first, that either this writer was gifted with faculties passing all human experience, or else his knowledge was divine. The first branch of the alternative is truly nominal and unreal. We know the sphere within which human inquiry toils. We know the heights to which the intuitions of genius may soar. We know that in certain cases genius anticipates science; as Homer, for example, in his account of the conflict of the four winds in sea-storms. But even in these anticipations, marvelous, and, so to speak, imperial as they are, genius can not escape from one inexorable law. It must have materials of sense or experience to work with, and a ποὒ στῶ from whence to take its flight; and genius can no more tell, apart from some at least of the results attained by inquiry, what arc the contents of the crust of the earth, than it could square the circle, or annihilate a fact.[16]

So stands the plea for a revelation of truth from God, a plea only to be met by questioning it possibility; that is, as Dr. Salmon[17] has observed with great force in a recent work, by suggesting that a Being, able to make man, is unable to communicate with the creature He has made. If, on the other hand, the objector confine himself to a merely negative position, and cast the burden of proof on those who believe in revelation, it is obvious to reply by a reference to the actual constitution of things. Had that constitution been normal or morally undisturbed, it might have been held that revelation as an adminiculum, an addition to our natural faculties, would itself have been a disturbance. But the disturbance has in truth been created in the other scale of the balance by departure from the Supreme Will, by the introduction of sin: and revelation, as a special remedy for a special evil, is a contribution toward symmetry, and toward restoration of the original equilibrium.

Thus far only the fourfold succession of living orders has been noticed. But among the persons of very high authority in natural science quoted by Dr. Reusch,[18] who held the general accordance of the Mosaic cosmogony with the results of modern inquiry, are Cuvier and Sir John Herschel. The words of Cuvier show he conceived that "every day" fresh confirmation from the purely human source accrued to the credit of Scripture. And since his day, for he can not now be called a recent authority, this opinion appears to have received some remarkable illustrations.

Half a century ago. Dr. Whewell[19] discussed, under the name of the nebular hypothesis, that theory of rotation which had been indicated by Herschel, and more largely taught by Laplace, as the probable method through which the solar system has taken its form. Carefully abstaining, at that early date, from a formal judgment on the hypothesis, he appears to discuss it with favor; and he shows that this hypothesis, which assumes "a beginning of the present state of things,"[20] is in no way adverse to the Mosaic cosmogony. The theory has received marked support from opposite quarters. In the "Vestiges of Creation" it is frankly adopted; the very curious experiment of Professor Plateau is detailed at length on its behalf;[21] and the author considers, with Laplace, that the zodiacal light, on which Humboldt in his "Kosmos" has dwelt at large, may be a remnant of the luminous atmosphere originally diffused around the sun. Dr. McCaul, in his very able argument on the Mosaic record, quotes[22] Humboldt, Pfaff, and Mädler—a famous German astronomer—as adhering to it. It appears on the whole to be in possession of the field; and McCaul observes[23] that, "had it been devised for the express purpose of removing the supposed difficulties of the Mosaic record, it could hardly have been more to the purpose." Even if we conceive, with Dr. Réville, that the "creation," the first gift of separate existences to the planets, is declared to have been subsequent to that of the earth, there seems to be no known law which excludes such a supposition, especially with respect to the larger and more distant of their number. These, it is to be noticed, are of great rarity as compared with the earth. Why should it be declared impossible that they should have taken a longer time in condensation, like in this point to the comets, which still continue in a state of excessive rarity? Want of space forbids me to enter into further explanation; but it requires much more serious efforts and objections than those of Dr. Réville to confute the statement that the extension of knowledge and of inquiry has confirmed the Mosaic record.

One word, however, upon the "days" of Genesis. We do not hear the authority of Scripture impeached on the ground that it assigns to the Almighty eyes and cars, hands, arms, and feet; nay, even the emotions of the human being. This being so, I am unable to understand why any disparagement to the credit of the sacred books should ensue because, to describe the order and successive stages of the Divine working, these have been distributed into "days." What was the thing required in order to make this great procession of acts intelligible and impressive? Surely it was to distribute the parts each into some integral division of time, having the character of something complete in itself, of a revolution, or outset and return. There are but three such divisions familiarly known to man. Of these the day was the most familiar to human perceptions; and probably on this account its figurative use is admitted to be found in prophetic texts, as, indeed, it largely pervades ancient and modern speech. Given the object in view, which indeed can hardly be questioned, docs it not appear that the "day," more definitely separated than either month or year from what precedes and what follows, was appropriately chosen for the purpose of conveying the idea of development by gradation in the process which the book sets forth?

I now come to the last portion of my task, which is to follow Dr. Réville into his exposition of the Olympian mythology. Not, indeed, the Homeric or Greek religion alone, for he has considered the case of all religions, and disposes of them with equal facility. Of any other system than the Olympian, it would be presumption in me to speak, as I have, beyond this limit, none but the most vague and superficial knowledge. But on the Olympian system in its earliest and least adulterated, namely, its Homeric, development, whether with success or not, I have freely employed a large share of such leisure as more than thirty years of my Parliamentary life, passed in freedom from the calls of office, have supplied. I hope that there is not in Dr. Réville's treatment of other systems that slightness of texture and that facility and rapidity of conclusion which seem to me to mark his performances in the Olympian field.

In the main he follows what is called the solar theory. In his widest view he embraces no more than "the religion of nature" (pp. 94, 100), and he holds that all religion has sprung from the worship of objects visible and sensible.

His first essay is upon Heracles, whom I have found to be one of the most difficult and, so to speak, irreducible characters in the Olympian mythology. In the Tyrian system Heracles, as Melkart, says Dr. Réville in p. 95, is "a brazen god, the devourer of children, the terror of men"; but, without any loss of identity, he becomes in the Greek system "the great lawgiver, the tamer of monsters, the peacemaker, the liberator." I am deeply impressed with the danger that lurks in these summary and easy solutions; and I will offer a few words first on the Greek Heracles generally, next on the Homeric presentation of the character.

Dr. L. Schmidt has contributed to Smith's great Dictionary a large and careful article on Heracles—an article which may almost be called a treatise. Unlike Dr. Réville, to whom the matter is so clear, he finds himself out of his depth in attempting to deal with this highly incongruous character, which meets us at so many points, as a whole. But he perceives in the Heracles of Greece a mixture of fabulous and historic elements; and the mythical basis is not, according to him, a transplanted Melkart, but is essentially Greek.[24] He refers to Buttmann's "Mythologus" and Müller's "Dorians" as the best treatises on the subject, "both of which regard the hero as a purely Greek character." Thus Dr. Réville appears to be in conflict with the leading authorities, whom he does not confute, but simply ignores.

Homer himself may have felt the difficulty, which Dr. Réville does not feel, for he presents to us, in one and the same passage, a divided Heracles. Whatever of him is not eidolon,[25] dwells among the Olympian gods. This eidolon, however, is no mere shade, but something that sees and speaks, that mourns and threatens; no "lawgiver," or "peacemaker," or "liberator," but one from whom the other shades fly in terror, set in the place and company of sinners suffering for their sins, and presumably himself in the same predicament, as the sense of grief is assigned to him: it is in wailing that he addresses Odysseus.[26] Accordingly, while on earth, he is thrasumemnon,[27] huperthumos,[28] a doer of megala erga,[29] which with Homer commonly are crimes. He is profane, for he wounded Herè, the specially Achaian goddess;[30] and he is treacherous, for be killed Iphitos, his host, in order to carry off bis horses[31] A mixed character, no doubt, or be would not have had Herè for a partner; but those which I have stated are some of the difficulties which Dr. Réville quietly rides over to describe him as lawgiver, peacemaker, and liberator. But I proceed.

Nearly everything, with Dr. Réville, and, indeed, with his school, has to be pressed into the service of the solar theory; and, if the evidence will not bear it, so much the worse for the evidence. Thus Ixion, tortured in the later Greek system on a wheel, which is sometimes represented as a burning wheel, is made (p. 105) to be the sun; the luminary whose splendor and beneficence had rendered him, according to the theory, the center of all Aryan worship. A sorry use to put him to; but let that pass. Now the occasion that supplies an Ixion and a burning wheel available for solarism—a system which prides itself above all things on its exhibiting the primitive state of things—is that Ixion had loved unlawfully the wife of Zeus. And first as to the wheel: We hear of it in Pindar;[32] but as a winged not a burning wheel. This "solar" feature appears, I believe, nowhere but in the latest and most defaced and adulterated mythology. Next as to the punishment. It is of a more respectable antiquity. But some heed should surely be taken of the fact that the oldest authority upon Ixion is Homer; and that Homer affords no plea for a burning or any other wheel, for, according to him,[33] instead of Ixion's loving the wife of Zeus, it was Zeus who loved the wife of Ixion.

Errors, conveyed without testimony in a sentence, commonly require many sentences to confute them. I will not dwell on minor cases, or those purely fanciful; for mere fancies, which may be admired or the reverse, are impalpable to the clutch of argument, and thus are hardly subjects for confutation. Paulò majora canamus. I continue to tread the field of Greek mythology, because it is the favorite sporting-ground of the exclusivists of the solar theory.

We are told (p. 80) that because waves with rounded backs may have the appearance (but query) of horses or sheep throwing themselves tumultuously upon one another, therefore "in maritime regions, the god of the liquid element, Poseidon or Neptune, is the breeder, protector, and trainer of horses." Then why is he not also the breeder, protector, and trainer of sheep? They have quite as good a maritime title; according to the fine line of Ariosto:

"Muggendo van per mare i gran montoni."

I am altogether skeptical about these rounded backs of horses, which, more, it seems, than other backs, become conspicuous like a wave. The resemblance, I believe, has commonly been drawn between the horse, as regards his mane, and the foam tipped waves, which are still sometimes called white horses. But we have here, at best, a case of a great superstructure built upon a slight foundation; when it is attempted, on the groundwork of a mere simile, having reference to a state of sea which in the Mediterranean is not the rule but the rare exception, to frame an explanation of the close, pervading, and almost profound relation of the Homeric Poseidon to the horse. Long and careful investigation has shown me that this is an ethnical relation, and a key to important parts of the ethnography of Homer. But the proof of this proposition would require an essay of itself. I will, therefore, only refer to the reason which leads Dr. Réville to construct this (let me say) castle in the air. It is because he thinks he is accounting hereby for a fact, which would indeed, if established, be a startling one, that the god of the liquid element should also be the god of the horse. We are dealing now especially with the Homeric Poseidon, for it is in Homer that the relation to the horse is developed; and the way to a true explanation is opened when we observe that the Homeric Poseidon is not the god of the liquid element at all.

The truth is that the Olympian and ruling gods of Homer are not elemental. Some few of them bear the marks of having been elemental in other systems; but, on admission into the Achaian heaven, they are divested of their elemental features. In the case of Poseidon, there is no sign that he ever had these elemental features. The signs are unequivocal that he had been worshiped as supreme, as the Zeus-Poseidon, by certain races and in certain, viz., in far southern, countries. Certainly he has a special relation to the sea. Once, and once only, do we hear of his having a habitation under water.[34] It is in "II.," xiii, where he fetches his horses from it, to repair to the Trojan plain. He seems to have been an habitual absentee; the prototype, he might be called, of that ill-starred, ill-favored class. We hear of him in Samothrace, on the Solyman Mountains, as visiting the Ethiopians[35] who worshiped him, and the reek of whose offerings he preferred at such times to the society of the Olympian gods debating on Hellenic affairs; though, when we are in the zone of the Outer Geography, we find him actually presiding in an Olympian assembly marked with foreign associations.[36] Now compare with this great mundane figure the true elemental gods of Homer: first Okeanos, a venerable figure, who dwells appropriately by the farthest[37] bound of earth, the bank of the Ocean-river, and who is not summoned[38] even to the great Olympian assembly of the Twentieth Book; and secondly, the graybeard of the sea, whom only from the patronymic of his Nereid daughters we know to have been called Nereus, and who, when reference is made to him and to his train, is on each occasion[39] to be found in one and the same place, the deep recesses of the Mediterranean waters. If Dr. Réville still doubts who was for Homer the elemental god of water, let him note the fact that while neros is old Greek for wet, nero is, down to this very day, the people's word for water. But, conclusive as are these considerations, their force will be most fully appreciated only by those who have closely observed that Homer's entire theurgic system is resolutely exclusive of Nature-worship, except in its lowest and most colorless orders, and that where ho has to deal with a Nature-power of serious pretensions, such as the Water-god would be, he is apt to pursue a method of quiet suppression, by local banishment or otherwise, that space may be left him to play out upon his board the gorgeous and imposing figures of his theanthropie system.

As a surgeon performs the most terrible operation in a few seconds, and with unbroken calm, so does the school of Dr. Réville, at least within the Homeric precinct, marshal, label, and transmute the personages that are found there. In touching on the "log," by which Dr. Réville says Hera was represented for ages, she is quietly described as the "Queen of the shining Heaven" (p. 79). For this assumption, so naïvely made, I am aware of no authority whatever among the Greeks—a somewhat formidable difficulty for others than solarists, as we are dealing with an eminently Greek conception. Euripides, a rather late authority, says,[40] she dwells among the stars, as all deities might be said, ex officio, to do; but gives no indication either of identity or of queenship. Etymology, stoutly disputed, may afford a refuge. Schmidt[41] refers the name to the Latin hera; Curtius[42] and Preller[43] to the Sanskrit svar, meaning the heaven; and Welcker,[44] with others, to what appears the more obvious form of ἕρα, the earth. Dr. Réville, I presume, makes choice of the Sanskrit svar. Such etymologies, however, are, though greatly in favor with the solarists, most uncertain guides to Greek interpretation. The effect of trusting to them is that, if a deity has in some foreign or anterior system had a certain place or office, and if this place or office has been altered to suit the exigencies of a composite mythology, the Greek idea is totally misconceived. If we take the pre-name of the Homeric Apollo, we may with some plausibility say the Phoibos of the poet is the Sun; but we are landed at once in the absurd consequence that we have got a Sun already,[45] and that the two are joint actors in a scene of the eighth Odyessy.[46] Strange, indeed, will be the effect of such a system if applied to our own case at some dale in the far-off future; for it will be shown, inter alia, that there were no priests, but only presbyters, in any portion of Western Christendom; that our dukes were simply generals leading us in war; that we broke our fast at eight in the evening (for dîner is but a compression of déjeuner); and even, possibly, that one of the noblest and most famous of English houses pursued habitually the humble occupation of a pig-driver.

The character of Hera, or Heré, has received from Homer a full and elaborate development. There is in it absolutely no trace whatever of "the queen of the shining heaven." In the action of the "Odyssey" she has no share at all—a fact absolutely unaccountable if her function was one for which the voyages of that poem give much more scope than is supplied by the "Iliad." The fact is, that there is no queen of heaven in the Achaian system; nor could there be without altering its whole genius. It is a curious incidental fact that, although Homer recognizes to some extent humanity in the stars (I refer to Orion and Leucotheë, both of them foreign personages of the Outer Geography), he never even approximates to a personification of the real queen of heaven, namely, the moon. There happens to be one marked incident of the action of Hera, which stands in rather ludicrous contrast with this lucent queenship. On one of the occasions when, in virtue of her birth and station, she exercises some supreme prerogative, she directs the sun (surely not so to her lord and master) to set, and he reluctantly obeys.[47] Her character has not any pronounced moral elements; it exhibits pride and passion; it is pervaded intensely with policy and nationalism; she is beyond all others the Achaian goddess, and it is sarcastically imputed to her by Zeus that she would cut the Trojans if she could, and eat them without requiring in the first instance any culinary process.[48] I humbly protest against mauling and disfiguring this work; against what great Walter Scott would, I think, have called "mashackering and misguggling" it, after the manner of Nichol Muschat, when he put an end to his wife Ailie[49] at the spot afterward marked by his name. Why blur the picture so charged alike with imaginative power and historic meaning, by the violent obtrusion of ideas, which, whatever force they may have had among other peoples or in other systems, it was one of the main purposes of Homer, in his marvelous theurgic work, to expel from all high place in the order of ideas, and from every corner, every loft and every cellar, so to speak, of his Olympian palaces?

If the Hera of Homer is to own a relationship outside the Achaian system, like that of Apollo to the sun, it is undoubtedly with Gaia, the earth, that "it can be most easily established. The all-producing function of Gaia in the Theogony of Hesiod[50] and her marriage with Ouranos, the heaven, who has a partial relation to Zeus, points to Hera as the majestic successor who in the Olympian scheme, as the great mother and guardian of maternity, bore an analogical resemblance to the female head of one or more of the Pelasgian or archaic theogonies that it had deposed.

I have now done with the treatment of details, and I must not quit them without saying that there are some of the chapters, and many of the sentences, of Dr. Réville which appear to me to deserve our thanks. And, much as I differ from him concerning an essential part of the historic basis of religion, I trust that nothing which I have said can appear to impute to him any hostility or indifference to the substance of religion itself.

I make, indeed, no question that the solar theory has a most important place in solving the problems presented by many or some of the Aryan religions; but whether it explains their first inception is a totally different matter. When it is ruthlessly applied, in the teeth of evidence, to them all, in the last resort it stifles facts, and reduces observation and reasoning to a mockery. Sir George Cox, its able advocate, fastens upon the admission that some one particular method is not available for all the phenomena, and asks, Why not adopt for the Greek system, for the Aryan systems at large, perhaps for a still wider range, "a clear and simple explanation," namely, the solar theory?[51] The plain answer to the question is, that this must not be done, because, if it is done, we do not follow the facts, nor are led by them; but, to use the remarkable phrase of Æschylus,[52] we ride them down, we trample them under foot. Mankind has long been too familiar with a race of practitioners, whom courtesy forbids to name, and whose single medicine is alike available to deal with every one of the thousand figures of disease. There are surely many sources to which the old religions are referable. We have solar worship, earth worship, astronomic worship, the worship of animals, the worship of evil powers, the worship of abstractions, the worship of the dead, the foul and polluting worship of bodily organs, so widespread in the world, and especially in the East; last, but not least, I will name terminal worship, the remarkable and most important scheme which grew up, perhaps first on the Nile, in connection with the stones used for marking boundaries, which finds its principal representative in the god Hermes, and which is very largely traced and exhibited in the first volume of the work of M. Dulaure[53] on ancient religions.

But none of these circumstances discredit or impair the proof that in the Book, of which Genesis is the opening section, there is conveyed special knowledge to meet the special need everywhere so palpable in the state and history of our race. Far indeed am I from asserting that this precious gift, or that any process known to me, disposes of all the problems, either insoluble or unsolved, by which we arc surrounded; of

"the burden and the mystery
Of all this unintelligible world."

But I own my surprise not only at the fact, but at the manner in which in this day, writers, whose name is Legion, unimpeached in character and abounding in talent, not only put away from them, cast into shadow or into the very gulf of negation itself, the conception of a Deity, an acting and a ruling Deity. Of this belief, which has satisfied the doubts, and wiped away the tears, and found guidance for the footsteps of so many a weary wanderer on earth, which among the best and greatest of our race has been so cherished by those who had it, and so longed and sought for by those who had it not, we might suppose that if at length we had discovered that it was in the light of truth untenable, that the accumulated testimony of man was worthless, and that his wisdom was but folly, yet at least the decencies of mourning would be vouchsafed to this irreparable loss. Instead of this, it is with a joy and exultation that might almost recall the frantic orgies of the Commune, that this, at least at first sight, terrific and overwhelming calamity is accepted, and recorded as a gain. One recent, and, in many ways, respected writer—a woman long wont to unship creed as sailors discharge excess of cargo in a storm, and passing at length into formal atheism—rejoices to find herself on the open, free, and "breezy common of humanity." Another, also woman, and dealing only with the workings and manifestations of God, finds[54] in the theory of a physical evolution as recently developed by Mr. Darwin, and received with extensive favor, both an emancipation from error and a novelty in kind. She rejoices to think that now at last Darwin "shows life as an harmonious whole, and makes the future stride possible by the past advance." Evolution, that is physical evolution, which alone is in view, may be true (like the solar theory), may be delightful and wonderful, in its right place; but are we really to understand that varieties of animals brought about through domestication, the wasting of organs (for instance, the tails of men) by disuse, that natural selection and the survival of the fittest, all in the physical order, exhibit to us the great arcanum of creation, the sum and center of life, so that mind and spirit are dethroned from their old supremacy, and no longer sovereign by right, but may find somewhere by charity a place assigned them, as appendages, perhaps only as excrescences, of the material creation? I contend that Evolution in its highest form had not been a thing heretofore unknown to history, to philosophy, or to theology. I contend that it was before the mind of Saint Paul when he taught that in the fullness of time God sent forth His Son, and of Euscbius, when he wrote the "Preparation for the Gospel," and of Augustine when he composed the "City of God"; and, beautiful and splendid as are the lessons taught by natural objects, they arc, for Christendom at least, infinitely beneath the sublime unfolding of the great drama of human action, in which, through long ages, Greece was making ready a language and an intellectual type, and Rome a framework of order and an idea of law, such that in them were to be shaped and fashioned the destinies of a regenerated world. For those who believe that the old foundations are unshaken still, and that the fabric built upon them will look down for ages on the floating wreck of many a modern and boastful theory, it is difficult to see anything but infatuation in the destructive temperament which leads to the notion that to substitute a blind mechanism for the hand of God in the affairs of life is to enlarge the scope of remedial agency; that to dismiss the highest of all inspirations is to elevate the strain of human thought and life; and that each of us is to rejoice that our several units are to be disintegrated at death into "countless millions of organisms"; for such, it seems, is the latest "revelation" delivered from the fragile tripod of a modern Delphi. Assuredly on the minds of those who believe, or else on the minds of those who after this fashion disbelieve, there lies some deep judicial darkness, a darkness that may be felt. While disbelief in the eyes of faith is a sore calamity, this kind of disbelief, which renounces and repudiates with more than satisfaction what is brightest and best in the inheritance of man, is astounding, and might be deemed incredible. Nay, some will say, rather than accept the flimsy and hollow consolations which it makes bold to offer, might we not go back to solar adoration, or, with Goethe, to the hollows of Olympus?

"Wenn die Funke sprüht,
Wenn die Asche glüht,
Eilen wir den alten Göttern zu.[55]"

Translation.

"When the sparks glitter,
When the ashes glow.
We speed us to the old gods."
Nineteenth Century.

  1. In his "Prolegomena to the History of Religions." My references throughout are to the translation by Mr. Squire (Williams & Norgate, 1884).
  2. "Analogy," part II, chap, ii, § 2.
  3. I will only name one of the most recent, Dr. Reusch, the author of "Bibel und Natur" (Bonn, 1876)
  4. "Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age," 8 vols. Oxford, 1858.
  5. "Address to the University of Edinburgh" (Murray, 1865); "Juventus Mundi" (Macmillan, 1868); "Primer of Homer (Macmillan. 1878; especially see Preface to "Juventus Mundi," p. 1.
  6. "Aryan Mythology," vol. I, p. 15.
  7. The στερέωμα of the Septuagint is construed in conformity with the Hebrew.
  8. Gen. i, 16.
  9. "Paradiso," iii, 87.
  10. In our translation, and in the recent revision the singular is used. But we are assured that the Hebrew word is plural (Bishop of Winchester on Genesis I, 1, in the Speaker's Bible). If so taken, we have the creation, visible to us, treated conjointly In versos 1-5, distributively in verses 6-19; surely a most orderly arrangement.
  11. "Samson Agonistes."
  12. On this expression, I refer again to the commentary of Bishop Harold Browne. Bishop Mant supplies an interesting list of testimonies.
  13. See Bishop of Winchester's "Commentary."
  14. This perplexed question is discussed, in a sense adverse to the Septuagint, by the critic of the recent revision. In the "Quarterly Review" for October, No. 822. The revisers of the Old Testament state (Preface, p. vi) that in a few cases of extreme difficulty they have set aside the Masoretic text in favor of a reading from one of the ancient versions.
  15. Ps. civ, 2-20. cxxxvi. 5-9, and the Song of the Three Children In verses 57-60.
  16. In conversation with Miss Burney ("Diary," i, 576). Johnson, using language which sounds more disparaging than it really is, declares that "Genius is nothing more than knowing the use of tools; but then there must be tools for it to use."
  17. "Introduction to the New Testament," p. ix. Murray. 1885.
  18. "Bibel und Natur." pp. 2, 68. The words of Cuvier are: "Moyses hat uns elno Kosmogonie hinterlassen, deren Genaukeit mit jedem Tage in einer bewunderungswürdigern Weise bestätigt ist." The declaration of Sir John Herschel was In 1861.
  19. Whewell's "Astronomy and General Physics," 1834, p. 181 seqq.
  20. Whewell op. cit., p. 206.
  21. "Vestiges," etc., pp. 11-15.
  22. "Aids to Faith," p. 210.
  23. Ibid.
  24. Smith's "Dictionary," ii, 400.
  25. "Od.," xi, 601-4.
  26. "Od.," xi. 605-16.
  27. "Od," xi, 267.
  28. "Il.," xiv. 250.
  29. "Od.," xxim 26.
  30. "Il.," v, 892.
  31. "Od." xxi, 26-80.
  32. "Pyth.," Il, 89.
  33. "Il.," xiv, 817.
  34. "II.," xiii. 17-31.
  35. "Od." i, 25, 26.
  36. "Od.," viii, 321-60.
  37. "Il.," xiv, 201.
  38. "IL," xx, 7.
  39. "Il.," i, 358; xviii, 36.
  40. Eurip., "Helena," 109.
  41. Smith's "Dict." art. "Hera."
  42. "Griech. Etymol.," p. 119.
  43. Preller, "Grieeh. Mythol.," i, 121,
  44. "Grieeh. Götterlehre," i, 862-3.
  45. See "Infra"
  46. "Od.," viii, 302, 834.
  47. "Il.," xviii, 289, 240.
  48. "IL," It, 35.
  49. "Heart of Midlothian.
  50. Theog.," 116-136.
  51. "Mythology of Aryan Nations," 1, 18.
  52. καθιππάζεσθαι: a remarkable word, as applied to moral subjects, found in the "Eumenides" only.
  53. "Histoire abrégée de différens Cultes." Seconde édition. Paris, 1825.
  54. I do not quote names, but I refer to a very recent article In one of our monthly periodicals.
  55. "Braut von Corinth."